Free Press joined with MoveOn.org and others Tuesday to deliver over 600,000 petitions to Congress calling on it to save the Corporation for Public Broadcasting from the Trump Administration's budget axe, according to Free Press.
"We’re calling on our senators to protect our access to public broadcasting and to think about what we would all lose without the CPB, which provides essential support to hundreds of NPR and PBS stations all over the country," said the group.
The President's budget blueprint, unveiled last week, zeros out federal funding for noncommercial media, which would have been $445 million.
The budget is only a blueprint and Congress must approve its line items, so the cuts are not set in stone. But it is arguably the most serious threat to CPB funding since it was created by Congress in the 1960s to distribute federal funds to noncommercial outlets.
While in the past Republicans, and even some Democrats, have balked at the funding and pushed for cuts, more recently there has been support from both sides of the aisle for funding.
CPB provides about 15% of noncom budgets, with the rest coming from corporate underwriters and contributions from viewers, but noncoms say zeroing out federal funding would also affect matching grants and threaten the survival of the system.
