NPR and PBS Should Be Defunded: Here’s Why:
This article makes an argument I’ve been making for many years: The government should not be using US taxpayer dollars to support organizations and institutions that are politically biased.
NPR and PBS are the two good examples. Their news has a distinctly leftist perspective, promoting left-wing propaganda narratives on such issues as the COVID-19 virus, the effectiveness of the vaccinations, and anything to do with Donald Trump. Their editorials and opinion pieces are consistently pro-Socialist and anti-US.
All that is fine if you are the NYT or The Washington Post, but when an institution that dispenses news and opinions gets tens of millions of dollars each year from the government, it behooves it to be fair and impartial in its reporting. Neither NPR nor PBS can pass that test. On top of that – and this is particularly irksome to me – their stories about business and finance are almost always simplistic, if not naïve. And if all that were not bad enough, both stations have the worst taste in culture, literature, and the arts.
Think about this…
* NPR and PBS receive substantial government funding despite being branded as independent public media. NPR receives about $100 million annually, primarily through member stations funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). PBS indirectly receives over $400 million in federal support, mostly through the CPB and direct congressional allocations.
* The CPB is funded by taxpayers but operates with limited oversight. It distributes about 70% of its federal funds to local radio and TV stations.
* NPR and PBS are demonstrably biased. NPR employees have donated to Democratic campaigns 87 times more than to Republican ones. High-profile departures from NPR (e.g., Uri Berliner) have criticized NPR’s editorial culture as an echo-chamber for leftist journalism. A 2023 Pew survey found that 63% of Republicans distrust NPR, and nearly 50% distrust PBS, signaling a growing partisan perception of these platforms.
Source: Suzy Weiss, The Free Press, “NPR and PBS Aren’t Entitled to Your Money,” May 26, 2025
