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The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is closing its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) office in compliance with President Donald Trump’s executive order, a memo from CEO Paula Kerger announced Monday.
A “fact sheet” released by the White House January 22 states Trump’s executive order “terminates ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ (DEI) discrimination in the federal workforce, and in federal contracting and spending.”
New York Times media reporter Ben Mullin posted to social media platform BlueSky the memo from Kerger addressed to “Colleagues.”
“As we discussed at our recent Town Hall, since the President’s Executive Order about DEl was announced in January, we have been working with legal counsel to understand how this potentially affects our Organization,” Kerger wrote. “To ensure that we are complying with the President’s Executive Order we have closed our DEl office, and Cecilia Loving and Gina Leow are leaving PBS. I know you join me in wishing them well in their future endeavors.”
“Our mission to educate, engage and inspire the wide variety of American communities we serve will continue to be at the center of our work, and we’ll also continue to ensure that PBS remains a welcoming place for everyone,” she added.
The Free Press reported Monday that the message from Kerger continued, “I know that this will raise many questions for people across the organization and look forward to discussing this in more depth at the upcoming All Staff meeting on Wednesday.”
Editorial assistant Josh Code explained further that Kerger’s memo “raised several eyebrows in our newsroom at The Free Press.”
“That’s because earlier this morning, we wrote to PBS asking them about a tip we received from a high-ranking executive at the network,” Code wrote. “The tipster had told us that PBS was planning to move both Loving and Leow to the network’s station services department in order to skirt Trump’s executive order calling for the elimination of DEI-focused positions and grants from government-funded institutions.”
The tipster continued that DEI policies are much revered among employees at PBS.
“They’re unwilling to change; they’re unwilling to adjust; they’re unwilling to make concessions in order to protect the sustainability of PBS,” the source said. “Instead, they were trying to play chicken and move things around and try different things to circumvent the executive order.”
According to the report, PBS was first planning to shuffle its two DEI executives into a “wellness department” and then – after nixing that idea – into the “station services department,” which supervises communications “between its national headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, and its local affiliates.”
Ultimately, The Free Press received confirmation from PBS Senior Director of External Communications Jason Phelps that Loving and Leow were being terminated.
According to a report in August 2021 at The Wrap, PBS launched its DEI office when the network had drawn criticism for “allotting a disproportionate amount of its airtime and funding to programs from Ken Burns,” a white male.
Kerger said hired Loving and Leow to help the network look “carefully in the mirror and recognize that there may be areas where we are not doing our best.”
Subsequently, PBS announced new DEI “disclosure requirements for producers, as well as $11 million in new funding commitments to programs intended to amplify non-white voices,” The Wrap noted.
Kerger said it was her hope that PBS’ new DEI office “would be a model for the rest of the industry as well.”
The PBS Foundation says “only about 15%” of the network’s budget is taxpayer-funded federal government subsidies, which translates to $1.40 per taxpayer, per year.
