National Public Radio (NPR) government and taxpayer funding illustration by Alexander Hunter/The Washington Times
Public broadcasting can survive just fine without taxpayer subsidies
Friday, March 28, 2025
By
Reprinted from The Washington Times
National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service may soon be cut off from the federal gravy train. During a House DOGE subcommittee hearing Wednesday, members didn’t find the answers they wanted from the executives behind the public-funded media operation.
“Billions have gone into both of your coffers over the last few decades, and I understand why Democrats are going to viciously and vehemently defend you all because you’ve become a propaganda wing of the Democratic Party,” Rep. Pat Fallon, Texas Republican, told the PBS and NPR executives.
Rather than discuss the merits of raiding taxpayer paychecks to enhance the overly generous salaries of these “public interest” CEOs, left-leaning members of Congress spent their time ranting about the need to save Big Bird and other popular PBS characters that could easily survive without subsidies.
If you believe NPR’s website, the organization receives “less than 1% of its annual budget, on average, from federal sources.” Trimming that 1% shouldn’t be a problem. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting also receives $560 million from the government each year, and Sen. Mike Lee, Utah Republican, has legislation redirecting that cash toward debt relief.
According to a Pew Research poll, a third of the public remains undecided about the wisdom of getting Uncle Sam out of the broadcasting business. The lone demographic category enthusiastically behind keeping the cash flowing is Democratic voters, 69% of whom insisted that others underwrite their listening and watching habits.
Uri Berliner, a business editor who spent 25 years at NPR, observed NPR’s far-left tilt in an article for the Free Press last year. “An open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR, and now, predictably, we don’t have an audience that reflects America. … In 2023, according to our demographic research, 6 percent of our news audience was black, far short of the overall U.S. adult population.”
NPR listeners like to think of themselves as society’s elite. According to NPR’s analytics, 71% of listeners are more likely to work in top management and 32% more likely to be a CEO. Three out of four consider NPR “personally important” to them. These wealthy White liberals and “PBS viewers like you” can crack open their own wallets to pay for this important content.
President Trump is ready to fight on this issue. “NPR and PBS, two horrible and completely biased platforms (Networks!), should be defunded by Congress, immediately. Republicans, don’t miss this opportunity to rid our Country of this giant scam, both being arms of the Radical Left Democrat Party,” he wrote on Truth Social on Thursday.
In 2017, Mr. Trump’s budget would have cut loose the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, but Congress came to the rescue to preserve the freebies. This time, CPB fired the first shot at the Department of Government Efficiency.
Earlier this month, the organization filed a lawsuit to thwart the administration’s downsizing effort. Lawyers argued that a temporary funding freeze at the Federal Emergency Management Agency would jeopardize the government’s ability to “issue real-time emergency alerts.”
The CPB had standing to sue because it gets $40 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly, one of the few federal judges appointed in the District of Columbia by a Republican, rejected the demand for a restraining order because the administration has merely been conducting a manual review of each grant.
The public shouldn’t be on the hook for funding these ungrateful media outlets.
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