“This is NPR.” That tagline has long been used for National Public Radio, but what it is remains remarkably in doubt. NPR remains something of a curiosity. It is a state-subsidized media outlet in a country that rejects state media. It is a site that routinely pitches for its sponsors while insisting that it does not have commercials. That confusion may be on the way to a final resolution after the election. NPR is about to have a reckoning with precisely what it is and what it represents.
While I once appeared regularly on NPR, I grew more critical of the outlet as it became overtly political in its coverage and intolerant of opposing views.
Even after a respected editor, Uri Berliner, wrote a scathing account of the political bias at NPR, the outlet has doubled down on its one-sided coverage and commentary. Indeed, while tacking aggressively to the left and openly supporting narratives (including some false stories) from Democratic sources, NPR has dismissed the criticism. When many of us called on NPR to pick a more politically neutral CEO, it instead picked NPR CEO Katherine Maher, who was previously criticized for her strident political views.
Some have long questioned the federal government’s subsidization of a media organization. NPR itself continues to maintain that “federal funding is essential” to its work. However, this country has long rejected state media models as undermining democratic values.
This funding is likely more important given NPR’s cratering audience and revenue. NPR’s audience has been declining for years. As a result, NPR has been forced to make deep staff cuts.
Ironically, NPR has one of the least diverse audiences. Its audience is overwhelmingly white, liberal, and more affluent than the rest of the country. Yet, while serving fewer and fewer people, it still expects most of the country to subsidize its programming.
Many of us have argued that NPR should compete with other radio companies in the free market. Notably, some Democratic members pushed to get Fox News dropped by cable carriers despite not being subsidized and ranking as the most-watched cable news network. (For full disclosure, I am a legal analyst at Fox.)
NPR and PBS are facing calls to remove the subsidy at long last. However, at the same time, pressure is coming from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). FCC Chair Brendan Carr is inquiring about NPR’s claim that it does not do commercial advertising.
Many of us have noticed that NPR has ramped up its sponsor statements with taglines about the products or firm’s clientele. Carr wrote, “I am concerned that NPR and PBS broadcasts could be violating federal law by airing commercials. In particular, it is possible that NPR and PBS member stations are broadcasting underwriting announcements that cross the line into prohibited commercial advertisements.”
The support for noncommercial radio and television stations fell under different regulations. It is hard to see the sponsor acknowledgments not as commercial advertising. It is common for for-profit outlets to have hosts read commercial sponsors.
Noncommercial educational broadcast stations-or NCEs are prohibited under Section399B of the Communications Act from airing commercials or other promotional announcements on behalf of for-profit entities.
What is interesting is that NPR stresses that the “NPR way” is actually better to reach consumers:
“Across platforms, NPR sponsor messages are governed by slightly different regulations, but the guiding spirit is the same: guidelines are less about what’s “allowed” and more about the approach that works best for brands to craft sponsor recognition messages that connect with people in ‘the NPR way.'”
It is common for law firms or companies to have hosts herald their work in given areas. It is also common to have product references.
The thrust of NPR’s pitch to advertisers is that this is a different type of pitch to attract more customers. However, the federal government long ignored the obvious commercial advertisement.
There is little discernible difference between NPR and competitors beyond pretense when it comes to bias or promotions. What is striking is how NPR’s shrinking audience righteously opposes any effort to withdraw public subsidies. While dismissing the values or views of half the country, they expect those citizens to support its programming. What would the reaction be if Congress ordered the same subsidy for more popular competitors like Fox Radio?
I would oppose a subsidy for Fox as I do NPR. Each outlet should depend on its viewership for support. Notably, many liberal outlets continue to maintain their biased coverage despite falling ratings and revenues. The Washington Post has had to again lay off employees and has lost roughly half of its readership.
After being called in to right the ship, Washington Post publisher and CEO William Lewis delivered a truth bomb in the middle of the newsroom by telling the staff, “Let’s not sugarcoat it…We are losing large amounts of money. Your audience has halved in recent years. People are not reading your stuff. Right? I can’t sugarcoat it anymore.”
Nevertheless, writers at the LA Times and other outlets continue to argue against balanced coverage. They would rather lose readers and revenue than their bias. So be it. These outlets have every right to offer their own slanted viewpoints or coverage. They do not have a right to a federal subsidy to insulate them from the response of consumers.
It is time to establish a bright-line rule against government subsidies for favored media outlets. “This is NPR” but it is not who we should be as a nation.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”
This column appeared on Fox.com
NPR has been spreading bias content for decades and, a leftist agenda.
Taxpayers should not fund this organization.
It was really disappointing, early in the Obama years, to hear NPR’s coverage of events change from clearly liberal but generally objective to increasingly shrill and one-sided. Bob Edwards was solo host on “Morning Edition” for years, and I enjoyed listening to him until he was summarily bounced in favor of a tag-team approach. “All Things Considered” in the afternoon was just that, and though the political coverage leaned left it wasn’t obnoxiously so, the show presented all kinds of quirky, insteresting stuff that no one else covered. I kept listening to it, at least in the morning, to know what the other side was thinking, right up until 2015 or so when their attacks on Republicans in general and Trump in particular became increasingly unhinged and unbearable.
But now, yes, for sure, it’s long past time to cut off the federal subsidy and let NPR sink or swim on listener contributions and advertising.
Let us also consider with the downfall of the USAID money laundering operation for the deep apparatchik state , that operations like National Pravda Radio were paid organs of the interwebs Network CIA front to push the apparatchik version of “events”. The corruption is deep and now not so murky. Remember what Deep Throat said of Nixon’s transgressions “follow the money”. And here we are as NPR is every bit as controlled and manipulated by the expose of what USAID really is and what sinister doings they did with our tax dollars.
anonymous…anonymous…anonymous…and so on. PLEASE Prof. Turley, modernize your comment section and require specific names even if it’s Bugs Bunny or Daffy Duck. Scroll the comments and most of what we see are Anonymous posts.
I am a leftist, and NPR is not “left.” It’s neoliberal/corporatist, imperialist, and centrist. I commonly refer to it as “National Propaganda Radio.”
And yet it oddly pushes your leftist POV and that of the apparatchik state ad nauseum.
who can ever forget the great balanced unbiased objective pieces written by Daniel Schorr which appeared on NPR on Saturday mornings. okay okay I’ve pulled my tongue out of my cheek
Saturday afternoons NPR runs Latino USA. This past Saturday the entire program was devoted to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. talk about a free one-hour campaign contribution. I won’t hold my breath for the show to feature a conservative Latino
And I’d wager funded by USAID via Interwebs Network ( CIA front).
This has been a no brainer for years.
There is no need to discus details about NPR itself – they are irrelevant.
Cut off federal funding. They can advertise, solicit donations – operate however they wish. They can broadcast whatever they want.
They can succeed or fail as the market directs.
Nor is this limited to NPR
Government should not participate or subsidize the economy.
No Arts grants, no research grants. no clean energy subsidies.
In the free market people make choices that reflect THEIR values.
There is no need for those in governemnt to nudge us or pick some values over others.
I do not care if NPR is violating a bunch of idiotic regulations.
Just cut off govenment funding – it is a tiny portion of NPR’s funding anymore anyway.
So many of the discussions here hinge on the flase presumption that Governemnt should be funding things.
The debate over academia would be confined to academia, parents and students – but for govenrment education funding.
Harvard can discriminate against or for asians and jews. It can run the college however it wishes – if government is not subsidizing education.
Schools can have or bad drag queen story hour, they can trans the toddlers or bar trans teachers as they please – if government was not paying for education.
Free markets deliver to us all whatever it is that we value.
The government has no money. It merely spends monies borrowed from future taxpayers!
Less than 2% of the NPR annual budget derives from government funding. Is this a topic worth spending time and effort on, huffing and puffing and trying to blow down the house of NPR. Your primary interest seems to be misleading and propagandizing. WHAT DO YOU SAY TO THIS?
https://www.westernjournal.com/fact-check-much-pbs-npr-revenue-comes-government-funding/
USAID i’d wager funneled millions more into NPR’s propaganda machine. Cut off all taxpayer funding and let it sink or swim on the merits.
NPR is puny in comparison to what Kanada’s CBC broadcaster receives. Trudeau’s Liberal government upped CBC’s taxpayer subsidy to C$1.2 Billion dollars every year. Adding insult to taxpayer injury, the Kanadian government through the CRTC imposes a 35% Canadian content rule on all media, tv shows, music, then forcibly makes these organizations contribute funds to the Kanada media fund.
It’s time to end tax-payer funding to NPR/PBS because the internet and cable have made them relics. Today, they are just another format. Plenty of consumers fund them, thus, tax funds are simply another revenue stream and not essential to their existence. Mission accomplished.
No more American Pravda! Get rid of this Democrat PsyOp that has moved FAR LEFT on the Communist Spectrum! The Main Stream Media does a great job of representing that end of the Spectrum and taxpayer supplemented propaganda is unnecessary, wasteful, and irritating. Most American Socialists know where to go to consume leftist dribble without the need for the other half to pay for it! Watch a few more commercials!!!!
puh-lease! The Democrats are not “left,” are certainly not “communists, and neither is NPR. It has become a mouthpiece for neoliberal corporatism, which is pretty right-wing, just not as right-wing as the GOP.
Thanks for the comedy routine.
Relics? You are beyond clueless sir. Really! Yes there are many other choices, but comparing APPLES to APPLES 🍎 — what American radio station can provide the breadth & depth of reporting that NPR brings to the airwaves?
NPR does more wokleism and leftist value pieces …it’s not worth the taxpayer money they are given. They are part of the whole USIAD money laundering scam and must go down with that corrupt entity !.
Channeling Cato the Elder: (Carthago delenda est) NPR must be destroyed.
I was so mad at Biden for letting prices of goods rise so much I voted for trump so he could impose tariffs and raise prices even higher. Trump is the greatest. If Biden can raise prices, trump can make them bigger. Yea trump go big. The biggest dufus is gonna be bigger.
And that is why you are anon, coward.
What irrelevant screed you have. Have you seen a therapist for your TDS, I humbly suggest you should.
When you voted for trump, did you want him to go to war for the Panama Canal?
Weren’t you all upset about war mongering?
The Chicom UOM agreement for preferential passage and access to the Panama canal with the Panamanian government will not be renewed. Trump won….again! Didn’t you say also that the Chinese government ripping off intellectual property, personal information and patents was a myth? See insider trading scam at Federal Reserve indictment yesterday?
Thanks for the comedic deflection. Your kung fu is weak my friend.
Now that the cartels have been designated terrorists, it means Mexico is harboring terrorists.
Its past time to send in the Marines and Seals.
Look at that Dennis.
You got your wish. A migrant concentration camp.
The worst of the criminal aliens will be kept in Gitmo.
Beahahahahahaha suck it Gigi!
* forget the 1A. Btw Oklahoma, you need to CAP education and remove free. In the future these actual 1A pretenders will use the education stipend as partial payment for their children’s education.
Aren’t you really objecting to NPR and PBS as advertisement for the DNC? It’s advertising, political donations by one and all but I may disagree with your speech but I’ll fight like hell to preserve it. Isn’t that the false refrain?
Take a look at the nations covered in the news. They’re a reflection of your new peers. 😂 Not so great anymore?
Bob Dylan song– how does it feel …
Back in the 1970s and 1980s, PBS was amazing and non-political. I used to watch the McNeil-Lehrer Report and they had the best reporting you could get because they were long-form reports not 2-minute, lop-sided blurbs. They also had great science programs like Nova, Connections, The Day the Universe Changed, etc. Their political coverage, epitomized by The McLaughlin Group, was neutral. They had great art programs like Masterpiece Theater. And my local station brought us All Creatures Great & Small as well as Dr. Who through the 8th doctor.
But they kept going more-and-more left-biased and by the late 1990s I gave up on them.
So you’re now a populist extremist who believes everything Trump says. Sweet.
Crybaby Loser ^^^
Yes. Trump’s speech is far better than leftist propaganda paid for by US citizens.
Sincerely, another former NPR and PSB listener.
Derp derp.
MosesZD,
You said it well. I stuck with them until 2016. I would turn on NPR and count backward….5…4…3…2…Trump.
I soon found other sources. I miss what they once did. So sad!
# Bill Moyers, masterpiece theater,
QUIT subsidizing NPR!!! Total leftist outlet. NO MORE!!!!!!!!!!
But but but, the Leftists say that’s not true. But it is. Someone referred to it as “American Pravda.” Spot on.
Back in the 1970s and 1980s, PBS was amazing and non-political. I used to watch the McNeil-Lehrer Report and they had the best reporting you could get because they were long-form reports not 2-minute, lop-sided blurbs. They also had great science programs like Nova, Connections, The Day the Universe Changed, etc. Their political coverage, epitomized by The McLaughlin Group, was neutral. They had great art programs like Masterpiece Theater. And my local station brought us All Creatures Great & Small as well as Dr. Who through the 8th doctor.
But they kept going more-and-more left-biased and by the late 1990s I gave up on them.
Had they actually been “great,” they would have been picked up by larger outlets.
Non sequitur.
If praising a “news, information and entertainment” backwater is a non sequitur, it is outright fraud.
For those of you in Rio Linda, had some portion of programing related to NPR approximated “great,” it would have been acquired and subsumed by the larger MSM or cable media.
Nothing on NPR, PBS et al. was “great,” critically acclaimed in the main, or otherwise widely popular.
I use to watch Discovery and the History Channel alot. I noticed that when the Chocolate Jesus Obama rose to power, the history channel no longer reported the same history and the story lines changed and the Discovery Channel, a once serious scientific based platform was now airing shows about Mermaids and Megladon as a reality. Propaganda through and through, what’s sadder is there was a population of people that believed that crap.