Earlier this year, at a Congressional hearing, National Public Radio’s Chief Executive Officer, Katherine Maher, sparred with House members who had accused NPR of anti-conservative bias. Not true, she contended: NPR’s “journalism” is essential for a democratic society.
Of course, her defiance was somewhat undermined by the revelation of her past Tweets referring to President Donald J. Trump as “a deranged racist” and a “fascist.” But I digress. While Maher’s appearance on Capitol Hill was applauded by MSNBC’s cabal of anti-Trump activists, it seemed to have had the opposite effect on Congressmen who held the purse-strings on tax dollars being funneled to NPR and its left-leaning counterparts at PBS.
U.S. Representative Dale Strong (R-Alabama) introduced legislation to defund NPR…calling it “an extension of the Democratic Party’s communication arm” and “nothing more than a mouthpiece for the far left.”
On the Salem Media news program THIS WEEK ON CAPITOL HILL with Tony Perkins, U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson noted that the “One Big Beautiful Bill” he guided to passage would benefit the American people in countless ways, including saving millions of their tax dollars, among the bill’s accomplishments: clawing back over $500 million previously allotted to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting…which pretty much served as a money-laundering operation for NPR, PBS and liberal local stations across America.
For decades, in speeches and appearances before Congress, top figures from PBS and NPR piously postured against efforts to defund them, always contending that they receive “very little in direct tax dollars” for their operations. While technically true, they obfuscated the fact that federal funding was channeled to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which—surprise! —turned around and provided “grants” and seed money to NPR and PBS. This scheme was reminiscent of Al Capone’s ledger depicted in the film “The Untouchables,” where coded entries for legitimate businesses were actually funneling money directly into the Chicago gangster’s pockets.
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This week, the public broadcasting Ponzi scheme came to a crashing halt when the Corporation for Public Broadcasting suddenly announced that, due to its budget being slashed (by Katherine Maher’s “deranged racist”), CPB will totally shut down early next year. This past Friday, CPB informed its staff that the bulk of their positions will be eliminated next month; those who remain will limp along until January by making the corporation’s “final distributions” of tax dollars.
Good riddance. President Trump and Speaker Johnson can chalk up yet another item in their Win column. For the past half-century, CPB and its cronies at NPR and PBS have been feeding at the public trough while using our tax dollars to crank out left-leaning programming like FRONTLINE documentaries titled “Separated: Children At The Border” and "Clarence and Ginni Thomas: Politics, Power and the Supreme Court." (Three guesses who got the short end of the stick on those: our brave Border Patrol agents and, of course, the left’s most hated Supreme Court Associate Justice.)
In the 1970s, the premise was that National Public Radio and PBS were getting “seed money” in the form of grants from the Ford Foundation, the Rockefellers, and other groups. Still, they would eventually wean themselves off that funding by getting listeners and viewers to support them. Thus were born the incessant pledge drives where effete snobs would interrupt concerts or dramas like “Masterpiece Theater” to beg for money from the little people watching and listening to keep public radio and TV on the air. However, the tote bags and Julia Child DVDs apparently were not enough, as eventually our tax dollars began surging into the picture.
Any attempts to cut off tax dollars caused a primal scream led by “non-profit” advocates who even trotted out children’s TV show characters like Big Bird from SESAME STREET to lobby before lawmakers who were pilloried for muzzling the First Amendment rights of Mister Rogers and the hushed-voice anchors on “news” programs like Morning Edition and All Things Considered.
(In a final desperate attempt to head off the Big Beautiful Bill, NPR types like Katherine Maher hysterically implied that cutting the public broadcasting gristle from the federal budget would “endanger rural communities for whom public radio is their only source of emergency weather information.”)
“Rubes on tractors need us.” That was the last gasp of NPR, and neither Donald Trump nor Mike Johnson was buying into that malarky…so the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is now throwing in the towel. Of course, this doesn’t mean an immediate end of NPR or PBS, but like a tennis ball bouncing down a tall staircase, they, too, will eventually hit bottom.
Few of us will miss 5-part radio documentaries on tribal elections in Burundi or poetry readings from inmates on Death Row at Angola Prison in Louisiana.
Fewer still will miss being lectured about “free speech” by eggheads from NPR looking down their noses at ordinary taxpayers. Thanks to the One Big Beautiful Bill, the adults are back in charge in Washington, and the public broadcasting freeloaders will now need to look for real jobs.
Tom Tradup is V.P./News & Talk Programming at Dallas-based Salem Radio Network.
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