The Media Research Center’s war on public broadcasting continued with a July 12 post by Alex Christy complaining that a PBS show wouldn’t blindly support President Trump’s cuts to the State Department the way he does:
The cast of PBS News Hour came together on Friday to decry the “shameful” nature of that day’s layoffs at the State Department. While New York Times columnist David Brooks and Washington Post associate editor Jonathan Capehart would claim the move would negatively impact U.S. foreign policy, their reasons for doing so were not convincing.
[…]There’s a reason why presidents of both parties have increasingly run foreign policy out of the White House and the National Security Council and relied on presidential advisors and special envoys. It is because the NSC is viewed as leaner and less bureaucratically lethargic than State. Meanwhile, the layoffs include 1,107 civil servants and 246 Foreign Service Officers. To put that in context, State had roughly 13,000 career civil servants and 14,000 FSOs.
[…]Reportedly, most of the layoffs fell on departments that dealt with things like migration and climate change, so the idea that the U.S. just lost lots of specialized expertise is not quite accurate, but more importantly, when was the last time the State Department had a major accomplishment? Even during Trump’s first term, the Abraham Accords was largely a product of the White House.
Tim Graham whined that NPR and PBS covered someone he doesn’t like in a July 13 post demanding that they be defunded for doing so:
One easy way to see how NPR and PBS are taxpayer-funded Democrat Party platforms is to witness their recent interviews with the chair of the Democratic National Committee, Ken Martin. Neither turned to touchy internal issues, specifically the brief career of David Hogg as a DNC leader. The questions seemed geared to this: How do we win? Will Senate Republicans consider this on the defunding proposal this week?
Meanwhile, Graham never criticizes the softball interviews of conservatives on Fox News and other right-wing media. Jorge Bonilla scoffed at the idea that defunding NPR and PBS might have real-life consequences:
Today’s installment of legacy media types suggesting that PEOPLLLLE WILL DIEEEEEE as a result of Congress rescinding funding for leftwing propaganda outlets PBS and NPR features CBS’s Margaret Brennan, who in a grotesque twist finds a way to tie imagined rescission-induced deaths to the assassination attempt against President Donald Trump at Butler, PA.
[…]Of course, this isn’t the first time that someone at the beleaguered CBS News suggests people will die as a result of defunding PBS and NPR. Our own Tim Graham caught them doing the same thing a few weeks ago. As Tim notes, that lie is predicated upon the assumption that the unicorn local PBS/NRP affiliates are the only game in town (they’re not):
[…]As we noted earlier, Brennan pivoted off of the Secret Service failures at Butler, PA, and subsequent funding to address these. Shame on her for trying to leverage what was thousands of an inch and a providential head turn away from being a national tragedy (and worse) into a plea for PBS/NPR funding.
Bonilla offered no proof that such an outcome will not happen. Graham returned to rant about NPR interviewing yet another person he doesn’t like in a July 15 post:
When Nancy Pelosi stacks a committee against Donald Trump, NPR treats that committee as the most newsworthy committee ever. By contrast, House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer can’t count on NPR to notice his committee’s investigations at all.
So it was mildly shocking that NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday devoted a three-minute puff piece on the new ranking Democrat on Comer’s committee. A search of NPR’s website revealed Comer has received three soundbites all year in 2025. This story was headlined “As Democrats spoil for a fight, a new face in the House is leading them on oversight.”
Graham’s sneering at Pelosi is presumably referring to the Capitol riot hearings; he has forgotten that she rejected the original Republican nominees to the committee because some of then for being pro-insurrection, and rather than submit suitable nominees, then-House minority leader Kevin McCarthy refused to participate at all. Rather than admit that inconvenient fact, Graham whined that “NPR is a megaphone and a bully pulpit for Democrats and has largely ignored the GOP chairman.” We don’t recall any MRC outrage at how Fox News and right-wing media ignore Democrats except to bash them.
Speaking of softball interviews in right-wing media, a July 16 post touted one involving the MRC’s nepo-baby leader:
MRC president David Bozell appeared on Newsmax’s Finnerty in the 8 pm hour on Tuesday night to discuss Congress rescinding $1.1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds PBS and NPR.
Host Rob Finnerty began by pointing out NPR “famously posted that they would not be covering the Hunter Biden story in 2020 because, quote, ‘we don’t want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories.’ That tweet is still on their account.” He noted we pounced on that statement by NPR “news” executive Terence Samuel at the time, and “Nobody does this stuff better than you guys.”
Bozell laid out the case against continued billions for atrocious left-wing propaganda:
[…]It’s just left wing propaganda from start to finish,” he concluded. “And even at this critical moment for them, with their $1.2 billion at stake, they can’t seem to get the memo.”
No indication was made that Finnerty ever asked Bozell a question that challenged his partisan narrative. — of course, peddlinbg right-wing propaganda unchallenged is why Bozell appeared on Newsmax in the first place. Instead, the article touted how “Finnerty made a great point about who is NOT subsidized.” That would be his employer.