Americans trust PBS because it’s publicly funded, not in spite of it

“President Trump says he is ‘restoring trust in government funded institutions.’ Our findings demonstrate that such trust already exists, in spades, towards PBS.”

By Christopher Ali, Hilde Van den Bulck and Jonathan Kropko June 4, 2025, 2:19 p.m.

On May 2, President Trump signed an executive order ordering CPB to halt all funding to PBS and NPR local stations. The justifications for this unprecedented action included the vast array of content available on multiple digital platforms and accusations of bias within public broadcasting’s newsgathering efforts and reportage.

Trump stated that CPB has violated its mandate of not endorsing “any political party.” Regarding PBS and NPR, he declared: “Neither entity presents a fair, accurate, or unbiased portrayal of current events to taxpaying citizens.” The executive order claims to be politically neutral, stating that “which viewpoints NPR and PBS promote does not matter,” but a corresponding article from the White House chastised both public broadcasters for “spread[ing] radical, woke propaganda disguised as ‘news.'”

The executive order has been heavily disputed. PBS CEO Paula Kerger called it “blatantly unlawful.” CPB stated that its mandate comes from and, therefore, can only be terminated by Congress. Yet the President has found many in the Republican Party to support his viewpoints. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene held a hearing on March 26 entitled “Anti-American Airwaves.” This hearing followed in the footsteps of a longer history of Republican criticism of U.S. public media’s alleged left-leaning bias and “woke” agenda — the latter often illustrated through reference to children’s programming like Sesame Street.

Contrary to these ideologically inspired beliefs, our empirical research — recently published in the Journal of Communication, the flagship journal of the communication studies discipline — finds that Americans from across the political spectrum don’t subscribe to the notion of a biased PBS. We found that those who watch PBS trust it immensely, for several complementary reasons.

In our article, “An Island of Trust: Public Broadcasting in the United States,” we report the findings of a nationally representative survey (n=1,500) of PBS audiences. The original study was funded by a Knight News Innovation Fellowship at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University for two of our authors. Our aim was to verify and nuance PBS’s own surveys that claim it has been the most trusted public institution in America over the last two decades. Do Americans who watch PBS really trust it more than any other public institution? And if so, what aspects of PBS, its audience, and wider media context explain this unique position and level of trust?

We found that those who watch PBS trust it along three different axes. First, viewers say PBS is an excellent value for public dollars. Overall, 47.4% of our respondents said that PBS’ value for public dollars was “excellent.” What’s more, survey respondents told us that they trust it precisely because it’s publicly funded. 41.9% said that they considered PBS’ funding structure a reason to put significant trust into PBS.