Why We Have to Defund NPR Now

NPR doesn't need to go away, but there's no reason for taxpayer funded media in 2024

Your options for media consumption have never been greater, so why do we still need taxpayers funding NPR? There’s 24-hour cable news, thousands of news websites that cover local and national affairs, talk radio, independent journalism platforms like Substack, and podcasting. None of those media outlets get or require taxpayer money to survive, so why should NPR be special? Elon Musk raised the question in 2023 when he identified NPR as “government-affiliated” media on Twitter.

NPR’s funding structure is complicated. They get their funding through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) which is the funding source for public media. Congress appropriates funding for the CPB and then allocates a portion of these funds to public radio stations via grants. These stations use the funds to cover operational costs, pay NPR membership fees, and purchase NPR programming. NPR receives revenue through these station payments, indirectly benefiting from CPB's financial support.

Their website states less than 1% of NPR's annual operating budget comes in the form of grants from CPB and federal agencies and departments. They say over two-thirds of their revenue comes from individual donations and corporate sponsorships. Government funding gives them an unfair advantage and prevents them from failing if they aren’t providing a good service. They get plenty of big stories wrong and produce a lot of content that’s not deserving of government support.

None of those media outlets get or require taxpayer money to survive, so why should NPR be special?

NPR claims to adhere to high standards of unbiased journalism. That notion got blown up in April by Uri Berliner who worked there for 25 years, even though much of the public knew they had a hard-left bias for years. He said the station lost its way when it started telling people how to think, lost its open-minded spirit, and doesn’t have an audience that reflects America. In 2023, 67% of its listeners said they were very or somewhat liberal, and only 11% somewhat conservative.

You can’t count on NPR to get the news right anymore or to say when they were wrong. They couldn’t stop saying Trump colluded with the Russians to win the election. Congressman Adam Schiff was interviewed 25 times about alleged evidence of collusion. The Mueller Report proved there was no collusion and then the coverage stopped and no lengthy examination of what they got wrong. They ignored the story about the Hunter Biden laptop which was very much real in his conviction.

You can count on NPR to promote stories that defend, justify, or promote far-left viewpoints. In 2020, they interviewed an author who wrote a book defending looting. Even that was too much for The Atlantic which is far from conservative. NPR just couldn’t resist discussing “cisheteropatriarchal racial capitalist” violence. Race and identity became critical to everything. Journalists had to track the race, gender, and ethnicity of everyone they interviewed in a central database.

You can’t count on NPR to get the news right anymore or to say when they were wrong.

Do we really need to fund a story about a drag queen who wrote a book called Math in Drag? That fell under the Science section. I wonder if the author knew that math is racist. Shame on NPR! Another topic NPR thought was important was the lack of diversity in bird-watching. Birds were apparently very important because they ran another story on how bird names need to get changed to get rid of colonial roots.

Diversity became the “North Star” of the organization. The problem is that kind of diversity didn’t include diversity of thought or opinion in the workplace. The voter registration in the D.C. office was 87 registered Democrats in editorial positions and no Republicans. That doesn’t sound like a place that produces diverse, unbiased, or balanced perspectives that a taxpayer-funded media source should provide. They aren’t considering all things. If you care about diversity, diversity of thought is more important than any other kind.

NPR alienates half the population with its far-left slant on news and absurd stories. Honest liberals like Berliner, who was later fired after his story, know it’s too much of a far-left slant so why should those people pay for it? They have gotten major stories wrong on Trump and Hunter Biden and have a clear left-wing agenda in their stories. Public money shouldn’t go to driving a political agenda. They should have no trouble making up that 1% they claim is federal funding through more sponsorships and donations.