Elon Musk is gunning for public media.
In his new role advising President-elect Donald J. Trump, Mr. Musk has floated sweeping cuts to the federal government, including the elimination of entire departments and the firing of agency leaders. One of the most concrete proposals on his list is eliminating hundreds of millions of dollars in annual funding that the government funnels to PBS and NPR stations, home to cultural touchstones like Elmo, Big Bird and “Fresh Air.”
For decades, NPR and PBS have overcome similar threats. But this year, “the attention and intensity” of the calls to defund public media seem greater, said Michael Isip, the president and chief executive of KQED, which operates NPR and PBS stations in the San Francisco Bay Area.
NPR and PBS stations are bracing for the fight. After the election, leaders of NPR’s biggest local stations circulated a report that warned “it would be unwise to assume that events will play out as they have in the past,” with regard to their federal funding. PBS received an update on the situation from political consultants at a board meeting in early December. And station directors in some states are already making their case to legislators.
Internally, NPR is preparing for a variety of funding possibilities, including that government money will be clawed back immediately, according to two people briefed on the network’s planning.
While many Americans know NPR and PBS by popular programs like “Sesame Street” and “All Things Considered,” those national organizations are merely the most visible part of a network of local stations crisscrossing the United States — a network that depends on public funding for local news, educational programming and emergency alerts. More than 98 percent of the U.S. population lives within listening range of at least one of the more than 1,000 public radio stations that carry NPR programming, and many stations use government funding to buy shows and pay for their newsrooms.
“The most vulnerable stations serving the most vulnerable people are going to be the ones that are hurt the hardest,” said Eric Nuzum, a former NPR executive and a co-founder of Magnificent Noise, an audio consulting and production company. “We’re talking about very rural parts of the United States.”
He added that NPR and PBS had a difficult road ahead even without a funding battle, with changing listener and viewer habits putting pressure on their business models.
An NPR spokesperson, Isabel Lara, said defunding public radio would result in less money for local journalism, including coverage of sports and culture. She added that the network regularly planned for a variety of different financial outcomes. “Cutting public media funding means cutting funding to local communities,” she said.
A PBS spokesperson, Jeremy Gaines, echoed those sentiments in a statement. “Now more than ever, the service PBS provides matters for Americans,” he said.
A representative for Mr. Trump had no immediate comment. Mr. Musk did not respond to a request for comment.
In many ways, the stations’ pushback draws from a well-worn playbook. Republicans have called for eliminating federal funding for public media for decades, including during the last Trump administration, though it wasn’t cut then. Many in the party have argued that the networks’ reporting and opinion commentary doesn’t encompass a full range of political views, and that taxpayers shouldn’t be required to pay for the programming.
Fred Rogers, the kindly TV host behind “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” on PBS, testified in defense of public media during an attempt during the Nixon administration to cut funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, an entity that received $535 million from the government this year and provides funds to PBS and NPR stations.
“For the majority of us who’ve been in public broadcasting for 20 to 30 years, this is not new,” said Ed Ulman, the president and chief executive of Alaska Public Media in Anchorage. He recently discussed funding with Dan Sullivan, a senator from Alaska, and the staff of Lisa Murkowski, the state’s other senator. Both are Republicans.
“It really comes back down to ensuring that people in D.C. understand the unintended consequences of some of their policy decisions,” Mr. Ulman said.
But the traditional script may not work as well this time, Mr. Nuzum said.
“So many of the plays are defensive,” he said. “No real thought is given to playing offense: What is our forward-looking vision that we can say justifies the investment from the American public for the next 10, 20, 30 years?”
This funding fight may also differ from earlier battles because of the newfound passion and sudden ascent of Mr. Musk, who has made plain his deep distaste for traditional media. Although he holds no elected office, his influence over government spending was revealed in stark relief last week when he helped torpedo a bipartisan spending deal, forcing lawmakers to redraft the agreement. Mr. Musk has recommended his social media service, X, as a replacement for news media outlets, which he accuses of bias against him.
“Legacy media must die,” Mr. Musk posted to X on Sunday.
NPR and PBS stations have two crucial advantages in the battle to preserve their funding. Many local stations serve as a backbone for emergency alert systems, a function that would be impossible to replace overnight. And the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is funded two years in advance, meaning that efforts to defund public media would most likely lag far behind congressional action.
But Republican-sponsored bills that would eliminate government funding for public media are already working their way through Congress. They include the No Propaganda Act, introduced this year by Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana and Representative Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, and the Defund NPR Act, introduced in April by Representative Jim Banks of Indiana.
Mr. Banks introduced his bill weeks after a senior editor at NPR, Uri Berliner, published an essay claiming that the network had a liberal bias. (Mr. Berliner resigned and now works for The Free Press, a digital start-up founded by the former New York Times writer Bari Weiss.)
Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, said in an interview that it was wrong to require conservatives to fund an outlet dismissive of their perspectives. Mr. Gonzalez contributed to Project 2025, a policy playbook to overhaul the federal government, writing that the government should defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
“This will be one of those things that will make America better,” Mr. Gonzalez said. “Not to coerce them into paying something for a media outlet that mocks their views.”
Public media organizations are already under serious pressure. NPR grappled with declining listenership and a decrease in sponsorships — public radio speak for advertising — in 2023, the last year for which detailed finances were available.
Ms. Lara, the NPR spokesperson, said the organization’s sponsorships held steady this year, adding that listenership grew in major markets beginning this summer.
Expecting local NPR and PBS stations to fulfill their obligations to inform and educate Americans across the country without public funding is unreasonable, Mr. Nuzum, the former NPR executive, said.
“It’s the equivalent of bringing a public radio tote bag to a gunfight,” he said.
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