Reply #17: No direct federal funding

[salvorhardin]

What NPR means is that there is no Congressional budget line that allocates money directly to NPR.

The federal government funds the Corporation For Public Broadcasting which in turn gives NPR about 3% of their yearly operating budget.

The CPB also provides grants to local public radio stations, some of which are NPR member stations. Usually about 10% of a local public radio station's budget comes from the CPB.

The NPR member stations then buy programming from NPR (All Things Considered, Morning Edition, etc.), thus some small percentage of the money the member stations get from the CPB flows to NPR via this route. It amounts to about another 3%-4% of NPR's total budget.

So no, NPR is not funded directly by the federal government. All of the taxpayer dollars they get come in indirectly via either the CPB or NPR member stations.