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Is It Finally Time To Defund NPR After Journalist Suspended for Revealing the Truth About Bias?

April 17, 2024

Many conservatives for many years have wanted to end the government funding of National Public Radio.

Recently resurfaced tweets from NPR CEO Katherine Maher combined with the suspension of an NPR editor after he called out the outlet’s leftwing bias has renewed the idea that maybe taxpayers shouldn’t be funding it anymore.

It Was Never a Secret That NPR Has Liberal Bias

NPR head Maher has a history of expressing support for racial reparations and climate change ideology – fitting for her new gig.

Conservative activist Christopher Rufo found these old tweets, something that was mentioned in the New York Times.

Maher’s past social media posts are newsworthy. Veteran NPR reporter Uri Berliner wrote an article for The Free Press that accused his longtime outlet of having a “liberal bent” and a lack of diversity in viewpoints.

Berliner, who worked at NPR for 25 years, was suspended for five days not long after.

He explored how NPR had run stories about Hunter Biden’s controversial laptop in 2020 being reported as “Russian disinformation” and the Covid-19 Wuhan lab origin theory being treated as a conspiracy theory as examples where no one is held accountable.

Berliner Speaks About Bias

“It is one thing to swing and miss on a major story,” Berliner writes. “Unfortunately, it happens. You follow the wrong leads, you get misled by sources you trusted, you’re emotionally invested in a narrative, and bits of circumstantial evidence never add up. It’s bad to blow a big story.”

“What’s worse is to pretend it never happened, to move on with no mea culpas, no self-reflection,” he continued. “Especially when you expect high standards of transparency from public figures and institutions, but don’t practice those standards yourself. That’s what shatters trust and engenders cynicism about the media.”

Berliner said that NPR was hostage to all the typical leftwing tropes.

“Race and identity became paramount in nearly every aspect of the workplace,” he wrote. “Journalists were required to ask everyone we interviewed their race, gender, and ethnicity (among other questions), and had to enter it in a centralized tracking system. We were given unconscious bias training sessions. A growing DEI staff offered regular meetings imploring us to ‘start talking about race.’ Monthly dialogues were offered for ‘women of color’ and ‘men of color.’ Nonbinary people of color were included, too.”

Defund NPR Now

Maher responded to Berliner’s criticisms in a statement, saying, “In America everyone is entitled to free speech as a private citizen. What matters is NPR’s work and my commitment as its CEO: public service, editorial independence, and the mission to serve all of the American public. NPR is independent, beholden to no party, and without commercial interests.”

Yeah right.

It’s true, everyone is entitled to free speech.

But NPR is not entitled to American tax dollars to fund only the narrow views they hold.

NPR should have been defunded a long time ago. But there’s still no time like the present.

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