NPR’s Left-Wing Slant Under Hill Panel’s Scrutiny, But CEO Is MIA

A House subcommittee on Wednesday mentioned the rising left-wing bias at National Public Radio, a taxpayer-funded information and options community.

The listening to stemmed from a debate sparked by a web based essay a month in the past within the Free Press by longtime NPR editor Uri Berliner, who alleged that the community was each extraordinarily biased and had deserted its dedication to high quality journalism. 

Berliner, who considers himself a liberal, wrote in his essay that NPR had grow to be deeply biased and that its information protection had alienated all however a slender, left-wing viewers. He stated the community wanted to vary or it could erode not solely its personal credibility, however the credibility of media generally.

Berliner resigned a few week after the controversy erupted.

NPR’s CEO, Katherine Maher, was requested to seem earlier than the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce on Wednesday. However, the day earlier than, she stated she couldn’t make it as a result of she didn’t have sufficient time to arrange. Maher additionally stated that she had an NPR board assembly to attend.

“NPR respects the Committee and its request, and has offered to testify on a date in the near future that works for the Committee and Maher,” an NPR spokesperson stated, according to Fox News.

A spokesperson for the committee responded to Maher’s absence.

“It speaks volumes that Ms. Maher has chosen not to appear [Wednesday] to answer for how her taxpayer-funded news outlet discriminates against the viewpoints of millions of Americans,” the committee spokesperson stated, in keeping with Fox News.

Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Va., who was to chair the listening to, stated in his opening assertion that the committee was investigating whether or not allegations of ideological bias and censorship of conservative and reasonable voices had been true.

Griffith stated that the subcommittee had invited Maher and that he hoped she would seem earlier than the committee within the close to future.

“The only reason not to appear in front of this committee at some point in the near future is if the allegations are both true and NPR doesn’t care,” the Virginia lawmaker stated.

Democrats on the committee had been dismissive of the listening to, and stated that allegations of NPR’s bias are baseless.

Rep. Kathy Castor, D-Fla., stated that NPR isn’t biased in any respect, that its reporting is effective and goal, and that Republicans take heed to an excessive amount of conservative media.

“Despite the clear benefits of public radio, Republicans have brought us here to discuss an alleged bias at NPR,” she stated. “Republicans say that NPR is biased against conservatives, but what they point to are examples of objective journalism. Disagreeing with reporting does not mean that the information is biased.”

The Florida Democrat steered that the committee ought to as a substitute concentrate on protecting the gun deaths of kids, making ready for the subsequent pandemic, what she stated had been the successes of the Biden administration-backed Inflation Reduction Act, or local weather change.

“Members may want to step out of the right-wing echo chambers, which have routinely peddled lies and conspiracy theories,” Castor stated.

Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., stated that it was essential to conduct oversight of NPR, which receives taxpayer {dollars}, and that there is no such thing as a free-speech proper to get taxpayers’ cash to fund a media group.

“It is a fundamental principle under the First Amendment for news agencies to report on stories however they see fit,” she stated. “It is not, however, a fundamental principle for news organizations to receive public funding to express their viewpoint.”

McMorris Rodgers stated that the listening to was to be about discussing accusations from inside NPR that the information community is “actively censoring viewpoints” whereas taking taxpayer cash.

“Note for the record that we invited NPR CEO Ms. Maher to participate in today’s hearing,” McMorris Rodgers stated. “She declined to do so, stating that she needed more time to prepare and that she had a conflict with an NPR board meeting.”

The Washington congresswoman stated that it was “especially troubling” that a corporation funded with taxpayer cash has “mocked, ridiculed, and attacked the people who fund their organization.”

McMorris Rodgers pointed to the Berliner essay and stated that it was telling that NPR declined to report tales that might assist President Donald Trump within the 2020 election, regardless of “how true and important to the public conversation they were.”

She cited how Berliner wrote that an editor at NPR thought the information community shouldn’t report on the Hunter Biden laptop computer story within the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election as a result of it might assist Trump.

It was additionally revealing, she stated, that Berliner stated he discovered 87 editors registered as Democrats, however no Republicans.

“Today’s NPR has strayed from their core mission,” McMorris Rodgers stated. “When an entity that was created by Congress and receives taxpayer funding strays from their core mission, there needs to be accountability and oversight.”

Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., stated that the listening to was a waste of time. He stated that it was unfair for Republicans on the committee to name within the NPR CEO to testify, provided that she solely had per week to arrange and that she had a board assembly scheduled on the identical time.

The New Jersey Democrat additionally stated that, provided that Maher had solely been the CEO for six weeks, she shouldn’t should reply for a “former, disgruntled employee,” referring to Berliner.

Pallone stated that NPR performs a “vital role in democracy” in offering info. He stated that public funding for the community goes to support largely native programming that gives the final line of protection in “news deserts.”

He stated that as a substitute of investigating the publicly funded NPR, Congress ought to examine “the vast landscape of right-wing media” that he stated promotes “misinformation.”

Pallone stated that investigating NPR hearkens again to the times of “McCarthyism.”

Howard Husock, a senior fellow on the American Enterprise Institute who had served on the board of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, testified that he needed to remind the committee of the place public broadcasting started. 

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is the group that oversees NPR.

It started with the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, he stated, and of specific relevance is the mandate from Congress that “public broadcasting from radio and television should, it says, be ‘responsive to the interests of people both in particular localities and throughout the United States.’”

Husock stated that that’s the place he has considerations about NPR. He pointed to a ballot by the Pew Research Center that discovered “87% of NPR listeners describe themselves as Democrats, 12% as Republicans.”

He stated that contrasts sharply with industrial tv newscasts, “which are close to 50/50.”

The AEI fellow stated that NPR doesn’t act like a “national taxpayer-supported service.”

NPR’s viewers shouldn’t be the product of restricted attain, he stated, “instead, it produces a product which seems not to attract a broad swath of America.”

That’s largely due to the collection of tales NPR studies. He steered that altering the outdated Public Broadcasting Act would assist alleviate the disaster of the decline of native newspapers.

Husock stated that direct funding doesn’t account for a lot of the taxpayer {dollars} NPR receives. Instead, “31% of revenues” come from charges charged to native associates. That means, he stated, that federal cash despatched by way of grants to native NPR associates is recycled again to the nationwide community.

Media Research Center Executive Editor Tim Graham stated in his testimony that bias at NPR isn’t a current phenomenon and that reporters on the community have deliberately tried, as an illustration, to derail Republican presidents’ Supreme Court nominees going again a long time and that they continued that with the 2018 nomination of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

“In March, between ‘Morning Edition’ and ‘Fresh Air,’ Kavanaugh accuser Christine Blasey Ford was granted an hour of taxpayer-funded airtime to reiterate her unproven charges of teenage sexual assault,” Graham stated.

Yet, the community has did not cowl tales which may harm Democrats. He cited the case of Hunter Biden’s laptop computer, the salacious contents of which had been dismissed by many “so-called mainstream media” shops as “Russian disinformation.”

Graham stated that many media shops had been biased when it got here to protecting that story, however “NPR stood out.” NPR’s public editor dismissed the story as a “politically driven event,” though the community gave intensive protection to Blasey Ford’s unproven allegations.

The MRC editor pointed to different examples of what he known as bias on the community.

“NPR covered the [former House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi-picked House Jan. 6 Committee live for every minute, and then it couldn’t do a two-minute story on the Biden impeachment inquiry,” he stated.

NPR has additionally “encouraged chaos and disorder in society,” Graham stated:

In 2020, NPR’s weblog “Code Switch,” with the slogan “Race in Your Face,” posted an interview selling a brand new e book titled “In Defense of Looting.” On “The NPR Politics Podcast” in 2021, they promoted a e book by Yale regulation professor Elizabeth Hinton saying that protests towards coverage shouldn’t be known as riots; they need to be known as “rebellions.”

On NPR’s “Fresh Air” on April 15, 2023, the film critic John Powers praised the film “How to Blow Up a Pipeline,” hailing it as “hugely timely.” You know, that is what NPR is doing.

That’s what NPR is doing with taxpayer {dollars}, Graham stated, “getting behind looting, rioting, and blowing up pipelines. And yet, NPR represents the Republicans as uniquely extreme.”