The CEO of NPR Made the Best Case for Defunding It
The notion that NPR can somehow become unbiased is about as believable as the IRS sending you a fruit basket to commend you for filing your taxes.
Federal funding for NPR is no more, at least for now.
Early Friday morning, the House approved the rescissions package, which, among other things, clawed back over $1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The vote capped off a long battle (decades-long, if you're counting the times lawmakers promised to do it but didn't follow through). But it's a battle that, especially this time around, didn't need to happen—because NPR should have rejected the federal funds from the outset. No one made a better argument for that than the CEO of the nonprofit, Katherine Maher.
"As far as the accusations that we're biased, I would stand up and say, 'Please show me a story that concerns you,'" she said Wednesday on CNN, "because we want to know and we want to bring that conversation back to our newsroom." She echoed that sentiment on a different show on the same network, saying that "we are, of course, a nonpartisan organization."
Her desire for introspection is nice. But the notion that there is a universe in which NPR is not biased, or that it can somehow become unbiased, is about as believable as the IRS sending you a fruit basket to commend you for filing your taxes.
Speaking of taxes, Maher's implication—that NPR is deserving of taxpayer funds if it can remain sufficiently neutral—is self-defeating. Of course NPR is biased. All sentient beings are. It's part of the human experience. Until we invent an all-knowing, perfectly judicious robot, every newsroom will be tinged with bias: whether in word choice, or what to cover, or what not to cover, or what to feature most prominently, or what to bury, or any number of other decisions. In invoking bias as a test with which to evaluate NPR's fitness for taxpayer dollars, Maher inadvertently makes the case against receiving those funds.
Just how biased is NPR? In a 2024 essay for The Free Press, Uri Berliner, then a senior editor on NPR's business desk, wrote that things went off the rails after the 2016 election, at which point the outlet decided to focus more on hurting President Donald Trump than on actually seeking the truth. Oftentimes, the truth may very well hurt Trump.
But not always. "The timeless journalistic instinct of following a hot story lead was being squelched," wrote Berliner of the Hunter Biden laptop saga, which called into question his foreign connections and possible influence peddling. "During a meeting with colleagues, I listened as one of NPR's best and most fair-minded journalists said it was good we weren't following the laptop story because it could help Trump."
Those who listen to or read NPR likely know this isn't an isolated instance. In December 2020, for example, the outlet called the theory that COVID-19 leaked from a lab "a baseless conspiracy" for which "there is zero evidence." Though a conclusive answer remains elusive, it turns out there is, in fact, quite a bit of compelling evidence for the lab leak theory, as Reason has covered in detail. That theory was politically inconvenient to the U.S. public health apparatus when it emerged. But journalism is supposed to hold the government to account, not recycle its talking points—even when the truth offends a preferred narrative or political party.
That's not to assign malice. Confirmation bias is a powerful drug that intoxicates people of all political persuasions. The assertion that NPR is immune to its effects, however, is beyond belief. Research by AllSides—a company that conducts blind surveys in which participants rate the bias of news content not knowing the source—has repeatedly found that NPR's online news leans left. (AllSides does not evaluate its live radio broadcasts, which, in this author's view, are frequently even more progressive.)
NPR is obviously not alone on the left. And there are plenty of outlets that skew rightward: Fox News, The Washington Examiner, Newsmax, National Review, and more. All of these companies have the right to air their perspectives. But none are entitled to be funded by the public, much of which does not care to consume what these organizations put out into the world. I don't want people forced to fund any outlet, including Reason, even though my takes are always perfect and airtight.
Indeed, those who are upset that NPR is losing funding might picture what reaction they would have to the CEO of Fox News pitching taxpayers on why the company is entitled to public dollars. Would those carrying an NPR tote entertain the idea?
