NPR and PBS were in the spotlight at a House hearing this morning before the Delivering on Government Efficiency subcommittee, as Republican grilled the CEOs of the public broadcasting outlets over alleged biases.
The hearing, titled Anti-American Airwaves: Holding the Heads of NPR and PBS Accountable, signaled a tough federal government funding fight ahead for the broadcasters. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which distributes the funds, is receiving $535 million in the current fiscal year, but about 70% of the outlay goes to public media stations.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) questioned the need for public media, given that so many listeners and viewers get their information via podcasts and on the internet. She accused PBS and NPR of becoming “radical left wing echo chambers for a narrow audience of mostly wealthy white urban liberals and progressives who generally look down on and judge rural America.”
She singled out the WNET children’s show Let’s Learn for featuring a drag queen on a show in 2021. PBS has said that the show was not funded or distributed by the network.
“If I had walked in my living room or one of my children’s bedrooms and had seen this child predator and this monster targeting my children, I would become unglued, and that is now most parents feel all over this country,” Greene said.
Greene also cited a 2015 PBS Frontline documentary, Growing Up Trans, and claimed that PBS was “one of the founders of the trans child abuse industry.” Frontline documentaries, which run in primetime, are aimed at adult audiences, and spotlight issues and topics at the center of public debate.
Democrats, however, deployed a strategy of mocking some of the Republican attacks, while highlighting the benefit of PBS’s children’s programming, NPR’s newsgathering and the necessity of the outlets in rural areas.
Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA) posed a series of questions to PBS CEO Paula Kerger, in an effort to puncture holes in the argument that the network has an “extreme liberal agenda.”
Garcia brought up Bert and Ernie on Sesame Street. “Now these two guys actually live together. They’re friends. They’re supportive of each other. Now that might be triggering to our chairwoman and some on those on this committee. Mr. Kerger, are Bert and Ernie part of an extreme homosexual agenda?”
“No,” Kerger answered.
Garcia added, “Now I’m obviously using some humor here, but the fact that we’re here today talking about defunding public television is actually not funny at a time where we can’t agree on basic facts, and while the press is under attack, we need public media like PBS and NPR more than ever.”
More to come.
