CPB serves as a firewall between the U.S. Congress and the editorial independence of locally owned and operated public media stations, their newsrooms, and journalists. The existence of a firewall, which protects journalistic integrity, does not mean the absence of oversight. While CPB is prohibited from interfering in editorial decisions, CPB supports objectivity and balance through statutorily authorized functions related to programming, such as funding, research, training, and communications. This has included commissioning a series of white papers on Objectivity, Balance, and Editorial Independence; funding the development of a Code of Editorial Integrity for public media stations to adopt; funding a Public Media Journalists Association Editor Corps to provide immediate editing assistance to small and rural public media stations; as well as funding professional development programs for public media newsroom leaders focused on editorial integrity.
In addition to these efforts to strengthen the editorial capacity of public media newsrooms, public media stations and producers encourage feedback on their journalism and are increasingly utilizing technologies that incorporate audience engagement into the reporting process. This helps ensure that topics selected for coverage are relevant to the lives of people in the communities the stations serve as well as bring more transparency to the reporting process, which helps bolster trust in media.