I love NPR. That’s the problem.
Slant I agree with doesn’t help me
Jeffrey Denny
So, Trump Republicans want to strip National Public Radio of public funding because, they declare, it’s liberal-biased.
They say taxpayers shouldn’t have to fund political propaganda.
NPR and its 1,000 member stations across America get a shocking $3 million from the government, 1% of their $300 million budget, around what Elon Musk spent to reelect Trump.
Meanwhile, Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill will protect Fox’s corporate tax breaks. Given Fox’s $9 billion in operating expenses last year that it can write off, and the $200 million of its $787 million Dominion lawsuit settlement fees it hopes to, Fox takes over 3,000 times more from taxpayers than NPR. (Yes, tax breaks are considered government spending.)
“For far too long, federal taxpayers have been forced to fund biased news,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene thundered. “This needs to come to an end, and it needs to come to an end now.” Ok. End government spending on the hilariously biased Fox News.
For that matter, cancel the Heritage Foundation tax exemption, since the group feeds right-wing biased news, like its attacks on NPR. At the 20% corporate tax rate, this would save taxpayers about $20 million off its $100 million in revenues last year.
Heck, let’s also factor in the Trump White House budget of around $700 million last year. The whole administration is a biased news operation. It also outsources to Fox, the Corporation for Trump Broadcasting.
We could go on and on — left and right, batting a political Pickleball — about taxpayer funding of media we disagree with.
Picking on NPR is just another Pez from the bottomless dispenser of empty treats the GOP tosses to MAGAs to gobble up.
And of course, Republicans don’t just call NPR left-leaning. It’s “Anti-American Airwaves,” as the House oversight committee grilling of NPR and PBS put it.
But as an NPR fan who believes there’s no better, smarter, more informative, professional, and important real journalism, I have to admit: I often eye-roll the programming because I agree with it.
I don’t need my beliefs confirmed like a knuckle-dragger hooting at a Fox interview with Stephen Miller about rounding up immigrants.
I prefer intelligent, thoughtful, insightful discussion from all angles to learn more. And maybe enrich what I think to serve as a better citizen. Most of all, feeding me what I believe is boring.
Case in point:
My NPR affiliate in Washington, DC, WAMU, broadcasts a show from WBUR Boston called “On Point.” It’s hosted by the award-winning and accomplished radio journalist Meghna Chakrabarti. She’s an Oregon State grad with master’s degrees from Harvard and Boston University.
Yesterday’s program was titled, “The $1 trillion defense budget: The One Big Beautiful Bill Act will increase defense spending to over $1 trillion for the first time in U.S. history. But will it actually improve U.S. national security?”
Of course not. At least not on the program.
Chakrabarti’s main guest was Lindsay Koshgarian from the Institute for Policy Studies, which declares, “We support movements to resist fascism and win transformational progressive change.”
Per Koshgarian’s bio, “her work on federal budget priorities highlights the militarization of the federal budget and the corresponding lack of investment in people and the planet.” She was an economic development researcher at UMass, has a BA from Penn, and a UCLA master’s in public policy.
Koshgarian never served in the military, worked at the Pentagon, or covered it as a reporter or industry expert. She presented no direct involvement or experience with military matters to back her powerful yet one-sided political and policy views.
She soap-boxed at great length and repetitively the usual military-is-evil collegiate bromides without interruption by Chakrabarti with the balanced professional journalist, “yeah, but.”
The “also featured” guest was retired U.S. Army Col. Larry Wilkerson, former chief aide to the late Secretary of State Colin Powell. He also criticized the defense budget request.
Iwould’ve preferred if Chakrabarti had at least one guest with a balancing perspective.
Someone on the right or even neutral who understood the criticism of the Trump military windup, but could walk through the rationale, even just for the supporting facts. Not battle Koshgarian like Dan Aykroyd’s “Jane, you ignorant slut,” but have a reasonable, informed discussion and debate.
For instance, as the Supreme Court was considering Dobbs and eventually overruled Roe, an interview program hosted two women attorneys, one pro-choice, the other anti-, discussing each legal angle. It was level-headed, measured, informative, and fascinating. And reinforced for me why the Dobbs decision was so wrong.
Maybe hard-core Republicans and Trump officials refuse to waste their media prep on trying to convince liberals that Trump is God’s gift to America. It’s easier to get on Fox where interviewers nod like Bobbleheads in a seismic tremor.
Also, not every NPR program is left-biased in choice of story, angle, or guests, even if departing insiders say so. Maybe I’m experiencing Baader-Meinhof frequency illusion, the cognitive bias where you believe something is happening more often than it is because you just realized it.
And of course, the Trumpsreich lies through and beyond their teeth about NPR to feed MAGA confirmation bias. They know MAGAs will never “do their research” and actually listen to NPR (like I keep tabs on Fox) instead of relying on Trump sources they agree with.
But c’mon, NPR, defenders and listeners: We all know you lean left, and proudly.
That’s why NPR is #1 in Subarus all over America. Just this morning, June 20, the top story online was “What children in poverty could lose from the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’.”
But NPR’s mission is “to create a more informed public — one challenged and invigorated by a deeper understanding and appreciation of events, ideas, and cultures.” That demands more balanced news angles and voices, if not to save NPR’s funding, then to make it more diverse, inclusive … and interesting. Even choirs get sick of the same sermons.
Jeffrey Denny is a Washington writer.
