House Republicans scrutinized National Public Radio over whether its reporting is biased, even as it is funded by taxpayer money.
At a Wednesday hearing, House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee of Investigations Chair Morgan Griffith in his opening remarks said he “would prefer NPR to return to its original mission under the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, to provide objectivity and balance in coverage of controversial subjects.”
“To me that means representing many different opinions in its newsgathering,” said Griffith, R-Va.
He pointed to NPR’s coverage of pro-Palestine protests erupting on college campuses across the country, including Salt Lake City’s University of Utah, “has been borderline encouraging, nostalgic even, evoking the good old days of protesting Vietnam.”
For Griffith, the hearing was about examining NPR’s funding in light of its perceived left-leaning slant. This move comes after a former editor spoke out against the public radio for suppressing conservative perspectives.
The subcommittee had requested NPR CEO Katherine Maher to testify on Wednesday, but Maher declined to attend. An NPR spokesperson told Fox News that Maher can’t appear before Congress because of a scheduled meeting with the board of directors a year in advance, but she was open to testify on a future date.
The hearing didn’t include any current or former employees, nor did it include Uri Berliner, the ex-editor at NPR who wrote a scathing essay against the broadcaster in The Free Press last month. NPR promptly rejected Berliner’s assessment.
“It’s true NPR has always had a liberal bent, but during most of my tenure here, an open-minded, curious culture prevailed,” Berliner wrote. “We were nerdy, but not knee-jerk, activist, or scolding. In recent years, however, that has changed. Today, those who listen to NPR or read its coverage online find something different: the distilled worldview of a very small segment of the U.S. population.”
Berliner, who was suspended following publication of his article, chose to then resign. He wrote about NPR’s coverage of the pandemic, Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, and Hunter Biden’s laptop.
NPR garnered more than 30 million weekly listeners in 2017 but by 2022, it lost 6.6 million of this audience, and Griffith attributes this shrinkage to the broadcaster’s decision to frame much of its reporting through progressive ideologies.
“What was intended to be a media organization that brought together millions of Americans across geographic, socioeconomic, and ideological boundaries to discuss life, the arts, and culture, has turned into what appears to be a progressive propaganda purveyor,” he said. “Using our taxpayer dollars, no less.”
NPR claims less than 1% of its annual operating budget comes from the federal government. But, as Griffith noted, “local radio stations may use any portion of their federal grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, to pay NPR’s membership dues and programming fees. That figure is roughly 30 percent of NPR’s revenue.”
Conservatives, including former President Donald Trump, who recently called the public radio outlet a “total scam,” have floated the idea of defunding NPR for years.
Although Berliner in his essay isn’t supportive of defunding the broadcaster, lawmakers like Reps. Jim Banks, R-Ind., and Claudia Tenney, R-N.Y., have proposed taking away NPR’s federal funding. But these efforts will unlikely pass Congress because of a Democratic-controlled Senate and White House.
Democratic Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., pushed back on these threats and emphasized the need for local journalism amid a tumultuous time for the industry that has forced many newsrooms to close their doors or opt for layoffs, according to The National Desk.
“These Republican attacks are unfortunate considering that public media plays an important role in all of our communities and should be supported now more than ever,” said Pallone.
Rep. Kathy Castor, D-Fla., the ranking member of the subcommittee, also said public radio has “clear benefits,” despite NPR becoming a GOP target.
“Republicans say NPR is biased against conservatives, but what they point to are examples of objective journalism,” she said. “Disagreeing with reporting does not mean the information is biased.”
One of the four witnesses, Tim Graham, the executive editor of Newsbusters.org, said he is “the regular audience” for NPR, adding, “It’s very hard to describe it as objective,” per Fox News.
“So, I think there should be a role in the public radio system to represent all the public. You can sit here and talk about how it does, I’ll tell you it does not. It’s not serving me,” he said. “It’s harming me, it’s smearing me. And a lot of Republicans and conservatives feel that way.”
Other witnesses included Howard Husock, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who previously served on the board of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting; James Erwin, federal affairs manager for telecommunications at Americans for Tax Reform; and Craig Aaron, co-CEO of The Free Press.