Plurality of Americans say NPR, PBS should be federally funded: Survey
Mar 26, 2025
A plurality of surveyed Americans say the federal government should continue to fund public broadcasters, according to a new survey.
New polling from Pew found 24 percent of surveyed Americans say the U.S. government should not continue to send taxpayer dollars to NPR and PBS, while a larger slic
e, 43 percent, say federal funding levels to those outlets should stay the same.
The same survey found 32 percent of Democrats say they regularly get news from NPR, compared with 9 percent of Republicans. Thirty-one percent of Democrats regularly get news from PBS, compared with 11 percent of Republicans who said the same.
The survey's results were published the same day the heads of NPR and PBS, Katherine Maher and Paula Kerger, respectively, were grilled by lawmakers on Capitol Hill over their outlets' editorial practices and funding models.
Maher told lawmakers her organization took in just more than $11 million in federal funding last year.
President Trump and Republicans have accused public broadcasters of bias against them, and some have called for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to be shut down completely.
The Pew survey was conducted March 10 through 16 among 9,400 respondents. ...read more read less