Hearing Wrap Up: DOGE Subcommittee Holds NPR and PBS Executives Accountable for Leftist Propaganda Funded by Taxpayer Dollars

WASHINGTON—Today, the Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency (DOGE) held a hearing on “Anti-American Airwaves: Holding the heads of NPR and PBS Accountable.” At the hearing, members held Katherine Maher, the Chief Executive Officer and President of National Public Radio (NPR), and Paula Kerger, Chief Executive Officer and President for Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), publicly accountable for the demonstrably biased news coverage they produce for an increasingly narrow and elitist audience. Republican members concluded these media entities should not continue to be funded by the broad taxpaying public.

Key Takeaways:

NPR and PBS spend millions of federal taxpayer dollars annually and consistently push a left-leaning narrative, catering to a narrow, ideologically aligned audience rather than the diverse public they claim to serve.

• During her opening statement, Subcommittee Chairwoman Majorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) stated: “The audience of public radio and television is declining. And I know this because I represent a rural district where farmers listen to podcasts and internet-based news while they drive their tractors. At the same time, NPR and PBS have increasingly become radical, Left-wing echo chambers for a narrow audience of mostly wealthy, white, urban liberals and progressives, who generally look down on and judge rural America.”

• Michael Gonzalez—Angeles T. Arredondo E Pluribus Unum Senior Fellow at the Heritage Foundation—testified: “[NPR, PBS and the other state broadcasters] have shown scorn for conservative views on a consistent basis, and have done so safe in the knowledge that their friends in Congress, of both parties, will save their bacon year in and year out. And indeed, this has so far always been the case since they were created.”

PBS and NPR should not be subsidized at the taxpayers’ expense.

• Michael Gonzalez testified: “NPR and PBS have violated the public trust, and have therefore forsaken their claim on the public money […] There is also the fact that this funding is a regressive tax. It is an obnoxious forced wealth transfer from working families to the most affluent pockets of society, which constitute the lion’s share of NPR’s and PBS’s audience.”

• Subcommittee Chairwoman Greene concluded in her closing statement: “After listening to what we’ve heard today, we will be calling for the complete and total defund and dismantling of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Here’s how it works: in America every single day, private businesses operate on their own without government funding. We believe that you all can hate us on your own dime.”

• Oversight and Government Reform Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) stated, “I’ve lost confidence in public radio. I don’t think, Madam Chair, they should get a penny.”

Member Highlights:

DOGE Subcommittee Chairwoman Marjorie Taylor Greene pointed out NPR CEO Katherine Maher’s concerning statements and raised questions about her objectivity.

Rep. Greene: “Miss Maher, your public statements and social media posts reflect left wing ideology and blatant opposition to free speech […] Let’s walk through some of the public, some of your statements, so the public can understand your personal views.

“You said your fellow Americans, just selected Donald Trump as president again this past November. You called him a deranged racist and sociopath. You posted on X that America is addicted to white supremacy. You’ve publicly chastised using the phrase boy and girl, which you said erases the language for non-binary people.

“Ms. Maher, the federal funding that your outlet receives comes from all American taxpayer dollars, not just from your viewers who support such statements as these. Let me inform you that your federal funding is also paid for by the other half of the country, the 77 million Americans who voted for President Trump, someone you call a deranged racist sociopath.

“Ms. Maher, many find your pro-censorship and anti-free speech views more concerning than your politics. The only speech you like seems to be speech that you agree with. In 2021, you called the First Amendment the number one challenge in American journalism, because it makes it hard to crack down on bad information. You said in a TED Talk that our reverence for the truth might be a distraction. You’ve also expressed support for deplatforming individuals you view as fascist.”

Chairman James Comer detailed NPR’s disinformation and propaganda, including COVID origins, the Russia Collusion Hoax, and the investigation of Joe Biden and his involvement in his family’s corrupt business schemes.

Chairman Comer: “NPR gets federal funds. I have a problem with that, because if people in Alaska, if all they have is public radio, then all they know is what these headlines say. And [these headlines] were wrong about COVID-19… Wrong Russian Collusion… Wrong about the Hunter Biden laptop.

“And then there’s a story about me. And part of what we went through in this committee during the Biden investigation – which ended with Joe Biden’s last act as president of the U.S. pardoning his entire family preemptively for an 11-year period, which just so happened to be the 11-year period that this committee investigated the Bidens […] NPR reported a lot about how there was no evidence of any wrongdoing and things that just weren’t true. In fact, there’s a story in NPR: ‘Lawmaker leading Hunter Biden House investigation accused of owning a shell company.’ Well, that’s me! […] That story that NPR wrote about me at the height of the Biden investigation, when you all were disputing every aspect of our investigation that is 100% factual. We have hundreds of pages of evidence, hundreds of pages of bank records, hundreds of pages of emails. Do you remember the story that that NPR wrote about me?”

Rep. Brandon Gill (R-Texas) exposed NPR’s bias and woke content after its CEO Katherine Maher repeatedly claimed at the hearing that NPR’s “reporting” is unbiased.

Rep. Gill: “A few years ago, NPR educated America about ‘the whole community of gender queer dinosaur enthusiasts.’ Do you think that that’s an appropriate use of tax dollars?”

Ms. Maher: “I was not at NPR at the time.”

Rep. Gill: “That’s not the question, though. Do you think that’s an appropriate use of our tax dollars?”

Ms. Maher: “The tax dollars that we use are able to provide a wide range…”

Rep. Gill: “I’ll take that as a yes, you do believe that that’s appropriate.”

Rep. William Timmons (R-S.C.) pointed out that the DOGE Subcommittee is conducting the war on waste to address our nation’s $36 trillion debt. He emphasized that all programs will be reviewed, and NPR and PBS’s bias should not be paid for by taxpayers.

Rep. Timmons: “We don’t want to shut down NPR and PBS, but we have $36 trillion in debt, and we have run a $1.8 trillion annual deficit. We are scouring all government spending, not just Democrat priorities, but Republican priorities too. We’re going to be going through the defense budget. We’re going to be making sure that we are spending our taxpayer dollars wisely because we have an existential threat. We cannot continue down this path financially [,,,] So, if our debt is part of the reason we’re here, I think another part of the reason why we’re here is to reevaluate your role in the government’s use of taxpayer dollars […] We are not living in 1967 and the Internet has changed our society. We increased social connectedness and there are various options for people to get news […] That’s probably half the problem. The other half is your perceived bias and your content moderation and the manner in which you are violating journalistic integrity.”

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