At the same time President Donald Trump is officially asking the Republican-led Congress to end public funding for PBS and NPR, MRC is encouraging the president to not back down.
“Taxpayers should not be forced to subsidize a media entity that has outlived its original purpose and refuses to operate in a transparent manner,” MRC wrote in a letter to the President.
The Daily Wire, which first reported the MRC letter, said MRC sees an opportunity during Trump’s second term for the GOP to finally take action.
“It may be the last, best chance taxpayers will ever have to unburden themselves from these leftist propaganda outlets once and for all,” Dan Schneider, MRC vice president, told the Wire for its story.
MRC’s push for action comes at the same time the White House has drafted a memo to Congress for lawmakers to consider when they return April 28 from a recess.
An unhappy story from liberal NPR about its future said Congress will have a 45-day window from that date for the House and Senate to either approve the rescission or allow the funding to be restored.
Both public news outlets are overseen and partially funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which NPR describes as an “independent nonprofit organization” that gets approximately a half-billion dollars annually from taxpayers.
Tim Graham, of the Media Research Center, tells AFN both PBS and NPR could have attempted to be “fair and balanced” with the new administration but predictably did not make that choice.
“They have doubled down. They have been nasty. They have been aggressive,” Graham says of their biased news coverage after Nov. 5.
On behalf of MRC, Graham attended a March 26 congressional hearing in which Republican lawmakers grilled the far-left bosses at PBS and NPR. He also watched congressional staffers bring in a six-foot stack of MRC articles and research papers that documented decades of bias.
The lengthy history of liberal bias was dismissed this week by liberal CNN, where media reporter Brian Stelter attempted to defend the public networks as fair and unbiased.
In a live CNN segment Tuesday, which was also documented by MRC, Stelter said the White House had unfairly complained about "transgender Americans" who were featured on PBS and NPR.
MRC, however, pointed out that was a dishonest attempt to defend them. The examples cited by the White House included a drag queen named "Lil' Hot Mess," who appeared on a PBS children's program. The segment from NPR was about "genderqueer" dinosaur enthusiasts.
Beyond the biased news coverage, Graham says PBS and NPR have outlived their usefulness. PBS began with children’s programs, such as “Sesame Street." It first aired in 1969.
“They can't seem to get their brains around the idea that we don't have just three channels on our TV anymore,” Graham says.
