In 2005, the PBS NewsHour set national standards for what TV journalism could be. Founded by Robert MacNeil and subsequently co-anchored by Jim Lehrer, the program did something unheard of in broadcasting: it appointed an ombudsman—former International Herald Tribune executive editor Michael Getler—to publicly scrutinize its work.The News Hour’s openness to viewer opinion and commitment to accountability paid off. As late as 2016, a Nielsen survey found The News Hour‘s audience reflected a rare political balance: 46% conservative, 31% moderate, and 23% liberal.
NPR had moved in the same direction even earlier, appointing an ombudsman in 2000 and publishing regular columns addressing listener complaints about accuracy, fairness, and editorial decisions. It, too, built a reputation for trust—although a 2014 Pew Research Center study, Political Polarization and Media Habits, found NPR was especially trusted by “consistent liberals.”
But the golden era came to an end after 2016 with changes at both NPR and the News Hour. On August 13, 2016, NPR radio shut down its listener forum. It validly cited low viewership and a clique of respondents who were using it as a chat line, but these were unnecessarily fostered by NPR’s lack of interest in listener input. The Kojo Nnamdi show (WAMU, Washington DC) maintained strong viewer interest with postings limited to one per month and software was available to filter crudity or stories about a sick cat. Meaningful critiques and feedback should have received special attention.
At NPR there was already a clash in 2013 when executives publicly rebuked the ombudsman for an in-depth critique of an NPR investigative series. A controversial report in the Free Press by Uri Berliner, a long-serving senior NPR editor, cited increasing political bias at NPR. He claimed that it had become a voice for the LGBTQ movement and listenership had skewed to the left.
In 2016, on the untimely death of Gwen Ifill, Judy Woodruff took over as sole anchor at the PBS News hour. The program reduced viewer feedback and in 2021 announced strict limits on audience responses. Viewer comments no longer got acknowledgment. Over the same period, the program shifted left. Long human interest interviews catering to progressive interest were only intermittently counterbalanced by stiff exchanges with Republican lawmakers. By the time Woodruff stepped down in 2022, American National Election Studies data indicated that Republicans comprised only 16 percent of the audience. Pew Research Center fact sheets showed a concurrent decline in overall viewership.
Failure of tax-supported public radio and television to maintain balance and encourage communication from the public was triply damaging. Lack of interest in viewer input limited meaningful contributions; this in turn lost access to critiques important for program managers to heed. For example, the program largely treated Trump supporters as a faceless “base” instead of taking interest in their concerns and Trump’s strategies.This misled both staff and viewers about the seriousness of the Trump challenge. Dominantly liberal programming and viewership gave Trump (2.0) an excuse to defund the PBS News Hour and NPR in his Executive order of May 1. This was followed by Congressional rescission of $1.1 billion earlier approved by Congress.With lost funding, the Center for Public Broadcasting disbanded itself in August 2025.
The News Hour has been revitalized with professionals like Jeff Bennett, Lisa Desjardins, Nick Schiffrin, and William Brangham, but program management has not learned lessons from the past and restored interest in its audience. Had it done so, it might have avoided embarrassment on January 2, 2026, when cohost Amna Nawaz interviewed Richard Grenell, former ambassador to the United Nations and President of the “Trump”-Kennedy Center for the Arts. Grenell, an articulate Trump supporter, got Nawaz flustered. Nawaz had earlier shown failure to understand that her role as an interviewer was not to debate conservatives with whom she disagreed, but to draw out information in cordial exchanges. Bennett exemplifies this skill.
Lawsuits by NPR and PBS declaring Trump’s executive order unconstitutional were partially upheld but cases are ongoing in 2026. The 2025 funding is lost but funding could be restored in the future. However, this is unlikely unless and until TV and Radio meet their responsibility to restore meaningful public participation. NPR radio stations now seem to take different approaches to viewer response, while email messages to the News Hour continue to go into black holes. Even my snail mail on university letterhead to the manager of the program failed to get acknowledgment. Earlier managers understood that two-way communication with the public was a commitment equal in importance to program quality. I suggest that current managers need to rediscover the importance of audience input if they want to increase prospects to restore funding.