Two Republicans have introduced a bill that would end the taxpayer funding of National Public Radio (NPR).
Senator Jim Banks (R-IN) declared, “Taxpayers shouldn’t be forced to fund NPR’s liberal propaganda. If NPR can’t stay afloat without government funding, that tells you all you need to know about the quality of their news.”
Representative Kat Cammack (R-FL) said taxpayer dollars have funded “left-wing activism under the journalism moniker” for too long. She noted NPR “cherry-picked its coverage in favor of its majority Democrat listeners—87 percent according to a Pew Research Survey—from failing to cover an assassination attempt on Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2018 to ignoring former President Joe Biden’s business dealings with his son Hunter in 2020. Federal funds shouldn’t be available to NPR.”
The bill states: “After the date of enactment of the Defund NPR Act, no Federal funds may, directly or indirectly, be made available to or used to support an organization described in paragram (2), including through the payment of dues to or the purchase of programming from the organization by a public broadcast station using Federal funds received by the station.”
Federal Communications Chair (FCC) Brendan Carr recently launched investigations into NPR and PBS due to their airing of commercials. “In particular, it is possible that NPR and PBS member stations are broadcasting underwriting announcements that cross the line into prohibited commercial advertisements,” he wrote to NPR and PBS presidents and chief executives Katherine Maher and Paula A. Kerger, respectively.
Maher said in response to the probe that NPR “programming and underwriting messaging complies with federal regulations, including the FCC guidelines on underwriting messages for noncommercial educational broadcasters, and Member stations are expected to be in compliance as well. We are confident any review of our programming and underwriting practices will confirm NPR’s adherence to these rules. We have worked for decades with the FCC in support of noncommercial educational broadcasters who provide essential information, educational programming, and emergency alerts to local communities across the United States.”
