Today’s NPR – Not Worth One Public Nickel

National Public Radio (NPR) “receives 50 to 60 million dollars in federal funding each year,” according to NPR reports. Last week, in congressional hearings, NPR declared they are “non-partisan,” required by law, then admitted they plainly are not. What does that admission mean?

Start with a back story: Last month, a “veteran NPR editor” wrote a “stunning tell-all essay” announcing that NPR is systematically biased. His “bombshell offered an inside look at NPR’s drift from being ‘a bit to the left’ in 2011 to current form …open-minded … no longer exists.”

From failing to cover the legally and politically significant discovery of profoundly disturbing crimes, public Biden corruption, and duplicity found on “the Hunter Biden laptop,” to dismissing the laptop as “Russian propaganda,” to accepting serial falsehoods from anti-Trump conspiracists like Adam Schiff (D-CA), to pushing Clinton-funded “Russia collusion” narratives, NPR lied.

Moreover, as the NPR editor noted, the outlet spread lies likely affecting the 2020 election; they covered up crimes for which they had evidence. For example, they affirmatively disavowed and sought to discredit those suggesting China’s Wuhan lab originated COVID, while pushing untested vaccines when credible medical doctors doubted the untested MRNA versions.

All this came out last week, when NPR’s leadership was grilled by Congress on the need for money when other outlets get nothing, raise from the public, and … US debt nears $37 trillion.

The answers given were duplicitous and evasive and revealed what most Americans suspected or knew. NPR, once a balanced outlet focused on facts, non-political features, and entertainment, is now an arm of the Progressive, leftist movement, which in turn is reflexively anti-Trump.

How else can you say it? The majority of NPR’s content, stories, and features are overtly political, no longer non-partisan, rather aiming to shape, recast, mislead – with little subtlety – the public, influencing young and malleable minds toward Progressive, historically Marxist doctrine.

Any objective content analysis done by a non-Marxist academic or private evaluator would come to the same conclusion. What started with relative objectivity has wholly lost the bead.

The core question before Congress, at this time, is whether recovery of the concept of government funding for domestic media in an America plainly founded on private media is still right.

Seldom has departure from non-partisan standards been more blatant, the basis for declining federal funds been more valid, and those responsible for loss of integrity been more insolent, unapologetic, and – so it seems – sure they are inoculated from future accountability.

Perhaps it is time to bring NPR, like USAID, Education, and IRS, to heel. For too long, average Americans – feeling powerless and poor – have been forced to foot the bill and fund propaganda. 

For too long, those who once promoted classical music, a slice of real news, and human interest stories have been redirected to publicly funded, soothingly curated, but pure Marxist mush. Moreover, as we flip through channels, realizing the NPR corruption, we have had to pay for it.

That should stop. Accountability, including anything pretending to be news, should be consistent with our Constitution and returned to the private sector. Public education, math, reading, classics, and music are good; public indoctrination is rubbish, not worth one public nickel.

Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (2018), and is National Spokesman for AMAC. Robert Charles has also just released an uplifting new book, “Cherish America: Stories of Courage, Character, and Kindness” (Tower Publishing, 2024).