The lawsuit came three days after a similar case by NPR, which also saw its funds cut.
PBS has filed a lawsuit against United States President Donald Trump and other administration officials to block his order stripping federal funding from the 330-station public television system, three days after NPR did the same for its radio network.
In its lawsuit filed on Friday, PBS relied on similar arguments, saying Trump was overstepping his authority and engaging in “viewpoint discrimination” because of his claim that PBS’s news coverage is biassed against conservatives.
“PBS disputes those charged assertions in the strongest possible terms,” lawyer Z W Julius Chen wrote in the suit, filed in US District Court in Washington, DC. “But regardless of any policy disagreements over the role of public television, our Constitution and laws forbid the President from serving as the arbiter of the content of PBS’s programming, including by attempting to defund PBS.”
It was the latest of many legal actions taken against the administration for its moves, including several by media organisations impacted by Trump’s orders.
