Foreshadowing what may be one of many fights in the coming year in Washington, Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) has introduced a bill that would end taxpayer funding to public radio and television. “The Corporation for Public Broadcasting refuses to give us fair, unbiased content,” says Kennedy, who says his legislation would save taxpayer money by ending what he calls “Big Brother’s propaganda outlet” in a social media post.
The proposed No Propaganda Act is a companion to a bill (H.R.8053) introduced earlier by Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) that would not only zero out future funding to public media, but also rescind earlier advance authorizations. That practice has been in government funding bills since 1975 to allow public broadcasters enough lead time to place and produce future programming. Will Kennedy and others finally deliver on a years-long promise by conservatives to end public media support?
“The Corporation for Public Broadcasting refuses to provide Louisianians and Americans with fair, unbiased content,” Kennedy says. “It wastes taxpayer dollars on slanted coverage to advance a leftist political agenda.”
Efforts to zero out CPB funding picked up steam earlier this year when former NPR editor Uri Berliner claimed in a Free Press article that a lack of political diversity among staff and C-suite mandates has created a niche format at NPR that appeals mainly to far liberal-leaning listeners and only presents one side of important national and international stories. Weeks later, Berliner resigned from NPR.
The No Propaganda Act is unlikely to be considered in the remaining days of the lame duck session, especially since Democrats remain in control of the Senate. But it is setting the table for when Republicans take full control of Washington in January.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) has already said that she intends to make public media part of her focus as she leads a new House subcommittee devoted to ending what it considers to be wasteful spending. Taylor Greene said in an interview last month that NPR airs “nothing but Democrat propaganda.”
There is little doubt President-elect Trump would support such a cut. “No more funding for NPR,” he wrote on social media earlier this year, calling the network a “liberal disinformation machine.”
The attacks on NPR come at the same time House Republicans have made good on their promise to cut funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The pending budget proposal removes CPB funding from the federal budget for the 2027 fiscal year. The White House had proposed $535 million for the nonprofit corporation, which distributes federal dollars to more than 1,500 locally managed and operated public radio and television stations nationwide. The Senate version has kept the CPB funding in its budget, however, which sets up another battle between the two chambers.
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