THE BBC IS not funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), as some public figures in the US have claimed. 

“USAID has been spending millions of taxpayer dollars every year funding not only the BBC, but also Politico?” wrote Charlie Kirk, executive director of the Turning Point USA, on 6 February.

“BBC IS FUNDED BY USAID,” said Pamela Geller, a blogger and conspiracy theorist from the US, in a post on Facebook on 4 February. 

The claim that USAID has been funding media organisations comes as the Trump Administration has suspended the vast majority of foreign aid spending. President Trump has himself described USAID payments to media organisations as “payoffs”. 

Both Kirk and Geller made the claim while referencing funding that USAID has supplied to the BBC’s international development charity, BBC Media Action, which is a separate entity to BBC News. 

BBC Media Action is funded independently by a range of donors, including USAID, which supplied the charity with £2.613 million in 2023 and 2024. That money did not go to the BBC’s services, which are largely funded by TV licence fees collected from the UK public.

Other donors to BBC Media Action include the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, the Swiss Agency for Development and the European Commission. 

BBC Media Action released a statement on 4 February that clarified it is “completely separate” from BBC News.

“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,” BBC Media Action said.

“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.”

As for Charlie Kirk’s claim that USAID has been funding the news outlet Politico to the tune of millions of dollars, that is also false. 

The only payments received by Politico LLC from USAID were for two subscriptions to an energy and environment publication called E&E in 2023 and 2024 that cost a total of $44,000, according to analysis by The Dispatch. 

According to usaspending.gov, an official website that tracks government spending in the US, Politico LLC received $8.4m in 2024. That money was not a “payoff”, as President Donald Trump has claimed, but fees for subscriptions to Politico products across the entire US government. 

Ever wondered how disinformation spreads so rapidly – or who is behind it? Check out our FactCheck Knowledge Bank for essential reads and guides to finding good information online.

The Journal’s FactCheck is a signatory to the International Fact-Checking Network’s Code of Principles. You can read it here. For information on how FactCheck works, what the verdicts mean, and how you can take part, check out our Reader’s Guide here. You can read about the team of editors and reporters who work on the factchecks here.