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It’s been comical the last couple of days, since Trump issued his executive order, watching the left and much of the media claim that NPR and PBS have always been objective and not biased in any way.
President Trump signed an executive order late Thursday terminating federal funding for National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS).
~Snip
“Government funding of news media in this environment is not only outdated and unnecessary but corrosive to the appearance of journalistic independence,” Trump wrote in the order.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) was enacted into law in the 1960’s. A time when there were only a few major radio stations on the AM dial across the country, and the three networks (ABC, NBC, CBS) and PBS. Now, as we all know, there’s not only AM radio, there’s FM and Sirius. Furthermore, all you have to do is throw a dart and you’ll hit one of any number of network TV news stations available to view. So, contrary to their claims, PBS and NPR no longer have a lock on being THE go-to for viewers and listeners.
Yet here they are, insisting that they are the GOAT and we taxpayers must continue funding them. NPR’s statement is quite something.
NPR is unwavering in our commitment to integrity, editorial independence, and our mission to serve the American people in partnership with our NPR Member organizations. Last night the President released an Executive Order seeking to cease all federal funding to NPR and PBS. We will vigorously defend our right to provide essential news, information and life-saving services to the American public. We will challenge this Executive Order using all means available.
America’s founders knew that an informed public is essential to a functioning democracy, and that commitment to serve an informed public is the heart of NPR’s mission. With the creation of the Public Broadcasting Act, Congress explicitly forbade ‘any department, agency, officer, or employee of the United States to exercise any direction, supervision, or control over educational television or radio broadcasting.’ This independence has informed the role of public broadcasting in the American interest for more than half a century, and is core to our relentless commitment to editorial independence and integrity in our service today.
~Snip
NPR stands by the excellence and commitment of our journalists, staff, and Member organizations to seek out stories that matter to the American public, that reflect every part of the diversity of our nation, and that bring affairs of the world to our audiences. We stand by our high standards and our colleagues in their pursuit of factual reporting, their work to present issues fairly and without bias, and our effort to seek the humanity and human consequence of every story. We will strongly defend our work and our editorial independence and will continue to tell the stories of our country and the world with accuracy, objectivity, and fairness.
Read that again, and then go read the entire statement. Then, we have the following statements from PBS and CPB.
Paula Kerger, president and CEO of PBS, in a statement emailed to Axios called the order “blatantly unlawful.”
She said it “threatens our ability to serve the American public with educational programming, as we have for the past 50-plus years,” adding, “We are currently exploring all options to allow PBS to continue to serve our member stations and all Americans.”
“CPB is not a federal executive agency subject to the president’s authority,” Patricia Harrison, CPB president and CEO, said in a statement on Friday.“Congress directly authorized and funded CPB to be a private nonprofit corporation wholly independent of the federal government.”
We aren’t biased! We demand you fund us! Trump, nor any President, is allowed to yank our taxpayer funding! Boy howdy, the arrogance is a thing of beauty among them.
Want to know why NPR and PBS should be defunded?? It took me all of two seconds to find a multitude of examples here on the blog! NPR was given funding to promote the Iran Deal, and reporters have fan-girled over the Castros for decades now. NPR has apologized for Christmas on several occasions, did a live broadcast of a woman’s abortion, and has taken it upon themselves to issue warnings about our Declaration of Independence because racism and George Floyd.
Editor’s note on July 8, 2022: This story quotes the U.S. Declaration of Independence — a document that contains offensive language about Native Americans, including a racial slur.
Over the past 32 years, Morning Edition has broadcast a reading of the Declaration of Independence by NPR staff as a way of marking Independence Day.
But after last summer’s protests and our national reckoning on race, the words in the document land differently.
Want more examples of why NPR and PBS should be defunded? Here you go.
PBS partisan hack Judy Woodruff warned about misinformation during campaign season and then dropped a massive lie about Trump before the election. The clip on the right was completely false.
— MAZE (@mazemoore) May 3, 2025
Funny how their “mistakes” always go against one side. pic.twitter.com/1KC9kDL5d6
There’s no such thing as illegal aliens or illegal immigrants.
NPR apologized for calling illegal immigrants “illegal.” pic.twitter.com/0RlCc6mwBe
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) May 2, 2025
The Federalist has 12 items listed as to why both entities should be defunded. And that list, including Hunter’s laptop and Joe’s cognitive decline, is just the tip of the iceberg of DECADES of bias from both organizations.
PBS’ “Conservative” David Brooks responds to Trump EO defunding NPR and PBS:
— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) May 3, 2025
"Who's more straight down the line than we are?"
Brooks, one week ago:
Judge Dugan is “heroic” for trying to help an illegal evade federal law enforcement. pic.twitter.com/64bGdxasB5
Uri Berliner pointed out NPR’s bias. And then they proved their bias by…suspending him.
The examples are numerous regarding the bias of NPR, PBS, and CPB. If, as they claim, they only get approximately $535 million from taxpayers each year, then it shouldn’t be that difficult to fill that gap from private donors.
Yes, PBS and NPR should be defunded and they can take their media bias elsewhere.
Feature Photo Credit: Photo of NPR banner via Flickr, cropped and modified
Clearly this author doesn’t watch Masterpiece, Call the Midwife, any of the mysteries that PBS shows or had children who watched Sesame Street or Reading Rainbow. What a sad, sorry, cultureless existence she must have if that’s the case.
Or does she not like Jane Austen miniseries? Or other miniseries based on classic books? Because a large lot of them have only aired on PBS!
Maybe think on that before you say they should be defunded. And no, private donors wouldn’t be able to save them completely.
Maybe think on whether the national government has any business deciding what “cultural” things to fund to help keep our noses properly in the air.
As to private donors… isn’t gov’t funding only a tiny fraction of what they receive? Or so they’ve told us EVERY SINGLE TIME their federal budget has been threatened.
“A Jane Austen fan”
Seeing that caused me to lose interest in your opinion. Your churlish insults only reinforced that. And this may come as a shock but there are shows out there for adults and children that are just as good and better than what PBS serves up. Neither PBS or NPR are the only games in town any longer.
They haven’t been the only games since about 1970.
I have mixed feelings about this, because my local classical music station went from commerical to public a few years ago, due to finances. It looked better in the long run to be public.
I don’t listen to NPR radio otherwise. And I know that classical music in history has always relied in patrons, often rulers of their area, etc. So I want to keep them and other arts organizations going, but not the news portion.
And yes, I am a low level sustaining member.
Actually express that to your local station. “If you make cuts, I would like them to be made over here and not over there. And yes, I support you with my own gifts.”
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