Below is my column in The Hill on the growing controversy over NPR and the government subsidy of its programming. There is not much serious debate over the political bias of the company, but NPR has a right to slant its coverage. The question is why this company should be given a federal subsidy over its competitors.
Here is the column:
It has been a rough week for the National Public Radio (NPR) after a respected editor, Uri Berliner, wrote a scathing account of the political bias at the media outlet.
Although NPR responded by denying the allegations, the controversy has rekindled the debate over the danger of the government selectively funding media outlets. That is a debate that does not simply turn on the question of bias, but more fundamentally on why the public should support this particular media company to the exclusion of others.
The Biden administration and Congress continue to struggle with a massive budget deficit and growing national debt, which stands at $34 trillion and is approximately 99 percent of Gross Domestic Product.
Despite the need to make tough cuts in core public programs, the public subsidy for NPR has been protected as sacrosanct for decades.
NPR insists that only roughly 1 percent of its budget comes from the government. But that is misleading due to a federal law that distributes funds through local stations and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been set aside for CPB in fiscal year 2026, a sizable increase from 2025.
In the meantime, NPR’s audience has been declining. Indeed, that trend has been most pronounced since 2017 — the period when Berliner said the company began to openly pursue a political narrative and agenda to counter Donald Trump. The company has reported falling advertising revenue and, like many outlets, has made deep staff cuts to deal with budget shortfalls.
For the record, despite the growing political bias shown by NPR news programs, I still view it to be unmatched in its quality and some of its programming. But the budget fight again raises a longstanding constitutional concern over subsidies for media by the federal government. It is not unconstitutional per se, but it continues to be an anomaly in a system that tries to separate government from the press.
The U.S. has never had a true “wall of separation” for media like the one Thomas Jefferson once referenced between church and state. Indeed, in 1791, Madison declared that Congress had an obligation to improve the “circulation of newspapers through the entire body of the people” and sponsored the Post Office Act of 1791, which offered newspapers cut-rate prices for reaching subscribers. For many years, newspapers would account for more than 95 percent of the weight of mail transported by the post office. It was a direct subsidy of the media, and it resulted in an explosion in the number of newspapers in the country.
Still, that subsidy benefited all newspapers regardless of their content or ownership. For decades, Congress has paid billions to the CPB and Voice of America. There is a valid debate over whether Voice of America is an outmoded Cold War-era federal program, but at least VOA is an actual federal program that explicitly carries programming for the government.
CPB and NPR are different. In a competitive media market, the government has elected to subsidize a selective media outlet. Moreover, this is not the media organization that many citizens would choose. While tacking aggressively to the left and openly supporting narratives (including some false stories) from Democratic sources, NPR and its allies still expect citizens to subsidize its work. That includes roughly half of the country with viewpoints now effectively banished from its airwaves.
NPR is precisely the type of press outlet that the framers sought to protect through the First Amendment. It is also the very sort of thing that should not be funded as part of a de facto state media.
While local PBS stations are supported “by listeners like you,” NPR itself continues to maintain that “federal funding is essential” to its work. If NPR is truly relying on federal funds for only 1 percent of its budget, why not make a clean break from the public dole? NPR would then have to compete with every other radio and media outlet on equal terms. And it would likely do well in such a competition, given its loyal base and excellent programming.
However, the funding of NPR has always imposed a different cost in terms of constitutional values as a media organization funded in part by taxpayers, including many who view the outlet as extremely biased. Such bias would not make NPR a standout among other news organizations. However, NPR is not like the others. While NPR prides itself on annual pledge drives, conservative taxpayers are not given a choice of whether to fund it. Congress effectively forces them to pledge every year, and they do not even get a tote bag in return.
This debate over the state-funding of NPR has developed an added concern recently due to changes in the media. There is a shift in recent years toward advocacy journalism as leading figures denounce the very concept of “objectivity” in the media.
Kathleen Carroll, former executive editor at the Associated Press, declared “It’s objective by whose standard? …That standard seems to be white, educated, and fairly wealthy.”
Ironically, that happens to be the main demographic of the NPR audience. According to surveys, that also includes a largely liberal audience that’s less racially diverse than…wait for it…Fox News.
NPR has been on the forefront of the advocacy journalism debate. Indeed, it has at times seemed to move toward dispensing with the journalism part altogether. NPR announced that reporters could participate in activities that advocate for “freedom and dignity of human beings” on social media and in real life. Reporters just need approval over what are deemed freedom or dignity enhancing causes. Presumably, that does not include pro-life or gun rights rallies.
While NPR is not alone in moving toward an advocacy model, it certainly makes the state-funding of NPR more and more problematic. Criticism of the obvious bias has not deterred NPR, which has doubled down on its exclusion of conservative voices. Berliner noted that NPR’s Washington headquarters has 87 registered Democrats among its editors and zero Republicans.
That includes its Chief Executive Officer Katherine Maher. After years of criticism over NPR’s political bias, the search for a new CEO was viewed as an opportunity to select someone without such partisan baggage. Instead, it selected Maher, who has been criticized for controversial postings on subjects ranging from looters to Trump. Those now-deleted postings included a 2018 declaration that “Donald Trump is a racist” and a variety of political commentary.
Maher lashed out at Berliner, calling his criticism and call for greater diversity in the newsroom “profoundly disrespectful, hurtful, and demeaning.”
That one-sided division of the editors is increasingly reflected in its audience. Berliner noted that in 2011, 26 percent of the audience was still conservative. Now that is down to just 11 percent. At some point, that percentage is likely to reflect mere momentary dial confusion as NPR chases away its last conservative listeners. In the meantime, its audience is now approaching an estimated 70 percent liberal listeners, but it still expects 100 percent of taxpayers to fund its programming and bias.
The market tends to favor those products and programming that the public wants. If the demand for NPR is insufficient to support its budget, then Congress should not make up the shortfall and prop up the programming. If it is sufficient, then there is no need for the subsidy.
This debate should not turn on whether you agree with the slant of NPR programming. NPR clearly wants to maintain a liberal advocacy in its programming, and it has every right to do so. It does not have a right to federal funding.
Jonathan Turley is the J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at the George Washington University Law School.
Fox News, Newsmax, ETC nor Conservative talk
radio get taxpayer $$. WTH does NPR get our $$??
Let them stand or fall on their own!
#DefundNPR!
Here is an excellent clip of Bill Mahr calling out the left.
No this country is not perfect – but it is very very good.
While you have the absolute freedom to chant “death to america here”
Actually doing so make YOU more deluded than the far right wing nuts at Charlottesville who where chanting “the Jew will not replace us”
The american left is BONKERS.
and the Democratic party is catering to these people.
https://youtu.be/Hp4WqEadu3M
I would suggest making National Public Radio prove its real value. Remove all government funding for its stations and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and force them to sell advertising to pay their own way.
All right mister free speech JT. BS, You are a fraud but what the hey, I’ll go with your deceptive description for a bit.
How about Texas AG going after Media Matters? Or is this too simple for your weak mind to get a handle on?
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/04/judge-halts-texas-probe-into-media-matters-reporting-on-x/
Would this be actual case where the government is interfering in free speech? Like the Judge said? unlike the BS you see on this site all the time about how the left is preventing free speech.
Facts matter.
I don’t listen to it anymore since I retired, but I used to listen to NPR all the time while driving too and from the airport. Anyone who things NPR is NOT biased has rocks in their head. No, it should not be subsidized, it should be supported by subscribers and donors. There’s nothing “public” about it. It’s another New Deal holdover designed to promote liberalism. (Yes, I know it wasn’t founded until 1970 but it was the brainchild of New Deal adherents.)
What about a citizen’s right to receive information from NPR?
You can listen to it all day long and through the night, but it shouldn’t be subsidized by taxpayers.
Pay for it voluntarily then.
try donating. that takes care of your right. his point was government money, coming from everyone.
Breitbart’s Take:
– Google Blocks News in California to Protest Proposed Media Payoff Law –
Google has begun restricting access to news articles for some users in California in response to the pending California Journalism Preservation Act, which would require tech giants like Google and Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta to pay publishers for news content.
By: Lucas Nolan ~ Apr. !5th, 2024
[Link] breitbart.com/tech/2024/04/15/google-blocks-news-in-california-to-protest-proposed-media-payoff-law/
NPR’s Take:
– Google blocks California news in response to bill that would force tech giant to pay –
Google has started blocking news articles for some people in California, the company announced on Friday.
Stories from California-based news organizations will not be available for an unspecified number of state residents who use Google to search the web, in a show of its might as Google attempts to quash a state proposal it has been fighting for years.
Bobby Allyn ~ April 12, 2024
[Link] npr.org/2024/04/12/1244416887/google-blocks-california-news-payments-bill
-TRA
The sad part is in a lot of our country NPR, which has taken over a lot of local stations, is the only news available on AM radio. I refuse to listen to it and have for many years due to its political bias. In an area which has very limited AM radio coverage it is the scourge of the airwaves. They are broadcasting political bias, transgenderism, gay news and other assorted nonsense to those who do not want to hear garbage news on the airwaves. They need to be defunded or reformed BADLY for the sake of those that do not want this garbage on their radio.
Anonymous said: “The sad part is in a lot of our country NPR, which has taken over a lot of local stations, is the only news available on AM radio.”
I own a retreat in a very rural part of the country. Hardly anyone there is dependant on AM radio for news. There are virtually no areas that do not have internet access by means of cell signal, satellite, or cable, and most of those also have TV network delivery by one or more of those means. Secondly, cessation of Federal NPR subsidy would most likely cause the demise of NPR, after which, assuming a market actually exists, some other AM radio provider would move in to take its place. What you mention is either a self-resolving problem, or is not one at all.
Taxpayer support is one issue. Another is that NPR does not cover the news — or rather, it only covers News favorable to one political party. For example the Trump Russia Conspiracy Theory was covered in detail from the perspective of untrustworthy Adam Schiff. They totally ignored the Hunter Biden laptop story and would not air any information about COVID coming from a lab leak. Yet another issue is that NPR is utterly boring, constantly harping on “victims” and woke causes. Who can listen to that, other than true believers? And yet another issue is that without government support and the support of large corporations and nonprofits, NPR would not survive in the market. It’s really unfortunate, NPR used to be wonderful. In fact, I used to work at an NPR station, long ago.
Turley accuses NPR of being biased. This is rich coming from someone who endlessly writes partisan blather to defend the worst person ever to occupy the White House–someone who cheated his way into office, someone who refused to leave when voted out but, instead, attempted an insurrection. Turley works for Fox–who got sued to the tune of almost $1 billion for lying about a voting machine company’s product–but NPR is the bad guy. The real goal of today’s little piece of trash is to try to create the illusion that non pro-Turmp media (I won’t call them “conservative” because they really aren’t) should be taken seriously. Turley tries to create the case that non pro-Trump media shouldn’t report his endless lying, disrespect of our legal system by insulting judges, prosecutors and their families, sexual assault and defamation of E. Jean Carroll, his deference to Proud Boys, 3 percenters, White Supremacists, Neo-Nazis, Boogaloo Boys and other degenerate, payoffs to women, stealing classified documents and starting an insurrection because that would be biased. Turley throws out the claim that NPR is biased, as if it is an established fact. No–it’s news. It’s news when a presidential candidate has this baggage. Non pro-Trump media are supposed to pretend that Trump, his lying, his incomptence, his criminal behavior and everything else are OK. If they don’t–they’re biased. No. They are not. The fact is, Trump is uniquely bad–a uniquely bad person, a uniquely incompetent president, someone uniquely unfit and uniquely dissimilar to every other person who held the office and/or ran for this office. The various criminal prosecutions and civil cases against him are not the result of selective prosecution or driven by politics. Trump is uniquely bad, and the chickens have finally come home to roost. And, sadly, he is now dragging down the entire Republican Party–they are all in on the Big Lie. That, too, is unique, and NOT OK.
Take your meds. Then find a sane person and take theirs. Your BS regurgitations are boring and lies. We know what idiots like jopy reid and the msnbcnnbcnpr crew are told to think, we know it is bs, and we pity people like you that feel the urge to repost it here.
GIGO.
Stay in your blue state. No sane person wants you anywhere near their state, let alone county, let alone neighborhood. Stay in your own Blue Zone with your daily dose of MSNBC brainwashing. People like you should no longer be free to move to Red States! Keep out! No one sane wants to be around you lunatic commie nutcases.
GiGi – where are you getting your history from? Donald Trump DID leave the White House on Janaury 19, 2021. A more pertinent question is whether Joe Biden (or the real President, whoever that is), will leave the White House if Donald Trump gets more than 270 electoral votes. I suspect that some advanced Leftist thinkers will say that Trump is disqualified from taking residence in the White House due to his “insurrrection” on 1/6/21. Demo’s will try to find enough Republican votes in the House to try to disqualify Trump under Art XIV.
The ‘Nihilist Pugnacious & Ribald’ Network is the closest definition I could discern for the fools who occupy the offices at the morass of NPR. They preach from their tree of deceit spreading its roots and choking out all other trees of actual facts, singing Tyrannical songs with pride to their benevolent leaders, while wishing the reprobates would see the light of their superior pathway to the future. This organization needs to take the journey of the Dodo Bird!!
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META came out at $38 – it’s $500 now.
You are absolutely right.
Truth Social less than $26 right now, so this must be the bargain of the century.
I suggest you mortgage the house, take the kids college fund, and put everything in DJT.
You should be a (real)billionaire by next week.
Not sure how I feel about government funding news. Yet at the same time I am not pleased with the outright bias and lack of caring from NPR either. At some point the tide will turn and then the Republicans can defund NPR if they so choose.
I wonder how NPR will react if they get defunded due to a lack of diversity.
Of course super PACS and corporate PACS are tax exempt and they are the ones after NPR. Dark money groups can be tax exempt and there are the ones who push for tax breaks for the 1% and corporation’s. Are you mad at them too Turley? At least Public Radio pays taxes.
The singular American failure is the judicial branch, with emphasis on the Supreme Court.
NPR must have been struck down at the time of the passage of the Communications Act of 1934 and the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, both of which are unconstitutional.
NPR must have been sued for flagrant fraud and the illegal acquisition and expenditure of public funds and taxes.
NPR must have been sued for illegally competing against private property-free enterprises operating in the free markets of the private sector.
The free press reports on the government; the free press can never be part and parcel of the government, which is oxymoronic.
NPR is counterintuitive, antithetical, and unconstitutional.
America enjoys the freedom of the press, not the governmental funding and control of the press.
No branch of government has any rationale or legal basis to operate as a private enterprise in the free markets of the private sector.
Congress has no power to tax for or fund NPR.
Congress has the power to tax for and fund ONLY debt, defense, and general Welfare (i.e. security and basic infrastructure), or all well proceed.
Congress has the power to regulate only money, commerce, and land and naval Forces.
Congress has no power to tax for any purpose it pleases.
______________________________________________________________
“…[Congress] are not to lay taxes ad libitum for any purpose they please;…”
“The laying of taxes is the power, and the general welfare the purpose for which the power is to be exercised. They [Congress] are not to lay taxes ad libitum for any purpose they please; but only to pay the debts or provide for the welfare of the Union. In like manner, they are not to do anything they please to provide for the general welfare [i.e. security and basic infrastructure] but only to lay taxes for that purpose.”
– Thomas Jefferson
I took up residence for business purposes in a somewhat rural part of a Southern State in the mid-1980s. I was a little nervous about having to rely on only local stations for news and then happily realized that there was NPR. But I was soon disabused as well as disappointed when it turned out that their news seemed primarily focused on simply emphasizing negative ideas about then-President Reagan. Reading about what’s going on with NPR nowadays seems spot-on, but they’ve been up to this sort of thing since at least the mid-1980s.
You accepted alms for the poor, public assistance, welfare, governmental charity, communist redistribution of wealth, and social engineering.
That makes you a communist.
Americans engage in freedom and free enterprise in the free markets of the private sector through self-reliance.
Americans are free to conduct charitable endeavors and provide charity.
Americans are free to voluntarily give everything they own away if that is what they choose.
The American government under the Constitution has no power to provide charity, compete against free enterprises, deny any constitutional rights, freedoms, privileges, and immunities, or tax for and compel Americans to help, assist, or provide “charity” to any individuals or organizations related to any particular pursuit, endeavor, or effort.
Spot on… I remember NPR running defense for Bill Clinton with Monica. Numerous commentators justify lying about the affair, and completely downplaying lying under oath.
I oppose federally subsiding Info wars.
Of Course I oppose federally subsidizing NPR.
I oppose government subsidizing ANYTHING.
People should make the choices in their lives based on THEIR values and the REAL cost of the choices they make.
The money governmetn spends is not free is comes from us and from the economy.
Government spending is just people in Washington or state capitals deciding for us things we can decide perfectly well for ourselves.
Would the leftists in our federal government fund say, the Heritage Foundation? I don’t think so. Why then does NPR get a dime from the taxpayer?
Double dip.
Seriously, the pathetic shell games wealthy dems play with this sort of thing – pfft (and just yesterday I stated that I have always regarded NPR as the White Pfft and Yawn Olympics; it’s there to make people who are asleep feel better about themselves, and perhaps a tiny bit superior to others. This goes for modern, very specifically *modern*, for the idiots among us, PBS, too, but at least they fund themselves through annoying coercion).
NPR has only publicly quadrupled down on the fact that they are boring, sleep-inducing Pravda. I find in the negative things to sympathize about this, the modern left can go **** itself. Anyone that still ascribes to their lunacy deserves Antifa, and the fallout of that which is inevitable. Hint: the rest of us have better guns, and if they don’t relent we will use them. And in the united States, that is legal.
Enjoy being ashamed in the future just as people overseas hide their affiliations with the National Front; YOU, leftists, are the same, not modern Republicans or Independents; and we are not going to ever, ever forget. And we sure as s*** aren’t going to let you take our country from us. Go blow, you petulant and privileged children.
Indeed, in 1791, Madison declared that Congress had an obligation to improve the “circulation of newspapers through the entire body of the people” and sponsored the Post Office Act of 1791, which offered newspapers cut-rate prices for reaching subscribers.
Congress also implemented the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, stating that; “religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.”
What began 230+ years ago as necessary for an educated and informed citizenry, is well passed it’s purpose. The reasoning for ending the public funding of media is exactly the same for ending the public funding of education. These are firmly established institutions that should live or die based on free market performance standards. In the same way taxpayers should not pay to support MSNBC or FoxNews, they should not have to support schools that fail to meet objective standards and/or the values of the taxpayer.
Madison was wrong. Our founders are not perfect.
If you let the camels nose into the tent – the camel always follows.
A “Post Office Act of 1791” that included any governmental aspect, facet, or degree of participation in free enterprise, free markets, free press, or charity was entirely without legal basis, constituting unconstitutional tyranny, dictatorship, and fascism.
A governmental enterprise or operation must be conducted with unfettered equity, or freedom from bias or favoritism.
Lincoln allowed Karl Marx’s nose into the tent, and America is utterly communist to this day.