The heart of the problem isn't that NPR doesn't allow most Americans to "see themselves reflected in the programming," it's that NPR has been lying to Americans about everything all the time, and we know it.
NPR isn't merely "the news" but slanted with a leftward bias. It is, and has been, pure ideological propaganda.
One of NPR's recurring propaganda points is that taxpayers fund only a tiny, insignificant portion of its budget and that it is on the whole self-sufficient. If that's the actually the case, then there should be no need to panic at the loss of public funds. But of course that's not actually the case.
Here are the real boogie men funding the far left propaganda being bullhorned from PBS and NPR. These PRIVATE foundations should be put to shame for the division they funded (and continue to fund):
The Ford Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Gates Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, David and Lucile Packard Foundation.
A useful direction for something like NPR (and its sibling PBS) - if they truly wants to be state-run media organizations - is to basically buy C-SPAN and broadcast all the congressional meetings/hearings/etc (and other stuff like presidential news conferences and such). They should also do so without any sort of commentary - just produce and publish the raw video stream from such meetings (and keep videos and text transcripts of them on a searchable website).
C-SPAN has been in trouble recently as streamers like Youtube TV don't want to carry it.
No commentary, no "reporting" - once you cross that bridge, you become political.
I disagree because if you just stream the hearing, you’re only showing how the people already in power choose to present an issue. Also, it’s hard to tell without analysis whether a politician actually made a good point, or just said something that sounded good. And regardless of whether witnesses are under oath, there’s plenty of lying and slanting of the truth in hearings.
You need someone well-informed to sift through the hours of footage and tell you what matters and what is basically this week’s sideshow. They should however make every attempt to provide this analysis from multiple viewpoints — not just liberal and conservative, but talking to the people actually affected by the issue.
Someone else can analyze the content. That someone should not be directly or indirectly on a government payroll.
There will be no shortage of analysis - after all, we have vast numbers of potential analysts with Substack accounts, youtube, podcasts, etc as well as the old-line network shows that few under the age of 70 watch anymore. But if the analysis comes from a state-owned or state-funded entity, it becomes a political football.
Thank you for your service. My only quibble is "center-left." LOL no. The actual center-left occupies the rightmost part of the NPR universe. The average NPR person is definite Firm Left. As an old person, I affirm that it wasn't always like this. It used to be sort of a genteel New York Times liberalism where they at least tried to acknowledge the broader world. The real cultishness is recent. It's like Uri Berliner said in his essay: something has changed, for the worse.
Yes. Having the news anchors switch from the much mocked "Latinx" to the equally obnoxious and linguistically imperialist "Latine" or "Latineh" after the election reads as cultural fringe left.
The problem with NPR, PBS, and much of the mainstream media is that it is a group of progressive-left folks creating what they see as unbiased news, but their idea of unbiased reflects their culture. It's like a group of all-male executives looking at a sex harassment case from a female employee complaining about a male executive, and them saying, "we've looked at this carefully and determined she's just being too sensitive." If everyone looking at the issue has a male executive perspective, that will impact their sincere idea of what's fair. Similarly, if everyone looking at a news story has a progressive left perspective, even when they try to be fair, they often fail to be so.
The solution is real viewpoint diversity among reporters, editors, and producers. All stories should be vetted from a variety of viewpoints. To be clear, I DO NOT mean we need a group of people who parrot Democratic talking points and another group who parrot Republican points. We need people who are independent thinkers striving to be intellectually honest, but who have diverse political dispositions and backgrounds. And yes, there are lots of people out there from both left and right political backgrounds who are willing to approach issues in good faith if given the chance and put into a culture that supports that.
This brings up a very interesting point in that I believe more than half of the voters in the U.S., if they would identify themselves, identify as independents. The problem is that independents are left with having to sift through D or R every election to see which side truly supports their real views and increasingly neither side can or does. We keep hearing “democracy is at risk” from both sides when there’s a “crisis” but what they don’t want to admit is that each party is at risk and at risk of crumbling. Both sides are trying their hardest to remake themselves, but ultimately are driven by their funders and ultimately dismiss their base. I think America does and will survive, it’s that I don’t think either party survives and one day we will no longer have D or R but some other parties. It seems each year, more and more, we’re witnessing the precipitous collapse of each party more than the country.
I was visiting family recently, listening to NPR in their kitchen. I could barely stomach it. They don’t even try to disguise the partisan bias. Ridiculous really. Just say NO to public funding. They don’t need it either.
I was a DC intern for a R House member in mid 1990’s. At that time there was an R bill (that went nowhere) to defund NPR/PBS. Was told at time this same bill had been presented every session FOR YEARS prior and always shot down. The zeitgeist now may have finally shifted where this defund bill will finally pass. However, it is not just the public $$ funding this ever-leftwing propaganda - but also a shit ton of long-time generational wealth private foundations — who also long went crazy woke funding this garbage. There needs to be a total and complete reset of NPR and PBS. I think it can still serve a purpose but it must shed its partisanship. And go back to just reporting the facts. This is no longer Mr. Rogers, Electric Company, Cartalk and the McNeil Newshour. That ship sailed off in the early 90’s, if not earlier. And we have been left with woke hell on its airways ever since.
I like the idea of public media and I hold a generally positive opinion of PBS but NPR is...bad. I feel like there's an opportunity here to close it and replace it with a new institution based out of Little Rock, Salt Lake, or somewhere else outside of "the bubble".
PBS and NPR may have made sense at one time as an alternative to the “Big 3” television networks, as well as radio. In the early days of broadcasting, CBS, ABC, and NBC dominated the airwaves, and much of what you saw on television or heard on the radio was merely repetitive or an echo of what was on the other channels/stations, which was commercially driven by advertisers, hence the term “soap opera” for daytime dramas targeted to housewives sponsored by soap makers.
PBS (and its precursor NET) and NPR came about to provide a medium whereby the people could go on the air, and create their own content. And initially, it was pretty much like that. Local public radio stations played classical or jazz music, and maybe had one or two talk shows or lectures. Public television had “educational programming” which was locally produced, of which Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood was one of the most famous.
The debut of Sesame Street in 1969 created a new trend in public broadcasting, namely creation of content not locally, but by slick national companies, which would then syndicate their programs, for fairly high fees, to local stations. Suddenly, the fund drives for local stations were not to pay for keeping the lights on, but to pay for those syndication fees.
Since then, PBS and NPR have become de facto commercial television and radio networks, without all the messy business of having to deal with and be accountable to advertisers and shareholders. And they’ve done it with corporate money, foundation money, your pledge money, and a big chunk of government money.
Out of one side of their mouth they say, “The government doesn’t give us enough money to survive” and out of the other they say, “We can’t survive without government money.” If the amount of money they receive is so meager, then losing it wouldn’t make any difference, would it?
With new forms of communication media having come on the scene, the rationale behind PBS and NPR has really evaporated in an era of streaming media, podcasts, and smartphones. We all have our own TV and radio studios in the palm of our hand.
And then there is the politics. It is gospel truth that PBS and NPR are heavily slanted to the left—and public money is used to promote a leftist agenda. If any government funds are used, they should be used to promote all points of view equally.
With that in mind, it’s time for Uncle Sam to either privatize PBS and NPR as actual commercial networks or reinvent them as truly public radio and television with more locally produced content and less nationally syndicated stuff that’s easily accessible to producers and consumers of content.
👏👏👏 A timely and important article, Zaid! We definitely do need public media. I agree with that but PBS and NPR don’t represent the public as you explained. They have a clear left-wing bias and are in the tank for the Democratic Party. Their programming used to be groundbreaking stuff today it’s just liberal propaganda with no value at all. I kid you not, PBS made documentaries on “The Talk” black parents supposedly have with their children about the police and how the opposition to disco music came out of racism and homophobia. 😂😂😂 PBS also put a video starring race hustler extraordinaire and creep who hit on Nancy Mace, Michael Eric Dyson where he explains white fragility. NPR has run countless off-the-wall, bonkers stories like the following:
I applaud President Trump for defunding NPR and PBS, until they shed their bias and return to serving ALL Americans regardless of political views, they don’t deserve a dime of our tax dollars! Plain and simple! It’s really such a shame what these two outlets have fallen to. They’ve become so woke, they’ve lost their mind. NPR refused to cover the Hunter Biden Story nor did I ever hear a peep out of them about Joe Biden’s cognitive decline or the Twitter Files Scandal. PBS has done too many Anti-Trump documentaries to count. They also breathlessly repeated the claim he called Nazis very fine people. They also very much pushed Russiagate, the lies behind COVID and the lies of the January 6th Committee.
I don't even know what a media of "the public" would sound like at this point. Given that the definition of "political" these days is "whatever I disagree with", I don't see there being a way to reconcile it. Maybe best to just drop the pretense and let it go.
Doubt that I would ever be accused of being part Inc th a democratic base but NPr was my go to all through the 90’s and the 2000s. They seemed biased to me but were aware of it and tried to present both sides while making mostly high quality programming. But they tossed all that long ago and I and most of my rights center friends are long gone
I listened to NPR for years, but was frequently annoyed by the lefty slant. I quit listening entirely when they refused to cover the Hunter Biden laptop story. They are nothing but a mouthpiece for the Democratic Party and have no reason to receive taxpayer support.
They're not a mouthpiece for the Democratic Party.
They're a mouthpiece for the "progressive," woke" wing of the Democratic Party -- and often for (cultural) viewpoints to the left of that.
Ask Seth Moulton or John Fetterman about that, for starters. Heck, they even started beating up on Gavin Newsom when he questioned the fairness of having "trans women" compete in female sports.
However, the culprit here isn't the Democratic Party -- merely its "progressive" faction, and non-Democrats to their left. Recognizing that would strengthen your case!
Except that Democratic politicians (even “moderates”) publicly support and vote in lockstep for Progressive policies. Fetterman is the exception that proves the rule. Total silence (or support) from rank and file Democrats on open borders, Biden dementia, and crazy trans policy.
It's not just Fetterman (and Moulton); even Gavin Newsom has questioned the fairness of "trans women" in women's sports -- and he's caught hell from the usual suspects (including NPR).
As for Biden's dementia? Last time I noticed, Jake Tapper was not a Republican. (For that matter, neither is James Carville, who's excoriated fellow Democrats that refuse to abandon the "woke" lunacy.)
Meanwhile, Trump has us on the verge of martial law -- bringing in a sledgehammer to perform brain surgery -- a cure worse than (or at least as bad as) the disease.
Tapper, Newsom,et al are only bucking Democrat orthodoxy after the fact. Where was their “courage” during the Biden administration when they would have suffered real consequences for speaking out? As for Trump, he’s trying to prevent a repeat of the 2020 riots when Democrat mayors allowed federal buildings to be destroyed along with billions of dollars in private property. The LA police chief said that his officers were being “overwhelmed” by the rioters. Newsom and Bass didn’t have enough sense to call in the National Guard. Trump did.
The last time I tuned into NPR they were running a story about an incarcerated man describing the solace that Taylor Swift brings him.
Partly bc it reminded him of a more innocent time, partly for the femininity and remembrance of the woman he is perhaps still in love with (his prior self, before he became a man).
I kid you not.
Goofy story, whatever, but at the same time: There was a LAND WAR in Europe for the first time in decades, the US had just technically entered Recession, inflation, interest rates climbing, Afghanistan's worst famine in 100 years. So...there was news to be reported on. Insanity.
As a Lefty, I agree that NPR's content seems to be targeted to wealthy, scared, old Democrats. I don't think NPR deserves public funding. Who wants to pay your hard earned tax Dollars to have the truth misrepresented as Russian disinformation?
The heart of the problem isn't that NPR doesn't allow most Americans to "see themselves reflected in the programming," it's that NPR has been lying to Americans about everything all the time, and we know it.
NPR isn't merely "the news" but slanted with a leftward bias. It is, and has been, pure ideological propaganda.
One of NPR's recurring propaganda points is that taxpayers fund only a tiny, insignificant portion of its budget and that it is on the whole self-sufficient. If that's the actually the case, then there should be no need to panic at the loss of public funds. But of course that's not actually the case.
Here are the real boogie men funding the far left propaganda being bullhorned from PBS and NPR. These PRIVATE foundations should be put to shame for the division they funded (and continue to fund):
The Ford Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Gates Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, David and Lucile Packard Foundation.
A useful direction for something like NPR (and its sibling PBS) - if they truly wants to be state-run media organizations - is to basically buy C-SPAN and broadcast all the congressional meetings/hearings/etc (and other stuff like presidential news conferences and such). They should also do so without any sort of commentary - just produce and publish the raw video stream from such meetings (and keep videos and text transcripts of them on a searchable website).
C-SPAN has been in trouble recently as streamers like Youtube TV don't want to carry it.
No commentary, no "reporting" - once you cross that bridge, you become political.
I disagree because if you just stream the hearing, you’re only showing how the people already in power choose to present an issue. Also, it’s hard to tell without analysis whether a politician actually made a good point, or just said something that sounded good. And regardless of whether witnesses are under oath, there’s plenty of lying and slanting of the truth in hearings.
You need someone well-informed to sift through the hours of footage and tell you what matters and what is basically this week’s sideshow. They should however make every attempt to provide this analysis from multiple viewpoints — not just liberal and conservative, but talking to the people actually affected by the issue.
Someone else can analyze the content. That someone should not be directly or indirectly on a government payroll.
There will be no shortage of analysis - after all, we have vast numbers of potential analysts with Substack accounts, youtube, podcasts, etc as well as the old-line network shows that few under the age of 70 watch anymore. But if the analysis comes from a state-owned or state-funded entity, it becomes a political football.
Thank you for your service. My only quibble is "center-left." LOL no. The actual center-left occupies the rightmost part of the NPR universe. The average NPR person is definite Firm Left. As an old person, I affirm that it wasn't always like this. It used to be sort of a genteel New York Times liberalism where they at least tried to acknowledge the broader world. The real cultishness is recent. It's like Uri Berliner said in his essay: something has changed, for the worse.
Yes. Having the news anchors switch from the much mocked "Latinx" to the equally obnoxious and linguistically imperialist "Latine" or "Latineh" after the election reads as cultural fringe left.
True, but on at least on KQED, you'll still hear plenty of "Latinx."
The problem with NPR, PBS, and much of the mainstream media is that it is a group of progressive-left folks creating what they see as unbiased news, but their idea of unbiased reflects their culture. It's like a group of all-male executives looking at a sex harassment case from a female employee complaining about a male executive, and them saying, "we've looked at this carefully and determined she's just being too sensitive." If everyone looking at the issue has a male executive perspective, that will impact their sincere idea of what's fair. Similarly, if everyone looking at a news story has a progressive left perspective, even when they try to be fair, they often fail to be so.
The solution is real viewpoint diversity among reporters, editors, and producers. All stories should be vetted from a variety of viewpoints. To be clear, I DO NOT mean we need a group of people who parrot Democratic talking points and another group who parrot Republican points. We need people who are independent thinkers striving to be intellectually honest, but who have diverse political dispositions and backgrounds. And yes, there are lots of people out there from both left and right political backgrounds who are willing to approach issues in good faith if given the chance and put into a culture that supports that.
This brings up a very interesting point in that I believe more than half of the voters in the U.S., if they would identify themselves, identify as independents. The problem is that independents are left with having to sift through D or R every election to see which side truly supports their real views and increasingly neither side can or does. We keep hearing “democracy is at risk” from both sides when there’s a “crisis” but what they don’t want to admit is that each party is at risk and at risk of crumbling. Both sides are trying their hardest to remake themselves, but ultimately are driven by their funders and ultimately dismiss their base. I think America does and will survive, it’s that I don’t think either party survives and one day we will no longer have D or R but some other parties. It seems each year, more and more, we’re witnessing the precipitous collapse of each party more than the country.
I was visiting family recently, listening to NPR in their kitchen. I could barely stomach it. They don’t even try to disguise the partisan bias. Ridiculous really. Just say NO to public funding. They don’t need it either.
"America needs public media because private media alone is insufficient."
But what would a purely public outlet offer?
Wouldn't it be better for the government to get out of the viewpoint game altogether? NPR and PBS already get major funding from private sources.
I was a DC intern for a R House member in mid 1990’s. At that time there was an R bill (that went nowhere) to defund NPR/PBS. Was told at time this same bill had been presented every session FOR YEARS prior and always shot down. The zeitgeist now may have finally shifted where this defund bill will finally pass. However, it is not just the public $$ funding this ever-leftwing propaganda - but also a shit ton of long-time generational wealth private foundations — who also long went crazy woke funding this garbage. There needs to be a total and complete reset of NPR and PBS. I think it can still serve a purpose but it must shed its partisanship. And go back to just reporting the facts. This is no longer Mr. Rogers, Electric Company, Cartalk and the McNeil Newshour. That ship sailed off in the early 90’s, if not earlier. And we have been left with woke hell on its airways ever since.
I like the idea of public media and I hold a generally positive opinion of PBS but NPR is...bad. I feel like there's an opportunity here to close it and replace it with a new institution based out of Little Rock, Salt Lake, or somewhere else outside of "the bubble".
PBS and NPR may have made sense at one time as an alternative to the “Big 3” television networks, as well as radio. In the early days of broadcasting, CBS, ABC, and NBC dominated the airwaves, and much of what you saw on television or heard on the radio was merely repetitive or an echo of what was on the other channels/stations, which was commercially driven by advertisers, hence the term “soap opera” for daytime dramas targeted to housewives sponsored by soap makers.
PBS (and its precursor NET) and NPR came about to provide a medium whereby the people could go on the air, and create their own content. And initially, it was pretty much like that. Local public radio stations played classical or jazz music, and maybe had one or two talk shows or lectures. Public television had “educational programming” which was locally produced, of which Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood was one of the most famous.
The debut of Sesame Street in 1969 created a new trend in public broadcasting, namely creation of content not locally, but by slick national companies, which would then syndicate their programs, for fairly high fees, to local stations. Suddenly, the fund drives for local stations were not to pay for keeping the lights on, but to pay for those syndication fees.
Since then, PBS and NPR have become de facto commercial television and radio networks, without all the messy business of having to deal with and be accountable to advertisers and shareholders. And they’ve done it with corporate money, foundation money, your pledge money, and a big chunk of government money.
Out of one side of their mouth they say, “The government doesn’t give us enough money to survive” and out of the other they say, “We can’t survive without government money.” If the amount of money they receive is so meager, then losing it wouldn’t make any difference, would it?
With new forms of communication media having come on the scene, the rationale behind PBS and NPR has really evaporated in an era of streaming media, podcasts, and smartphones. We all have our own TV and radio studios in the palm of our hand.
And then there is the politics. It is gospel truth that PBS and NPR are heavily slanted to the left—and public money is used to promote a leftist agenda. If any government funds are used, they should be used to promote all points of view equally.
With that in mind, it’s time for Uncle Sam to either privatize PBS and NPR as actual commercial networks or reinvent them as truly public radio and television with more locally produced content and less nationally syndicated stuff that’s easily accessible to producers and consumers of content.
👏👏👏 A timely and important article, Zaid! We definitely do need public media. I agree with that but PBS and NPR don’t represent the public as you explained. They have a clear left-wing bias and are in the tank for the Democratic Party. Their programming used to be groundbreaking stuff today it’s just liberal propaganda with no value at all. I kid you not, PBS made documentaries on “The Talk” black parents supposedly have with their children about the police and how the opposition to disco music came out of racism and homophobia. 😂😂😂 PBS also put a video starring race hustler extraordinaire and creep who hit on Nancy Mace, Michael Eric Dyson where he explains white fragility. NPR has run countless off-the-wall, bonkers stories like the following:
https://www.npr.org/2020/07/06/887646740/me-and-white-supremacy-helps-you-do-the-work-of-dismantling-racism
https://www.npr.org/2024/05/08/1249886153/what-s-the-cash-value-of-being-white-a-white-woman-poses-the-question-about-hers
https://www.npr.org/2022/02/06/1078571919/washington-commanders-name-change-native-americans
https://www.npr.org/2025/03/24/nx-s1-5337989/israel-gaza-invasion-hamas
https://www.npr.org/2020/06/09/873375416/there-is-no-neutral-nice-white-people-can-still-be-complicit-in-a-racist-society
This is just to name a FEW. PBS doesn’t really hide their partisan bias either:
https://www.pbs.org/video/techno-racism-the-bias-built-in-mutually-inclusive-18aiyz/
https://www.pbs.org/video/racism-a-public-health-crisis-covv3w/
https://www.pbs.org/show/driving-while-black/
https://art.stanford.edu/news/documentary-film-racist-trees-broadcast-pbs
https://www.pbs.org/video/understanding-anti-racism-xmzrzb/
I applaud President Trump for defunding NPR and PBS, until they shed their bias and return to serving ALL Americans regardless of political views, they don’t deserve a dime of our tax dollars! Plain and simple! It’s really such a shame what these two outlets have fallen to. They’ve become so woke, they’ve lost their mind. NPR refused to cover the Hunter Biden Story nor did I ever hear a peep out of them about Joe Biden’s cognitive decline or the Twitter Files Scandal. PBS has done too many Anti-Trump documentaries to count. They also breathlessly repeated the claim he called Nazis very fine people. They also very much pushed Russiagate, the lies behind COVID and the lies of the January 6th Committee.
I don't even know what a media of "the public" would sound like at this point. Given that the definition of "political" these days is "whatever I disagree with", I don't see there being a way to reconcile it. Maybe best to just drop the pretense and let it go.
Doubt that I would ever be accused of being part Inc th a democratic base but NPr was my go to all through the 90’s and the 2000s. They seemed biased to me but were aware of it and tried to present both sides while making mostly high quality programming. But they tossed all that long ago and I and most of my rights center friends are long gone
I listened to NPR for years, but was frequently annoyed by the lefty slant. I quit listening entirely when they refused to cover the Hunter Biden laptop story. They are nothing but a mouthpiece for the Democratic Party and have no reason to receive taxpayer support.
They're not a mouthpiece for the Democratic Party.
They're a mouthpiece for the "progressive," woke" wing of the Democratic Party -- and often for (cultural) viewpoints to the left of that.
Ask Seth Moulton or John Fetterman about that, for starters. Heck, they even started beating up on Gavin Newsom when he questioned the fairness of having "trans women" compete in female sports.
Seems like you’re helping me make my case for defunding NPR.
Absolutely!
However, the culprit here isn't the Democratic Party -- merely its "progressive" faction, and non-Democrats to their left. Recognizing that would strengthen your case!
Except that Democratic politicians (even “moderates”) publicly support and vote in lockstep for Progressive policies. Fetterman is the exception that proves the rule. Total silence (or support) from rank and file Democrats on open borders, Biden dementia, and crazy trans policy.
It's not just Fetterman (and Moulton); even Gavin Newsom has questioned the fairness of "trans women" in women's sports -- and he's caught hell from the usual suspects (including NPR).
As for Biden's dementia? Last time I noticed, Jake Tapper was not a Republican. (For that matter, neither is James Carville, who's excoriated fellow Democrats that refuse to abandon the "woke" lunacy.)
Meanwhile, Trump has us on the verge of martial law -- bringing in a sledgehammer to perform brain surgery -- a cure worse than (or at least as bad as) the disease.
Tapper, Newsom,et al are only bucking Democrat orthodoxy after the fact. Where was their “courage” during the Biden administration when they would have suffered real consequences for speaking out? As for Trump, he’s trying to prevent a repeat of the 2020 riots when Democrat mayors allowed federal buildings to be destroyed along with billions of dollars in private property. The LA police chief said that his officers were being “overwhelmed” by the rioters. Newsom and Bass didn’t have enough sense to call in the National Guard. Trump did.
The last time I tuned into NPR they were running a story about an incarcerated man describing the solace that Taylor Swift brings him.
Partly bc it reminded him of a more innocent time, partly for the femininity and remembrance of the woman he is perhaps still in love with (his prior self, before he became a man).
I kid you not.
Goofy story, whatever, but at the same time: There was a LAND WAR in Europe for the first time in decades, the US had just technically entered Recession, inflation, interest rates climbing, Afghanistan's worst famine in 100 years. So...there was news to be reported on. Insanity.
As a Lefty, I agree that NPR's content seems to be targeted to wealthy, scared, old Democrats. I don't think NPR deserves public funding. Who wants to pay your hard earned tax Dollars to have the truth misrepresented as Russian disinformation?
Absolutely! But it's not about blaming the Democratic Party, and recognizing that will only strengrhen your case.