Washington – A House Republican who pressed the government efficiency efforts of the Trump administration asked to dismantle and disburse the public transmission system of the nation after a contentious audience on Wednesday with the bosses of PBS and NPR.
“We believe that everyone can hate us in their own penny,” said Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Together with the statement of President Donald Trump on Tuesday that “he would love” to see federal funds cut, the public transmission system perhaps faces the greatest threat to its existence, since it was first established in 1967. The broadcasters obtain approximately half a billion dollars in public money through the corporation for the public transmission.
Republicans have often complained that PBS and NPR news programming leans to the left, but efforts to reduce or eliminate funds are generally fading because legislators want to protect their local stations, 336 of them only for PBS, with those in rural areas that depend most about taxpayers’ money.
The audiences in the name of the new administration are one of the multiple front in which Trump and his allies are aggressively challenging and, in some cases, sanctioning the US media, which the president has been very critical for years. Just this week, he denounced The Atlantic repeatedly to publish texts of the signal messaging application between the high -ranking defense that plans a military attack.
A succession of Republican legislators complained on Wednesday for the alleged bias, particularly NPR stations, making it clear that it was not a problem that disappeared in silence.
Kentucky James Eating representative said that, when he was a young farmer, he frequently listened to NPR transmissions on his tractor, since it was often his only option. But now, he has podcasts and other things to listen.
“I don’t even recognize the station,” he said. “They are not news. It seems that it is propaganda. I feel it is misinformation every time I listen to NPR.”
Greene showed an image of what she called a “Drag Queen” that appeared in a PBS program aimed at children and complained about documentaries with transgender people. PBS executive director, Paula Kerger, said the “Drag Queen” reference was about something by mistake on the New York PBS station website and never in the air. Transgender people appeared as part of adult programming that reflected the experiences of different Americans, he said.
Democrats characterized the audience as a distraction of more important issues, such as this week’s revelation that an Atlantic journalist was included in a text chain of Trump administration officials detailing an American military strike in Yemen. “If the shame was still one thing, this audience would be shameful,” said Massachusetts representative Stephen Lynch.
Some Democrats tested comedy. California’s representative, Robert García, asked if the “Sesame Street” red character, “is now or has he been a member of the Communist Party?”
“It’s a puppet,” Kerger said. “But not”.
Transmission leaders recognized mistakes.
NPR president, Katherine Maher, said the radio network was wrong to rule out what was on the laptop of Hunter biden as a non -history. After the Republicans in the Committee repeatedly referred to them, Maher said he regretted having published some anti-trump tweets before starting working for NPR.
Although he says he is not responsible for the editorial content, Maher detailed NPR efforts to ensure that a variety of political views are represented. The NPR weekly audience decreased from 60 million to 42 million between 2020 and 2024, according to internal documents published by the New York Times, although Maher said on Wednesday that these numbers have been presented last year.
“I don’t think we are politically biased,” said Maher. “We are a non -biased organization.”
Uri Berliner, a former NPR editor who resigned last year after complaining that the media had become too unilateral, wrote in Free Press on Wednesday that NPR should no longer accept the money of taxpayers so that he can “leave the public of his mission statement and embrace the progressive.”
“Don’t try to hide what everyone already knows,” he wrote.
The members of the Republican committee said NPR cited Wednesday’s audience in fundraising appeals and asked Maher if the system would survive without public money. “It would be incredibly harmful to the national public radio system,” he said.
Kerger emphasized the service that PBS provides to local communities, particularly with their educational programming for children, and said she is concerned about the future of her smallest stations.
“This,” he said, “is an existential moment for them.”
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David Bauder writes about the AP media. Follow it in http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social
