Leaders of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private agency that has steered federal funding to PBS, NPR and hundreds of public television and radio stations across the country, voted Monday to dissolve the organization that was created in 1967.
The CPB provided funding for the Maine Public Broadcasting organization, which includes Maine Public Radio and other news services.
CPB had been winding down since Congress acted last summer to defund its operations at the encouragement of President Donald Trump. Its board of directors chose Monday to shutter CPB completely instead of keeping it in existence as a shell.
“CPB’s final act would be to protect the integrity of the public media system and the democratic values by dissolving, rather than allowing the organization to remain defunded and vulnerable to additional attacks,” said Patricia Harrison, the organization’s president and CEO.
Many Republicans have long accused public broadcasting, particularly its news programming, of being biased toward liberals but it wasn’t until the second Trump administration —- with full GOP control of Congress — that those criticisms were turned into action.
Ruby Calvert, head of CPB’s board of directors, said the federal defunding of public media has been devastating.
“Even at this moment, I am convinced that public media will survive, and that a new Congress will address public media’s role in our country because it is critical to our children’s education, our history, culture and democracy to do so,” Calvert said.
CPB said it was financially supporting the American Archive of Public Broadcasting in its effort to preserve historic content, and is working with the University of Maryland to maintain its own records.
Story by David Bauder, Associated Press. BDN writer Leela Stockley contributed to this report.
