On November 9, a few days after Donald Trump won election to return to the White House, I wrote an article titled “Defunding NPR.” In the article, I presented reasons why “a spending cut that jumps out as among the most obvious for [Department of Government Efficiency leader Elon Musk] and the incoming Donald Trump administration to pursue is eliminating all US government support for National Public Radio (NPR) and its affiliated programing and radio stations.” Here is an update.
This week, Trump made it clear that he is on board with accomplishing this objective, while a subcommittee hearing in the United States House of Representatives indicated that a legislative effort may be forthcoming to bring about the defunding. In fact, Trump and the House subcommittee hearing expanded the target of defunding to include the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) that is focused on television in addition to the radio-focused NPR.
Asked on Tuesday about the hearing scheduled for the next day in the DOGE Subcommittee of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Trump offered that he would “love to” end US government funding for both NPR and PBS. In support of this conclusion, Trump quickly addressed some points I had discussed in my November article — that the government supported media organizations have been “very biased” and that the justification for government support was from a “different age” and no longer pertains as there are plenty other media now accessible by the American people.
The next day, even the title of the subcommittee hearing — “Anti-American Airwaves: Holding the heads of NPR and PBS Accountable” — portended trouble for the continued flow of US government money.
Subcommittee Chairman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), in her opening statement, declared:
For far too long, federal taxpayers have been forced to fund biased news. This needs to come to an end, and now.
Greene proceeded in her opening statement to tell leaders of NPR and PBS, Katherine Maher and Paula A. Kerger, respectively, who were present as hearing witnesses that they would both be “held accountable” and expected to explain “to the American people why they think they deserve Americans’ hard-earned money.”
Speaking with reporters after the hearing, Greene made clear she supports ending US government support for NPR and PBS, declaring that “we don’t need state-sponsored media in America today” and that once NPR and PBS are turned into private entities they can rely on donations and advertising money instead of support from the US government. Removing the US government funding, she further stated, is “widely supported” among Republicans in the House.
