What Is NPR Now?

On Monday, NPR joined the vast majority of its colleagues in refusing to sign a new policy, ordered up by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, seeking control over how news organizations cover the Pentagon. “NPR will never be party to limitations on the independence of the press and the objective, fact-based reporting of our journalists,” Thomas Evans, the network’s editor in chief, said in a statement. “We will not sign the Administration’s restrictive policy that asks reporters to undermine their commitment of providing trustworthy, independent journalism to the American public.”

Evans assumed the role only last month, amid what has already been a cataclysmic year for public radio. In July, Congress voted to strip public broadcasting of all federal funding, after years of partisan complaints about NPR’s supposed liberal bias. The move devastated the financial base for hundreds of local and tribal radio stations, which rely heavily on federal funds, and it forced the national network—which draws on programming fees from those stations for about a third of its revenue—to plan millions in budget cuts.

Evans was previously a vice president and London bureau chief at CNN. He initially came to NPR last September to helm the “Backstop,” a new team that would review stories prior to publication—part of NPR’s effort to prove its bipartisan bona fides and preserve federal funding. Now, with the funding battle lost, NPR might seem to be freed from that balancing act. But Evans says listeners should not expect it to become the new face of the resistance. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.