Will The GOP Finally End PBS and NPR Subsidies?

Written by Robert Knight

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is in the news again.

Kermit the Frog, the iconic “Sesame Street” Muppet, will give the 2025 commencement address at the University of Maryland.

Kermit’s appearance will coincide with the 65th anniversary of the graduation of UM’s Jim Henson, who was awarded a degree in home economics in 1960. In a press release, “Kermit” said he would keep the address upbeat, even though, as he put it, “It’s hard to be green.”

It’s also hard to defend a half-billion dollars annually in taxpayer subsidies for a system that often serves as a megaphone for the radical left. As Thomas Jefferson wrote in The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom,

“To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical.”

The public broadcasters have aired good and even excellent programming, such as PBS’s “Rick Steves’ Europe” and “Great Performances” and National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered,” but these should have no trouble attracting support from the claimed millions of viewers and listeners.

Last week, CPB executives were in the hot seat for the second time in a year to fend off charges of political bias and woke management.

Last April, longtime NPR senior editor Uri Berliner wrote an essay for The Free Press about the network’s rampant leftism. Among other things, he said he counted 87 Democrats on the news staff and zero Republicans.

In a U.S. House hearing Wednesday, “Anti-American Airwaves,” members of Congress grilled NPR CEO Katherine Maher and PBS President Paula Kerger over the networks’ leftward tilt.

Laurence Jarvik, a prominent critic of public broadcasting and federal arts funding who wrote the book “PBS: Behind the Screen,” said that after watching the hours-long hearing, he had renewed hope that Congress finally would pull the plug.

“We tried in the 1990s, but the Republicans saved public broadcasting. President Bill Clinton was willing to zero it out, but Republicans said no. A guy came in from Alaska to testify that only public broadcasting could reach remote villages with emergency alerts. This is nonsense. They could find another way.

“This past week, the Democrats again played the Alaska card. Apparently, they dusted off the same script.”

Mr. Jarvik accused public broadcasting officials of serving up “30 years of unimpeded debauchery, propaganda and patronage for Democrats, and some Republicans. They always have a few token Republicans to provide cover.”

Politicians can reward donors by giving them plum seats on the boards of CPB, the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities, he noted.

As usual, defenders of the public subsidies said it costs each taxpayer a pittance to provide 1% of NPR’s budget and 15% of PBS’s budget.

“They say it’s only pennies, but public broadcasting serves as a lobby for more government spending,” Mr. Jarvik said. “For example, they relentlessly promoted climate extremism and the Green New Deal, which spawned the Inflation Reduction Act. That monstrosity sent billions in taxpayer subsidies to leftist groups.”

U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Georgia Republican, opened the hearing of the Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee on delivering on government efficiency by showing images from PBS of a drag queen shimmying for children. Democrats weren’t impressed.

U.S. Representative Stephen Lynch, Massachusetts Democrat, accused Ms. Greene of “political theater to hold a hearing to go after the likes of Elmo and Cookie Monster and Arthur the Aardvark.”

Ridiculing opponents by linking them to cartoon characters can be quite effective. I call this the “Tinky Winky” ploy. It makes any critic sound like a monster.

Decades ago, The Washington Post reported that a creator of PBS’s animated toddler show “Teletubbies” acknowledged that Tinky Winky, a purple boy with an upside-down triangle on his head and a purse, was deliberately cast as gay.

The Post story was excerpted by a newsletter from an organization founded by the Rev. Jerry Falwell. Right on cue, the liberal media began portraying Falwell as an unbalanced obsessive who “even went after Tinky Winky.”

Likewise, PBS critics are accused of wanting to barbecue poor old Big Bird. At one point, the “Sesame Street” star earned an estimated $1 billion in product licensing, more than enough to fund PBS and NPR.

By the way, in May 2019, the PBS children’s show “Arthur” treated children to a gay wedding scene in “Mr. Ratburn and the Special Someone.”

During the hearing, Ms. Maher and Ms. Kerger insisted that their networks were unbiased despite the mountains of evidence presented.

Ms. Maher said she regretted making several social media posts before her NPR tenure began in March 2024. One tweet from May 2020 said America was “addicted to white supremacy.”

Another said, “I mean, sure, looting is counterproductive. But it’s hard to be mad about protests not prioritizing the private property of a system of oppression.”

Another called President Trump a “deranged racist sociopath.”

It’s hard to crawl back into the Good Ship Fairness after a deep dive like that.

As Ms. Maher sinks in Washington’s swamp, maybe Kermit the Frog can throw her a life jacket, all the while singing, “Why are there so many songs about rainbows?”