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

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.

Second, viewers trust PBS because of its content, notably its news and children’s programming. 49.8% of our respondents listed PBS as a major source of news — perhaps not surprising, given that ours was a survey of PBS viewers. What is surprising is that PBS is a major source of news regardless of political preferences. 54.5% of self-declared “extreme conservatives” and 58.5% of self-declared “extreme liberals” in our survey sample consider PBS a major source of news and information.

Crucially, and in direct opposition to the claims in President Trump’s executive order and Republican politicians’ statements, our findings indicate that PBS audiences evaluate its news as unbiased. In fact, when asked to compare it to other U.S. news media, respondents considered PBS the news organization least associated with political ideology. PBS’ kids programming was another area of content that audiences indicated they highly trust, while barely 5% of survey respondents reported that they distrust PBS’ children’s educational programming, a far cry from critics’ claims of its detrimental effects on children.

Children’s educational programming also factors into the third area of why Americans who watch PBS trust PBS: nostalgia. Many of the respondents in our survey reported that they trust PBS because they “grew up on it.” As one respondent told us in response to an open-ended question, “I’ve always loved PBS since I was a child. I trust it because they are the most harmless network I have ever seen. Everything is so pure and they speak the truth.” Many other respondents noted that Mister Rogers was a major reason they trusted PBS, a phenomenon we dubbed “the Mister Rogers Effect.”

So what does this all mean in our present politically hostile climate? It means that those who watch PBS trust it for many of the exact reasons that President Trump claims it’s untrustworthy. They trust it because of its public basis, they trust it because they perceive its news and children’s programming as unbiased, and they trust it because they feel a personal connection to it. Given the wide breadth of political ideologies of viewers, our findings suggest that PBS is a meeting place for many Americans, not the bastion of liberal or anti-American sentiment that some Republicans claim it to be.

Our findings lead us to conclude that PBS can and should play a larger role in the American media ecosystem. Its role as trusted meeting place comes at a time when, according to a 2019 study from the Pew Research Center, 71% of Americans “think interpersonal confidence has worsened in the past 20 years” and only a quarter of Americans (24%) “trust the federal government to do what is right.”

Given that the U.S. spends only $1.40 per capita on public media, compared to over $100 per capita in the U.K. and Norway and compared to, for example, the $849 billion spent on the military (almost $2,700 per capita), the high levels of trust in PBS from across the political spectrum suggests a tremendous value for very little money.

Very little seems to unite Americans these days. Trust in government and public institutions is precipitously low. PBS bucks this trend. It is an “island of trust” in an ocean of what some call “post-trust” and others call “post-truth.” It can be the focal point for a renewed spirit of American public discussions, a commitment to journalism, and a platform to recultivate trust.

For this to happen, however, PBS needs to survive. More than that, it needs to thrive. A 2021 study by Timothy Neff and Victor Pickard that we cite in our article found that those countries with high levels of support for public broadcasting also have healthier democracies.

President Trump says he is “restoring trust in government funded institutions.” Our findings demonstrate that such trust already exists, in spades, towards PBS. Instead of fighting to take away the measly amount of public funding awarded to PBS, we should be doubling down on it as a vital component of our democracy.