Public broadcasting’s lobbyists and their television and radio clients huddled in a Washington hotel this week to chart an uncertain future. And who could blame them if they assumed the roar they heard outside came from a chainsaw-wielding Elon Musk, stalking the hotel a la Jack Nicholson in The Shining?
The noise, however, was a bus rented by the Media Research Center — a rolling billboard with “DEFUND PBS & NPR” splashed on the side. It circled Capitol Hill this week, reminding its denizens that this is the year to end what is an injustice on many levels: taxpayer funding of these outlets.
END THE CORPORATION FOR PUBLIC BROADCASTING
Of course, the broadcasting and lobbying executives at the 2025 Public Media Summit — the annual conference held by public broadcasting’s leading advocacy group, America’s Public Television Stations, at the Salamander Hotel Feb. 24 through 26 — probably saw no humor in the fact that the planets may finally be aligning against them.
Not only has Musk, who heads the Department of Government Efficiency, been very outspoken that public broadcasting’s more than half-a-billion-dollar annual public subsidy is a target as he seeks to reduce federal spending, but members of Congress are also readying several bills to axe NPR and PBS funding.
The head of the DOGE Subcommittee on the House, Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene (R-GA), has called on the leaders of PBS and NPR to testify sometime in March. At heart is not just the wasteful spending — it was revealed recently that NPR hosts make close to half a million dollars a year — but also that PBS and NPR are biased toward the Left.
Elon Musk recently posted on X, “Defund NPR. It should survive on its own.” The post included a video of NPR CEO Katherine Maher saying, “I think our reverence for the truth might have become a bit of a distraction that is preventing us from finding consensus and getting things done.”
Defund NPR. It should survive on its own.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 4, 2025
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It’s not just the irony of the CEO of a news organization brazenly spitting at the truth. That clip perfectly encapsulates the smug liberal mindset that DOGE and President Donald Trump have set out to destroy in Washington, D.C.
“As an organization that receives federal funds, both directly and indirectly through its member stations, NPR’s reporting should serve the entire public, not just a narrow slice of likeminded individuals and ideological interest groups,” Greene wrote in a letter to Maher. An almost identical letter went to PBS.
