Politicians and those who have worked in the public broadcasting industry have criticized NPR, PBS, and VOA, claiming that they promote leftist propaganda on the taxpayer’s dime.
On Inauguration Day, PBS News posted on X a video clip of Telsa CEO Elon Musk with the caption, “Billionaire Elon Musk gave what appeared to be a fascist salute Monday while making a speech at the post-inauguration celebration for President Donald Trump at the Capital One Arena."
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., shared the PBS News post on X the same day, responding, “As the Chairwoman of the Oversight Subcommittee on DOGE, I look forward to PBS @NewsHour coming before my committee and explaining why lying and spreading propaganda to serve the Democrat party and attack Republicans is a good use of taxpayer funds. We will be in touch soon.”
On Jan. 21st, Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, posted on X, “Free people aren’t forced to pay for state-funded media. Stop making Americans fund leftist propaganda. Defund PBS & NPR.”
PBS has a longer history of being criticized for biased coverage.
Michael Pack, president of Manifold Productions, Inc., told Just the News on Jan. 14th that his Iraq War documentary, The Last 600 Meters, was principally funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The corporation provides funding to both PBS and NPR. However, after initially accepting the documentary for air, PBS declined to air it for being “too pro-military,” Pack said.
The documentary just shows the Najaf and Fallujah “battles from the soldiers’ point of view,” he explained. “I was really shocked.”
Pack, who was CEO of the U.S. Agency for Global Media during Trump’s first term, asked again last fall if PBS would air the documentary for the 20th anniversary of the battles, but they “still didn’t want to.”
Last April, Uri Berliner, an NPR senior editor, resigned following a five-day suspension from the outlet he had worked at for 25 years. The suspension came after Berliner authored an essay that was critical of the news outlet's liberal bias. He blasted NPR’s coverage of the Russia collusion hoax and ignoring the Hunter Biden laptop.
“In October 2020, the New York Post published the explosive report about the laptop Hunter Biden abandoned at a Delaware computer shop containing emails about his sordid business dealings. With the election only weeks away, NPR turned a blind eye,” Berliner wrote.
“When the essential facts of the Post’s reporting were confirmed and the emails verified independently about a year and a half later, we could have fessed up to our misjudgment. But, like Russia collusion, we didn’t make the hard choice of transparency.”
The essay also reopened broader criticism of the organization, including criticism against the network’s CEO Katherine Maher, who has made controversial posts on social media. She has described Trump as “racist,” and appeared to downplay protests after the death of George Floyd in 2020.
Trump also called for defunding NPR last April.
A bill was introduced in Congress last April that would have defunded NPR. However, it did not make it out of committee.
Likewise, VOA has also had alleged issues of bias. Only days after Hamas’ murderous attack on Israel in October 2023, VOA issued guidance to reporters and editors that said the assault could be referred to as a terrorist attack, but to “avoid calling Hamas and its members terrorists, except in quotes,” according to internal emails.
Years earlier, as Trump began his first term in the White House, VOA reporters and employees shared social media posts that were politically biased against him and obscene.
Read much more at:
https://justthenews.com/accountability/media/public-funding-stake-npr-pbs-voa-eyed-defunding-reform-amid-alleged-reporting
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