Academy-award nominated documentarian Ken Burns has spoken out against recent federal funding cuts to public media.
His condemnation follows the recent Senate passing of The Rescissions Act of 2025, which effectively rescinds all federal funding for the Corporation of Public Broadcasting (CPB). This legislation will affect public media organizations across the country, even media giants NPR and PBS. PBS made significant contributions to Burns’s career, hosting several of his now famed documentaries.
“I think we’re all in a bit of a state of shock, and also reeling at the sort of shortsightedness of it all,” said Burns on PBS NewsHour. “This is such an American institution trusted by people across political divides, geographic divides, age groups. What’s so shortsighted about it, I think, is that this mostly affects rural communities, or [they] are the hardest hit.”
Rural stations that depend on federal funds to operate are now in significant danger of having to shrink the span of and depth of their coverage, jeopardizing the access rural areas have to news sources and threatening important arts and culture coverage.
Burns stated that he will suffer a projected budget shortfall of 20% from federal funding cuts and though this is a significant hit, he will be able to compensate for the lost funds. Smaller scale stations and projects that rely more heavily on funds from the CPB will face the most devastating impacts, effectively limiting the wide scope of public media.
“But it’s those projects at the national level that might get 50 or 60, maybe even 75% of their funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting,” said Burns. “They just won’t be able to be made, and so there will be less representation by all the different kinds of filmmakers. People coming up will have an impossible time getting started.”
The House has sent the bill to the White House, which is expected to be signed into law in the coming days.
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