On Thursday, May 1st, President Trump signed an executive order instructing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to terminate funding for public broadcasters NPR and PBS.

The order requires the CPB to limit funding to the “maximum extent allowed by law and shall decline to provide future funding.”

The corporation, is however, not a government agency, it is a private organization. Under the law, the CPB is not obligated to comply with the order.

President and CEO of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting Patricia Harrison responded to Trump’s executive order on May 2nd. 

“CPB is not a federal executive agency subject to the President’s authority. Congress directly authorized and funded CPB to be a private nonprofit corporation wholly independent of the federal government,” she said.

Harrison emphasized the government’s intent when the CPB was formed in 1967.

“In creating CPB, Congress expressly forbade ‘any department, agency, officer, or employee of the United States to exercise any direction, supervision, or control over educational television or radio broadcasting, or over [CPB] or any of its grantees or contractors…’ 47 U.S.C. § 398(c),” she said.

CNN cited language from 1967 supporting Harrison’s statement: The law said the corporation is a private entity, not a federal agency, “to afford maximum protection from extraneous interference and control,” and expressly forbids the government from exercising “any direction, supervision, or control over educational television or radio broadcasting.”