In the Trump Administration’s latest attack on free speech and public media, the President signed an executive order March 15 that effectively shut down the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which oversees Voice of America as well as a host of other international broadcasting entities such as Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Radio Free Asia. In an interview with NPR, Grant Turner, the former CFO at the USAGM, called the firings “Bloody Saturday” for the agency and its networks.
This has heightened anxieties for diverse documentary filmmakers and organizations that already were threatened by the authoritarian political administration. Much of their work and distribution is tied to publicly funded media; one prominent documentary nonprofit that supports creators of color estimates 80 percent of their projects connect to public media in some way.
“We are caught in this terrible place with what’s been happening on the commercial side with streaming companies focusing on true crime above everything else, and the existential threat on the public media side,” said one documentary industry insider.
Many in the documentary field are specifically concerned about the upcoming Congressional Oversight DOGE subcommittee hearing on federal funding of public media tentatively scheduled for March 26, where presidents and CEOs of NPR and PBS, Katherine Maher and Paula Kerger, respectively, have been called to testify. The hearing will be chaired by Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has accused both NPR and PBS of producing “systemically biased” content. (The most-watched show on PBS is “Antiques Roadshow.“)
“There are a lot of people in the PBS system who are afraid about what they can program, and that definitely affects the films we produce,” said one documentary funder, whose work centers on underrepresented filmmakers. “I worry that PBS organizations are going to really shy away from anything that is political, but I don’t know where that line is drawn. It’s probably true that they’ll stay away from trans experiences and Palestinian stories, but is climate change going to be okay? Is police brutality?”
While the President’s anti-DEIA and “gender ideology” orders continue to be litigated in the courts, there remain plenty of examples of “anticipatory obedience,” said documentary filmmaker Razi Jafri. “That’s so much of what’s going on right now, with nonprofits and organizations making adjustments without being told to yet.”
However, documentary industry veteran Chris Hastings, who was the editor-in-chief of WGBH’s WORLD channel and is now the president and CEO of WXXI in Rochester, New York, said public television stations remain independent and should not have to cave to federal mandates. “We don’t make editorial decisions because a funder tells us to,” he said.
“We’re not owned by NPR or PBS,” he said. “We’re in partnership with them, but we’re a nonprofit. We have a community advisory board, a board of trustees, and most public media stations are the same way. And that’s the beauty of the system. These community-based stations are serving local audiences, and it’s the audience who owns it, and it’s their local donations that help sustain the station along with national investment from the federal government. My hope is that, whatever changes are happening in D.C., the mission can sustain; the money can fluctuate, but the mission needs to stay the same.”
If the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is entirely defunded, Hastings is clear. “It doesn’t mean we have to shut down. It would be a huge cut, and we would have to evaluate our services. But for those people feeling the squeeze, we just need to make sure we keep capturing the truth. We need to keep rolling the tape.”
Many documentary organizations supporting marginalized groups are trying to lay low for now. But they also recognize “that we can’t just run and hide,” said another executive director. “We have to stick together and figure out the money part. But some people aren’t going to make it, and there is going to be some genuine hardship.”
Arts nonprofits and documentary filmmakers are closely following the shifting guidelines around anti-DEIA directives for federal funding organizations such as the National Endowment of the Arts and the National Endowment of the Humanities. NEA spokespeople recently held public information sessions that suggested its grants are open to applicants from diverse groups, such as American Indian or Hispanic-serving institutions, for example. Organizations must also sign a kind of anti-DEI loyalty pledge, an “assurance of compliance,” which ensures applicants “will not operate any programs promoting ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ (DEI) that violate any applicable Federal anti-discrimination laws, in accordance with Executive Order No. 14173.”
Since many expect federal funding for public media to be fully cut or severely diminished, philanthropic and private donors have been given increased attention to fill the gap. Some larger institutions, such as the MacArthur Foundation, the Barr Foundation, and the Kresge Foundation, have doubled down on funding and commitments to DEI, while others have stayed muted.
A leader in the nonfiction nonprofit sector said it’s too early to tell what major philanthropists might do, although one of their funders is now giving less to all their grantees.
“Will people step back from film and head to frontline orgs more?” they said. “What will happen to the stock market and economy? Funders stepped up during COVID. Will that happen again? I’m definitely concerned, and I know others are, too.”
While some suggest that U.S.-based documentary filmmakers might seek funding help overseas in international co-productions, veteran documentary producer and consultant Louise Rosen is quick to shut down the idea.
“There are rumblings of funding cutbacks in many countries,” she said. “Under such circumstances, international support for U.S. projects seems unlikely and potentially highly controversial. The funding priority must be to homegrown productions. And besides, because of our historic lack of federal and regional indie film funding, with few exceptions, US makers have never really had much to reciprocate with nor have they actively cultivated those relationships.”
Rosen, formerly interim director of the International Documentary Association, acknowledges that international colleagues in the documentary world know that most American documentary filmmakers do not support the current Administration. She said, “There is some resentment not dissimilar to the feeling many here have towards the Democratic party… ‘How did you let this happen?’ So I won’t be surprised by implicit or explicit boycotting of U.S. films.”
Stay tuned for more IndieWire coverage on how Trump’s anti-DEIA actions will impact fiction storytelling and the private sector.
