If NPR’s authorities funding is slashed underneath Donald Trump’s administration, it will do important injury to the broadcasting collective’s native stations, Steve Oney tells me. “So in that sense,” he says, “NPR is weak.”
“But it surely’s onerous to inform what Donald Trump goes to do proper now,” provides Oney, whose forthcoming e book, On Air, captures the “triumph and tumult” at NPR over its 55-year existence. Oney notes that whereas Elon Musk has called for defunding NPR on X, “whether or not they act on it’s only hypothesis.” He mentions that Trump is already “bulldozing his manner by means of numerous tasks.”
The “defunding” speak can oversimplify the state of NPR’s funds: The broadcaster says that, on common, it solely instantly receives about 1% of its annual operating budget from the federal authorities, through grants from the Company for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and different businesses. Nonetheless, 30% of NPR’s funds comes from native stations that pay charges to license nationwide content material—and people member stations obtain a median of 10% of their funding from the CPB. It’s the federal funding that has lengthy put NPR within the crosshairs of Republican administrations.
On Air, which has been within the making for 14 years, chronicles the evolution of NPR, tracing the establishment and its management from its founding in 1970 to the twenty first century. In a single occasion, Oney captures how the assaults of 9/11 turbocharged NPR’s live-news operation, the topic of a latest Self-importance Truthful excerpt. Whereas the content material of the e book follows the trajectories of the general public broadcaster’s star skills all through NPR’s storied historical past—together with Bob Edwards, Susan Stamberg, and Ira Glass—Oney sees NPR as reflecting and embodying “what’s occurring within the nation at each specific period.”
“It’s a e book that occurs to be coming to fruition throughout a second through which present occasions are fraught, and NPR could be in the course of it, however it’s a historical past of an establishment’s 55 years and a historical past of America throughout that very same interval,” Oney tells me.
This dialog has been edited for size and readability.
Self-importance Truthful: Are you able to converse to how the medium of radio allowed NPR to carve out a distinct segment for itself in an trade that was turning into more and more saturated on the time and nonetheless is?
Steve Oney: Effectively, on the time NPR started, radio was actually the bastard little one of digital media. It was forgotten. In actual fact, the phrases “and radio” have been typed and taped into the invoice that created the Company for Public Broadcasting on the final second. The glory and the hope in public broadcasting was all about PBS. NPR was a stepchild within the founding of the 2 broadcasters, so it was like numerous nice tales the place a stunning contestant finally ends up profitable the race. That is one the place a medium—radio—that lots of people had written off really proved it was an ideal and supple medium for storytelling. Actually you may hint the start of the podcast revolution proper to the very first broadcast of All Issues Thought-about, the place they threw collectively this deadline, 20-plus-minute documentary on an anti–Vietnam Conflict demonstration in Washington, which simply so occurred to happen on the day that NPR launched All Issues Thought-about.
As you chronicle all through the e book, NPR has battled a notion that it has a liberal bias. In your view, what has allowed for this impression to manifest?
I wouldn’t go as far as to say it has a liberal bias, however I’d say—this can be a distinction and not using a distinction—that it oftentimes champions progressive views, and that’s been extra pronounced throughout sure durations of NPR’s existence. It was very pronounced within the mid-Nineteen Seventies after they really conceived of a change to start creating ethnic programming, programming aimed toward totally different genders and races. It’s been true of late, throughout the DEI dustup.
