By Marta Szpacenkopf
Cutting federal funds to National Public Radio (NPR) could dismantle the infrastructure of public radio and broadcasting in the United States, jeopardizing access to public radio for rural and underserved communities, many of which lack access to another local news organization. This is a warning from Katherine Maher, president and CEO of NPR, who delivered the keynote address “More informed: The stakes and future for public media,” chaired by Sonal Shah, CEO of The Texas Tribune, on March 28, 2025, as part of the 26th International Symposium on Online Journalism (ISOJ).
“I believe so deeply in the importance of federal funding in order to maintain a network that truly serves the whole country,” Maher said. "The cost of maintaining infrastructure in the high desert of the Southwest, in the hollers of Appalachia, in the valleys of our mountain systems, is extraordinarily high. Infrastructure is not cheap.”
Two days prior to her participation at ISOJ, Maher appeared before a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee on government efficiency, where she addressed the issue of continued federal funding for public media and defended NPR against accusations of bias from Republican lawmakers.
Yet, this isn't the only sign of trouble for NPR.
Brendan Carr, chairman of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, ordered an investigation into NPR and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in January to see if they are “violating federal law by airing commercials.”
U.S. President Donald Trump himself has called for Congress to defund both NPR and PBS, calling them "arms of the Radical Left Democrat Party."
Asked by ISOJ panel chair Sonal Shah what percentage of local radio stations would disappear without federal funding, Maher declined to give a number, but said smaller stations would be hit the hardest.
“Remember, there are so many little stations out there that provide direct support to small communities. And those are the ones that often have the high infrastructure cost of maintaining those towers, the cars that drive around to make sure that the towers are working,” Maher said. “We at NPR, of course, want to make sure that we sustain and support that and are thinking in conversation with our member stations about what that would look like to be able to continue to serve the entire nation. And so how might we work with our stations to maintain it? How do we support additional fundraising from the public?”
“We all know that it would be very damaging to the system to lose funds. And we are thinking very hard about what it means for us to step in to try to support and sustain that system if need be,” she continued.
NPR has 246 member stations in all 50 states and Guam, reaching 99.7 percent of the country's population. Maher said public media is often the only form of press available in local communities, with one-fifth of Americans living without access to a local news organization, other than public media.
In total, Maher explained, NPR receives about $11.2 million annually directly from the federal government. A portion of that money is 1 percent of NPR’s $300 million annual budget, or an average of $3 million in a year, which she said goes toward spending on bulletproof vests for journalists in war zones, increasing capacity to cover national elections, and other needs. Maher explained that they also receive an additional $8 million to support what’s known as the Public Radio Satellite System (PRSS), which connects all 1,300 public radio stations in the country, giving them access to live, real-time broadcasts. It also supports some of the emergency broadcasting systems in the United States.
“I know for all of the newsrooms out there, that's a lot of money and it is also not a ton of money relative to our budget, which mostly comes through either our membership fees or our sponsorship or direct donations,” Maher said. “Now, the total amount of money that goes to all of public radio in this country is $120 million. That supports, as I said, 1,300 public radio stations. It is, again, a lot of money, but relative to the impact that it has in terms of the reporting that it's able to deliver, it is pennies on the dollar per citizen.”
Regarding Republican politicians' accusations of bias in NPR's coverage, Shah reminded the ISOJ audience that several members of the committee used an editorial published by The Free Press written by a former NPR editor titled: "I’ve Been at NPR for 25 Years. Here’s How We Lost America’s Trust." The article was published in September last year, when Maher had only been in the role for two weeks.
Other issues mentioned at the public hearing were coverage of the Russian interference investigation, the case of Hunter Biden's laptop and the theory of the laboratory origin of COVID-19.
“I want to start by just defending and standing up and advocating for our newsroom. We produce award-winning extraordinarily strong journalism. I was not an NPR at the time and I'm not on the editorial side, so I'm not privy to all the conversations that happened,” Maher said. “I have spoken to our editorial leadership and they would say the following: They wish that they had been more aggressive and earlier on the Hunter Biden laptop story. I was speaking with one of our editors who said: ‘Look, I have a general rule, if we speak about something for more than five minutes, we should probably cover it.’ We spoke about that for more than five minutes. We didn't cover it. We should have, let's acknowledge that.”
“I'm a very big believer that when there's criticism, you have to hear it, you have to listen to it,” she continued. “You have to think about what it means for your work and then you get better by integrating criticism that is valid and meaningful.”
Maher also reinforced NPR's focus on producing local journalism in a context of extreme polarization in the United States, with research showing that the existence of local journalism is directly correlated with better civic outcomes: higher rates of citizen engagement, more expressive electoral participation and reduced levels of political polarization.
"We know that the decline of local journalism and local papers has been so significant over the course of the past two decades. And what we are really focused on at NPR and with our colleagues at our 200 plus newsrooms across the nation is how do we step in to be a resource,” Maher said. "And so 85% of Americans believe that local news matters. 15% of Americans are willing to pay for it, which is where public media steps in. It is part of the way that we step into a breach where markets can't support local journalism and it is part of our commitment to serving all Americans."