8% of the BBC’s “total funding” came from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in 2022/23 and 2023/24.
This isn’t correct. It was the international charity BBC Media Action, not the BBC as a whole, which received funding from USAID amounting to 8% of its income in 2023/24.
An Instagram post has claimed that 8% of the BBC’s “total funding” in recent years came from a US government aid agency. This is not true.
President Donald Trump has signed an executive order that put almost all US international aid spending on hold pending a 90-day review. This has led to programmes funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) being paused.
Since this announcement we’ve seen a number of claims on social media about the BBC, the UK’s public service broadcaster, being funded by USAID.
And in a video on Instagram, one user says: “Wait, remind me why we’re paying a TV licence if the BBC received 8% of its total funding in 2023 and 2024 from USAID—and how unbiased might that make them?”
However, it is actually the BBC’s international development charity, BBC Media Action, which received 8% of its funding from USAID last year, not the BBC as a whole.
The charity, founded in 1999, describes itself as “part of the BBC” but is legally and financially independent, and does not receive funding from the licence fee. The BBC is funded primarily through the licence fee.
BBC Media Action supports local media in nearly 30 countries to “ensure people on the frontlines of conflict and crisis have access to trustworthy information”.
In 2023/24, the charity received £2,613,000 from USAID, around 8% of its total income. In 2022/23 it received £1,897,000 from USAID, which by our calculations amounted to around 5.5% of its income that year
In a statement, BBC Media Action said: “Like many international development organisations, BBC Media Action has been affected by the temporary pause in US government funding, which amounts to about 8% of our income in 2023-24. We’re doing everything we can to minimise the impact on our partners and the people we serve.
“As the BBC’s international charity, we are completely separate from BBC News, and wholly reliant on our donors and supporters to carry out our work.”
We have previously fact checked other misleading content related to the BBC, including faked articles and videos.
Before sharing information you see online, it’s important to consider whether it’s accurate and verifiable. Our toolkit can help you better navigate content on social media.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as missing context because it was the charity BBC Media Action, not the BBC as a whole, which received 8% of its funding from USAID in 2023/24.
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