An indication for the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is seen on its constructing headquarters on Feb. 18, 2025 in Arlington, Virginia.
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PBS on Friday sued President Donald Trump to dam his effort to chop off federal funding for the public broadcaster.
The U.S. Structure and the half-century-old regulation governing public tv “forbid” Trump from trying to defund PBS or “serving because the arbiter” of its programming, PBS wrote in U.S. District Courtroom in Washington, D.C.
The lawsuit from PBS and considered one of its member stations in Minnesota got here three days after NPR filed a similar suit in opposition to Trump and his administration.
“After cautious deliberation, PBS reached the conclusion that it was essential to take authorized motion to safeguard public tv’s editorial independence, and to guard the autonomy of PBS member stations,” a PBS spokesperson instructed CNBC in a press release.
The nonprofit public media shops each need the courts to invalidate Trump’s Might 1 executive order commanding the Company for Public Broadcasting, or CPB, and all govt businesses to “stop Federal funding for NPR and PBS.”
Trump’s order declared that the federal government funding the information media is “not solely outdated and pointless however corrosive to the looks of journalistic independence.” It additionally accused each PBS and NPR of failing to current “a good, correct, or unbiased portrayal of present occasions to taxpaying residents.”
Attorneys for PBS mentioned they dispute Trump’s assertions “within the strongest attainable phrases.” However regardless, the president is legally barred from meddling with the broadcaster’s funding or its content material, they wrote.
They cited a federal telecommunications law’s dictate that no “division, company, officer, or worker of the USA” could “train any path, supervision, or management over public telecommunications, or over [CPB] or any of its grantees.”
That additionally applies with respect to “the content material or distribution of public telecommunications packages and providers,” the regulation states.
Trump’s order additionally violates the Structure’s protections of speech and press freedom, PBS argued. It “makes no try to cover the truth that it’s reducing off the circulate of funds to PBS due to the content material of PBS programming and out of a need to change the content material of speech.”
“That’s blatant viewpoint discrimination and an infringement of PBS and PBS Member Stations’ personal editorial discretion,” legal professionals for the broadcaster wrote. They added that the order “smacks of retaliation for, amongst different issues, perceived political slights in information protection.”
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