The Trump administration has drafted a memo to Congress outlining its intent to end nearly all federal funding for public media, which includes NPR and PBS, according to a White House official who spoke to NPR.
The memo, which the administration plans to send to Congress when it reconvenes from recess on April 28, will open a 45-day window in which the House and Senate can either approve the rescission or allow the money to be restored.
The official, who spoke to NPR on condition of anonymity, confirmed the existence of the draft.
In a statement on Monday that did not refer to the memo, the White House said: "For years, American taxpayers have been on the hook for subsidizing National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), which spread radical, woke propaganda disguised as 'news.'" The statement includes examples of what the White House said is "trash that passes as 'news'" and "intolerance of non-leftist viewpoints."
NPR produces the award-winning news programs Morning Edition and All Things Considered, while PBS is best known for its nightly PBS News Hour and its high-quality children's programming, such as Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood.
There's a little commercial for NPR tucked right into NPR's article about NPR.
No bias here!
This month, on social media platforms, President Trump blasted the two primary public broadcasting networks, posting in all caps: "REPUBLICANS MUST DEFUND AND TOTALLY DISASSOCIATE THEMSELVES FROM NPR & PBS, THE RADICAL LEFT 'MONSTERS' THAT SO BADLY HURT OUR COUNTRY!"
Trump is expected to propose rescinding $1.1 billion -- two years' worth of funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), a congressionally chartered independent nonprofit organization that in turn partially funds NPR and PBS.
Gentlemen, here are your talking points: "$1.1 billion is less than one-one-thousandth of our multi-trillion dollar budgets therefore we must never cut billions from the budget."
In making the move, the president appears to be drawing impetus from a House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee hearing in late March. The panel called NPR's and PBS' chiefs to testify, alleging the networks' news coverage is biased against conservatives.
In a statement, NPR said: "Eliminating funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting would have a devastating impact on American communities across the nation that rely on public radio for trusted local and national news, culture, lifesaving emergency alerts, and public safety information."
"We serve the public interest. It's not just in our name -- it's our mission. Across the country, locally owned public media stations represent a proud American tradition of public-private partnership for our shared common good," it said.
Paula Kerger, PBS' CEO and president, said the Trump administration's effort to rescind funding for public media would "disrupt the essential service PBS and local member stations provide to the American people."
"There's nothing more American than PBS, and our work is only possible because of the bipartisan support we have always received from Congress," she said.
NPR added this: This article was written by people working for NPR, who would therefore lose their jobs if NPR's funding was cut, but they didn't allow the ludicrously biased head of NPR to review the article, therefore, it's free of all bias or self-interest.
Disclosure: This story was reported and written by NPR correspondents David Folkenflik and Scott Neuman. It was edited by deputy business editor Emily Kopp and Managing Editors Gerry Holmes and Vickie Walton-James. Under NPR's protocol for reporting on itself, no NPR corporate official or news executive reviewed this story before it was posted publicly.
The article claims NPR and PBS aren't biased. Another lie.
The Free Beacon reviewed a bunch of PBS "documentaries." The main thesis of these "documentaries? Literally everything is racist.
PBS receives roughly 15 percent of its $373 million operating budget from the federal government. In addition to its member stations and on-demand streaming shows, some of the money goes to Independent Lens, the weekly series through which PBS airs documentary films. They often have to do with racism.
The 2022 Independent Lens flick Racist Trees, for example, chronicles a black neighborhood in the overwhelmingly liberal "LGBTQ haven" of Palm Springs, Calif. The neighborhood's residents feel that a "wall of trees" that lines a nearby golf course was "intentionally planted to exclude and segregate" the neighborhood, and want the trees removed.
"They say that these trees are not racially motivated, that they were not racially planted there," one interviewee says in the film. "They can prove that by one simple act. Remove the trees."
Other Independent Lens documentaries similarly center on claims of racism, misogyny, and homophobia. There's Our League, the story of a transgender woman who "comes out to her old-school Ohio bowling league." There's also Ferguson Rises, a documentary in which PBS shadows the father of Michael Brown. And in Breaking the News, PBS documents the "women and LGBTQ+ journalists" who launched nonprofit newsroom The 19th to "buck a broken news media system." One interviewee in the film argues that it's easier for a white woman "to vote in space than it is for a black woman to vote in Philadelphia."
It's documentaries like those that have motivated the Trump administration to call to scrap taxpayer funds for PBS. The White House plans to ask Congress to rescind $1.1 billion in federal funding for the entity that funds NPR and PBS, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. PBS has hired Ballard Partners, a lobbying firm with deep ties to the Trump administration, to push back.
Video at the link.
Drew Holden
@DrewHolden360
Thread
Im not sure people realize just how egregious some of NPR's "journalism" has been. Amid the debate about defunding the network, I wanted to walk down memory lane to revisit some of its worst coverage.
There's a lot.
More of NPR's and PBS's taxpayer-funded electioneering efforts here.