For decades, Republicans have claimed to be the defenders of small government and the watchdogs looking out for wasteful spending.
However, they’ve rarely backed up their rhetoric with action. In fact, they’re arguably just as responsible for the explosive growth in government spending and our national debt as Democrats.
From time to time, the GOP would promise to cut funding for the Public Broadcasting System and National Public Radio, otherwise known as mouthpieces for the leftist agenda. When it came right down to it, Republicans didn’t have the courage to pick even that low-hanging fruit.
Before last November’s election, the movement to defund these taxpayer-funded propaganda machines came under scrutiny when New York Congresswoman Claudia Tenney introduced the Defund NPR Act of 2024.
The “bill follows the suspension of NPR editor and self-described liberal Uri Berliner, after Berliner revealed the overt levels of partisanship that have taken over the company’s newsroom,” Tenney’s office explained in a press release. “According to Berliner, NPR reporters and editors openly made editorial decisions to tear down President Trump and prop up the Biden campaigns. In one instance, reporters ignored the Hunter Biden laptop scandal, claiming that the story could help re-elect Trump.”
After Trump won the presidential election, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy penned an opinion piece for The Wall Street Journal in which they outlined broad plans to cut government spending in the Trump administration as part of the Department of Government Efficiency.
They wrote, “DOGE will help end federal overspending by taking aim at the $500 billion plus in annual federal expenditures that are unauthorized by Congress or being used in ways that Congress never intended,” including “$535 million a year to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.”
When NPR CEO Katherine Maher said in a Ted Talk last year, “I think our reverence for the truth might have become a bit of a distraction that is preventing us from finding consensus and getting important things done,” Musk was quick to post on X, “Should your tax dollars really be paying for an organization run by people who think the truth is a ‘distraction’?”
The answer should be a resounding no.
The editors at National Review explain, “National Public Radio has every right to operate as a left-wing propaganda outlet masquerading as a legitimate news organization. But it is not entitled to pursue this goal with taxpayer money. The latest revelations about the ideological rot at NPR have only made this case stronger.”
They add, “Admittedly, in principle, we don’t think that it is the role of the federal government to fund public broadcasting. But if the government is going to be subsidizing a news organization, that organization should at least be balanced with a mix of perspectives more representative of the country. When it fails to do this, any justification for continuing to support it out of the common treasury falls apart.”
We live in a different information age, and citizens have plenty of other news and entertainment outlets to fill the void of public broadcasting. Maybe that’s why they’re losing viewers and listeners.
“NPR and its affiliate stations have had mixed success adapting to the digital era,” Sam Klebanov writes at Morning Brew. “Though its flagship podcast, Up First, is among Apple’s Top 10, and its Tiny Desk Concert series is megapopular on YouTube, it’s reportedly struggling to grow a paying subscriber base and keep up with the New York Times’s blockbuster The Daily podcast, as well as the Joe Rogans of the world.”
Klebanov adds, “NPR’s TV peer, PBS, projected in 2022 that virtually no adults younger than 50 would be watching its prime-time shows by 2026.”
So what happens if Congress pulls the plug on these Leftmedia outlets? The New York Times reports, “An NPR spokesperson, Isabel Lara, said defunding public radio would result in less money for local journalism, including coverage of sports and culture. She added that the network regularly planned for a variety of different financial outcomes.”
But with the advent of the Internet and social media, local journalism has exploded in towns big and small. These days, there’s no lack of coverage of sports or culture. If NPR and PBS are so crucial to their listeners, they can find other funding sources.
Now that Donald Trump is back in the White House and Republicans are back in power in Congress, there’s no better chance to send NPR and PBS out to pasture. Neither has served the interests of the American public, and there are plenty of other news and entertainment outlets to fill the void.
Sure, ending public radio and television won’t make a dent in our national debt, but it would be a good first step toward the Republican Party keeping its promise to cut wasteful spending in Washington and make sure taxpayers aren’t forced to fund leftist propaganda.
https://patriotpost.us/articles/114098-defund-the-corporation-for-public-broadcasting-2025-01-31
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