Every couple of years, Paula Kerger, the long-serving chief executive of PBS, faces pushback from Congress. It often comes from Republicans who argue that public broadcasters like PBS and NPR are biased and not deserving of taxpayers’ money. Ms. Kerger, 67, has a playbook for how to handle that.
“We would just fight on the merits,” Ms. Kerger said in an interview this week, spelling out the broadcaster’s mission, audience, spending priorities and results. “That’s an argument we know how to do.”
But this year, she said, feels “very different.” In January, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission ordered an investigation into the public media networks’ sponsor messages. In March, Ms. Kerger faced hostile lawmakers on a House subcommittee led by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who called the hearing “Anti-American Airwaves.”
Then, this month, President Trump signed an executive order seeking to end all federal funding for PBS and NPR, which the White House called “woke propaganda.” Soon after, Mr. Trump terminated a grant that PBS used to finance children’s educational programs.
“It feels like a lot of stuff coming at us from lots of different directions,” Ms. Kerger, who has run PBS for nearly 20 years, said from her office in Arlington, Va., with a view of the Washington Monument. The group “furloughed a ton of people last week,” she said.
PBS gets about 15 percent of its budget from federal grants. The rest comes from sources including licensing, sponsorships and dues from its 330 or so member stations.