What’s Being Lost in the Documentary Space As Congress Defunds Public Media

What’s Being Lost in the Documentary Space As Congress Defunds Public Media

I’m Not Your Negro, The Invisible War, Minding the Gap, The Mole Agent, Abacus: Small Enough to Jail: These are just a sampling of the iconic films that ITVS has co-produced with independent filmmakers for decades, more than 900 films over the last 35 years.

But the future of our public-private partnership is at risk with the short-sighted and destructive July 18 vote to defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) by Congress. ITVS, which is funded by CPB, will continue to receive federal funding until Sept. 30, 2025 and then nearly $9 million annually will no longer go to independent documentary filmmakers.

It’s perhaps ironic that ITVS was founded in 1989 through a visionary and bipartisan act of Congress that instructed CPB to fund an independent television service that would serve the American public with innovative and diverse content made by independent producers. Since then, ITVS’ mission — done in partnership with PBS, series like American Masters and POV, and the National Multicultural Alliance — has held firm to help ensure that every American’s story, particularly those that are underrepresented, is seen through public media. And today, PBS is the foremost distributor of independent documentary, featuring stories and storytellers that don’t meet the interests or priorities of commercial media like the big studios and streamers.

Over the last five years, ITVS has directly invested $44 million of CPB funds in documentaries. In the same period, ITVS brought 126 films to public media viewers for free, or close to free, at a taxpayer cost of about five cents per American. What does that five cents buy?

Consider the more than 70 films with a disability angle that ITVS has co-produced in its lifetime and the hundreds of in-person community events it supports each year. Or, the more than 60 people on average that Oscar-nominated doc producer Beth Levison hired on the eight ITVS/public media films that she’s produced. Or, the Matter of Mind trilogy that conveys the day-to-day realities of families impacted by ALS, Parkinson’s Disease, and Alzheimer’s Disease. Or, the filmmakers like Loira Poitras, Roger Ross Williams, Dawn Porter, and Nanfu Wang whose early films were co-produced by ITVS before they moved on to prolific commercial careers.

One of the reasons that I chose to lead ITVS is because I know firsthand what makes it a cornerstone of the documentary ecosystem: I got my start in documentary in the early aughts when ITVS funded the Academy Award-nominated The Weather Underground, which I produced and broadcast on the second season of Independent Lens.

While ITVS can and will continue to shepherd through more than 40 feature films that are currently in production and present an incredible slate of documentaries on Independent Lens next season, our open calls and development funds that infuse production money into the field have been put on hold. If we can’t replace lost funds, the number of trusted original American independent films will diminish from the domestic and international stage, from film festivals to awards shows.

At the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, six ITVS films premiered in the line-up. In the last five years alone, ITVS supported 50 Academy-qualifying films. One can guess that the number of Academy-qualifying films will go down, and film festival curation may become increasingly commercial. In all likelihood, urgent, groundbreaking, artful, and impactful documentaries might not be made at all, let alone distributed to all Americans. In this new reality, the notion of independence itself hangs in the balance.

When it comes to documentaries, commercial producers have already contracted. A24 is the most recent entertainment company to stop producing documentaries, while Participant Media permanently shut its doors despite huge successes like Citizenfour and An Inconvenient Truth.

Congress’ vote will not only exacerbate the growing hardships in the industry, it will also endanger the cornerstone of storytelling that exists for the public good. ITVS films are where viewers in underserved parts of the country see themselves represented (If Dreams Were Lightning) and where creating common ground and deepening viewers’ understanding of a complex and varied nation are the ultimate goals. They elevate pressing issues by showing how they impact everyday people (Matter of Mind: My Alzheimer’s). And they educate and inspire, giving Americans everywhere access to stories in all 50 states to learn about literature (Alice Walker: Beauty and Truth),to travel to remote reservations in Wyoming  (Folk Frontera), and to experience culture, beauty, and joy through documentary.

The rescission of CPB funds will hit producers outside of major cities the hardest, where funding opportunities are far more limited. This impact will be felt well beyond public media, touching every aspect of the documentary industry. Americans will have less access to compelling, rigorous content produced for the public good as filmmakers will change careers, investors will divest, and fewer films will be produced.

The stories ITVS produces, those rooted in social justice, lived experience, and structural inequality, are being sidelined at larger media companies. And what’s at stake isn’t just coverage, but care; the kind of long-form, ethically grounded storytelling that invites the public not only to watch, but also to understand the world around them.

We need more than breaking news today; we need stories that stick.

In the current media landscape, these federal funds are not easily replaced, and a profitable distribution model for public service films has yet to emerge in the nearly six decades PBS has been around. But the need to tell America’s stories has never been greater.

Long-form, big-budget films are not viable for every storyteller, and audiences must be met where they are. ITVS bridges those gaps, whether they are financial or programming. At ITVS, we recognize that, with Congress’s decision to defund public media, a lot will and must change, and we intend to be part of that evolution.

We may have lost our funding, but unlike Congress, we have not lost our way.

Carrie Lozano is the President & CEO of ITVS, the publicly funded documentary company behind hundreds of titles from Oscar nominees to festival favorites.

Update July 31, 1pm A previous version of this story mentioned CNN eliminated its documentary unit. In 2022, CNN revived its arm that produces documentaries.