As talking heads on cable TV obsessed all weekend over the pending African-American female Supreme Court nominee—once Joe Biden’s handlers reveal to him who she will be—overlooked in the fracas is National Public Radio’s latest taxpayer-funded blunder involving the High Court.
In mid-January, NPR Legal Affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg reported—incorrectly—that Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor who has diabetes “did not feel safe” while sitting so close to people who were unmasked. Specifically, Tonenberg singled-out Trump appointee Neil Gorsuch who typically is seated near Sotomayor. The NPR veteran added that a “request” had been made for all justices to be masked when in Sotomayor’s presence.
“His (Gorsuch’s) continued refusal since then,” Totenberg reported, “has also meant that Sotomayor has not attended the justice’s weekly conference in person, joining instead by telephone.
For most of us in the non-NPR real world—where actual problems like empty grocery store shelves…the Biden inflation rate being the highest in 39 years wiping out any pay increases we’ve realized…and a dopey, senseless ramping-up of potential war with Russia over a squabble involving a pipsqueak Eastern European country whose primary export is beets—the breathless Totenberg “scoop” amounted to little more than Middle School tattle-tales.
But then—in an unprecedented joint statement—the Supreme Court released comments from both Gorsuch and Sotomayor flatly stating the NPR report “surprised us” and declaring, “It is false. While we may sometimes disagree about the law, we are warm colleagues and friends.”
Yikes! If you or I had reported that story—only to be publicly slapped down by both Supreme Court Justices supposedly involved—I suspect we’d have issued a hasty retraction accompanied by an apology. But not NPR… which—absurdly—announced it was “standing behind” Totenberg’s unfounded reporting.
Salem Radio Network talk host Hugh Hewitt—citing his own extensive experience with the U.S. Supreme Court--blasted Totenberg’s reporting, and called for an end to taxpayer dollars subsidizing NPR. “It is high time that we stop subsidizing lies from the Left coming from NPR..not just about the Supreme Court,” Hewitt stated, adding that—in his view—NPR is little more than “Socialized radio putting out propaganda from the Left.”
Most objective observers, of course, totally agree with Hewitt’s characterization of NPR’s daily programming…rife with liberal bias from dawn until dusk. But Hugh got me to wondering about the funding of NPR. Anytime I hear it—usually riding in a taxi whose driver sits on a beaded car seat with the smell of incense wafting throughout as he is locked onto Morning Edition or All Things Considered or special features like “White Lies” and left-leaning debates on guns—the shows are constantly being interrupted by amateurish “announcers” begging for money… for which they offer a tote bag or an NPR coffee mug. So if the “public” is paying for Public Radio…why does it need to siphon-off our tax dollars to keep the lights on?
NPR sources claim that “while NPR does not receive any direct federal funding,” it does receive “a small number” of competitive grants from The Corporation for Public Broadcasting and federal agencies like the Department of Education and the Department of Commerce. (I’m V.P. of the Salem Radio Network—heard on thousands of affiliates from coast to coast—and oddly, I do not recall SRN ever receiving a single grant from The Department of Education or the Department of Commerce. But I digress.) NPR contends that this funding only “amounts to approximately 2% of NPR's overall revenues.”
Which led me to check the octopus-wiring at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which supplies so-called “competitive grants” to public radio. Consider this weasel-wording: “CPB is a private nonprofit corporation(sounds good so far) that is fully funded by the federal government.”
Oops. Just in my state of Texas alone…CBP is supplying Public Radio a minimum of $9-million during Fiscal 2021, under various made-up titles including “radio programming,” a “Radio Fiscal Stabilization Grant” and a “Radio Community Service Grant.”
In New York, CPB’s largesse is $12-million and in California the “grants” add up to nearly $19-million, by CPB’s own accounting. (Even relatively smaller population-wide South Dakota is bestowed over $2-million. Why not? Since CPB is “fully funded by the federal government.” Bureaucrats—whether in Congress, federal agencies or so-called private non-profits, just love to waste our tax dollars subsidizing Leftist programming which undermines American values at every turn.)
I don’t know about you, but I believe that after decades and decades of subsidies from The Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, various liberal activists and—don’t forget—sweet little old ladies sending in $15 to get those tote bags, if NPR was ever going to stand on its hind legs and operate like a real business…it would have done so by now. But it hasn’t, because NPR continues to exist as the linear equivalent of welfare recipients lining up for their next blocks of free government cheese. No incentive to break the umbilical cord and become productive members of society. Or in NPR’s case, the real world of broadcasting
(Most Americans even have empathy for folks trapped in government housing projects, whose lives continue to be dominated by “welfare advocates” who drum into them the tyranny of low expectations.)
But it’s way past time to kick NPR off the U.S. taxpayer welfare rolls…whether they’re receiving our tax dollars directly from some misguided state or local governments or sneakily laundered through private nonprofit corporations like CPB.
Time to pull the plug on NPR. At the end of the day, they’re just freeloaders.
Tom Tradup is V.P./News & Talk Programming at Dallas-based SALEM Radio Network. He can be reached at ttradup@srnradio.com
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