Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is keeping the pressure on NPR to explain its funding and its editorial decision-making. It is part of the fallout from the resignation of NPR editor Uri Berliner this spring following his public accusations the public media network engages in biased reporting. In April, Cruz sought answers about whether the Corporation for Public Broadcasting has done anything to address the allegations. Now he’s targeting NPR directly.
Cruz is asking NPR to turn over documents and information regarding its funding sources, including millions of dollars in donations from donors who he believes appear to be buying desired news coverage. The Texas Republican is seeking NPR financial records dating to 2019, including how much local stations pay in dues and licensing fees to the network for shows like “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered.” He also wants a list of each grant or donation of $5,000 or more since 2019.
Beyond money, Cruz is seeking information from NPR on what steps they take to ensure that financial contributions from its donors do not impact editorial decisions. And he wants to know how NPR’s centralized tracking system for interviewees’ race, gender, and ethnicity influence — used to ensure a wider variety of guests appear on the network — is used in its editorial decisions. Cruz is also seeking data on how often NPR presented stories that included right-leaning viewpoints.
“If the American taxpayer is going to finance a public broadcaster, then they deserve nothing less than fair and unbiased reporting,” Cruz writes in a letter to NPR President Katherine Maher. He thinks the network is “falling short” of a mandate to be objective and balanced.
The political heat on NPR has been turned up for the past several months after Berliner posted an essay in The Free Press. The veteran journalist claimed in the piece 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 scathing rebuke from inside the network has been seized on by conservatives, who say it confirms what they have been saying all along about public media. They are proposing that all federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting be cut off, a move that would end CPB funding to local public radio and TV stations.
“As it turns out, NPR’s selective reporting may be driven not only by pre-existing political bias within the organization but also by its private donors,” Cruz alleges in the letter. “The timing and content of certain NPR articles align with earmarked, multi-million-dollar donations from left-wing nonprofits looking to advance their own narratives in the press. In other words, NPR may be engaged in a payola scheme to leverage its dwindling credibility as a nonpartisan news organization to ‘help’ partisan, left-wing mega-donors.”
‘In Invaluable Service’
Corporation for Public Broadcasting President and CEO Patricia de Stacy Harrison has defended the use of taxpayer dollars. In a response to Cruz in May, she said public radio stations provide “an invaluable service” to Americans. “This is especially true for those who live in rural and remote areas, where the stations often serve as the primary, if not sole, source of news,” Harrison said.
But Harrison also vowed that CPB will continue to comply with federal laws and conduct an independent periodic review “of the objectivity and balance mandate in concert with our statutory obligation to maintain a firewall of editorial independence.” In addition, she pledged CPB will continue to review national public media programs funded directly by CPB “for their accuracy, fairness, objectivity, and balance.”
Republican lawmakers don’t seem convinced. The House Appropriations Committee voted this month to remove CPB funding from its pending spending bill 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 policy agenda laid out in the GOP blueprint known as Project 2025 also says one of its priorities — if Republicans take control of Washington — is to end public radio and TV funding by taxpayers. The 922-page document argues the money is “squandered on leftist opinion each year” and the government “should not be compelling the conservative half of the country to pay for the suppression of its own view.”
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