The Media Research Center’s Joseph Vazquez spent a July 16 post whining that public broadcasting was being defended:
The New York Times leadership actually attempted to sell readers on the dimwitted notion that stripping tax dollars from leftist public media is just as nutty as defunding police departments. This is the same newspaper that largely rationalized nixing police funding across a number of stories over the past few years.
The Times editorial board went to bat for lefty outlets NPR and PBS, which are on the verge of possibly getting $1.1 billion cut from their mothership Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). The newspaper had the utter audacity to argue in a June 16 editorial that continuing literal government-funded propaganda is a founding ideal:
[…]The newspaper even admitted that “Republicans complain, not always wrongly, that public media reflects left-leaning assumptions and biases.” “Not always wrongly?” What does that even mean in this context? Like this is rare? Instead of hourly?
Vazquez offered no evidence that non-right-wing views appear “hourly” on public broadcasting. Instead, he tried to play the conflict-of-interest card:
What The Times didn’t tell readers is that its own lefty podcast The Daily, is widely distributed by American Public Media (APM), which receives funding from — *checks notes* — the CPB! Conflict of interest much?
[…]The newspaper has a clear financial incentive for keeping the public media gravy train rolling, which makes its latest editorial failing to disclose this factoid look even worse in retrospect. Also missing from the editorial was any disclosure that one of the newspaper’s top columnists, the insufferable anti-Trump fanatic David Brooks, co-contributes to one of PBS News Hour’s signature segments, Brooks & Capehart.
Vazquez offered no proof that the Times’ podcast is “lefty.
Curtis Houck served up his own whining fit that the head of NPR defended her operation, under the headline “Defund Them Now,” as if merely defending its work must result in NPR being defunded:
With $1 billion in taxpayer funding on the line as part of a rescission package the Senate could vote on late Wednesday, PBS and NPR have teamed with their liberal media allies to throw the proverbial kitchen sink at trying to maintain the farce of non-partisan, robust, and unique local programming that saves lives. That was the message Wednesday morning from NPR CEO Katherine Maher on CNN’s Situation Room.
Co-host Wolf Blitzer and Pamela Brown were more than happy to help Maher, openly rooting for NPR and, amid their softball questions, letting her spew lies about NPR’s biases, funding, and then vile smears about rural Americans.
When the head of PBS similarly defended the operation she runs, Houck raged a few hours later:
With so much of the national political media being manufactured through narratives and public relations campaigns, it wasn’t a shock that PBS CEO Paula Kerger surfaced on CNN Wednesday afternoon for an interview soaked in elitist condescension and lies, just hours after Katherine Maher of NPR did the same. Both appeared as $1 billion in government funding is on the chopping block ahead of a possible Senate vote.
The worst part was at the end with Kerger claiming she doesn’t see any basis in “an argument that we are somehow biased” and the despicable lie that critics “often struggle to come up with examples of what they’re talking about” when all she sees is the “excellence of journalism” on display.
This was triggered by CNN News Central co-host Boris Sanchez’s final question that disingenuously framed concerns (read: facts) about PBS’s bias as surrounding their children’s shows…even though we’ve pointed out that is horrifically biased as well.
As if Houck is not taking part in pushing a narrative that bashes public broadcasting through a well-financed PR campaign. Houck went on to rehash his employer’s so-called study that “PBS’s Washington Week hits Republicans with 92 percent negative coverage from April 4 to June 27, 2025″ — but failed to disclose that the ‘study” was rigged to censor any mention of “straightforward” coverage, which dishonestly skewed the numbers.
Justine Brooke Murray added to the whining in a July 17 video:
It takes a lot of confidence for NPR CEO Katherine Maher to testify in front of Congress and claim with a straight face that her “trustworthy” taxpayer-subsidized outlet “serves all Americans” in a “non-partisan fashion.”
That’s a funny way to describe cheering on the Chinese Communist Party and justify looting and terrorism on behalf of left-wing radicals.
And who, exactly, is NPR serving when they broadcast mothers murdering their pre-born children?
If abortion is “murder,” why doesn’t Murray demand that every woman who has had one be imprisoned or executed? She never addresses that logical paradox.