‘One-sided’ reporting attacks half the country and ‘doesn’t deserve a single cent of American taxpayers’ money’
By Bob Unruh
Just as President Donald Trump’s cost-cutting campaign is reaching its stride, members of Congress are developing their own suggestions for saving taxpayers’ money, including from the tax-supported Public Broadcasting System and National Public Radio, which benefit by hundreds of millions of dollars.
In fact, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., the chair of the new Delivering on Government Efficiency subcommittee, has summoned NPR chief Katherine Maher and PBS chief Paula Kerger to answer questions.
Reports call the strategy a “direct challenge to what conservatives have long criticized as taxpayer-funded propaganda for the left.”
For instance, NPR refused to cover the Hunter Biden laptop scandal in 2020.
Officials there explained, “We don’t want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don’t want to waste the listeners’ and readers’ time on stories that are just pure distractions.”
Actually, the laptop evidence revealed much about scandals involving the Biden family, including information about its years-long influence peddling operations that appeared to involve Joe Biden himself. The family, according to a later report from Congress, took in tens of millions of dollars – in return essentially for giving people access to Joe Biden as vice president, then president.
Joe Biden himself once openly bragged about threatening Ukraine with the loss of American support if they didn’t fire a prosecutor looking into a company that was paying Hunter Biden a million dollars a year to be on its board.
🚨PBS AND NPR CALLED TO FACE DOGE SUBCOMMITTEE🚨
PBS and NPR receive the tax dollars of hard-working Americans to stay on the air.
Their coverage should serve every single American, not just a narrow slice of like-minded individuals and ideological interest groups.
Notably,… pic.twitter.com/m2qAkGpzMo
— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) February 3, 2025
The publicly funded operations more recently claimed that Elon Musk, a key adviser to Trump and tasked with cutting government waste, fraud and abuse, gave a “fascist salute” at a rally.
Greene said, “PBS and NPR receive the tax dollars of hard-working Americans to stay on the air. Their coverage should serve every single American, not just a narrow slice of like-minded individuals and ideological interest groups. Notably, NPR refused to cover the Hunter Biden laptop story in an attempt to protect then-candidate Joe Biden leading up to the 2020 presidential election. Just hours after President Trump was sworn in for the second time, PBS falsely implied that @elonmusk made a fascist salute at the President’s inaugural rally.
“This kind of one-sided reporting, which attacks over half the country to protect and promote its own political interests, doesn’t deserve a single cent of American taxpayers’ money. I look forward to bringing the president of each of these so-called ‘media’ outlets before my brand-new DOGE Subcommittee to explain to me—and to the American people—why they deserve to continue receiving public funding. To me, it looks like a great place for @DOGE to save some extra $.”
Musk said it was an excellent idea.
NPR gets about one-quarter of its budget from taxes; PBS about 40%, amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars.
Billionaire Elon Musk gave what appeared to be a fascist salute Monday while making a speech at the post-inauguration celebration for President Donald Trump at the Capital One Arena.
“Some elections are important, some are not. But this one, this one really mattered and I just… pic.twitter.com/K8Fo0sdozL
— PBS News (@NewsHour) January 20, 2025
The decision by NPR, too, to essentially cast aside “truth” in its priorities also has earned criticism.
NPR’s new CEO: “Our reverence for the truth might be a distraction getting in the way of finding common ground & getting things done.”
This gets to the heart of the cultural divide in the modern West: whether you believe truth is a priority or a hindrancepic.twitter.com/Pkwy5kkNWy
— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) April 17, 2024
Should your tax dollars really be paying for an organization run by people who think the truth is a “distraction”? https://t.co/W79tcJJLxu
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 12, 2024
Constitutional expert Jonathan Turley pointed out that even “respected editor, Uri Berliner,” wrote a scathing condemnation of political bias at NPR, but the outlet still “doubled down on its one-sided coverage.”
And, he noted, “What is striking is how NPR’s shrinking audience righteously opposes any effort to withdraw public subsidies. While dismissing the values or views of half the country, they expect those citizens to support its programming. What would the reaction be if Congress ordered the same subsidy for more popular competitors like Fox Radio?”
He explained outlets “have every right to offer their own slanted viewpoints or coverage. They do not have a right to a federal subsidy to insulate them from the response of consumers.”
