Washington (AP) – A Republican from the Republican who to promote the government of the government of Trump called for a controversial hearing on Wednesday with the deposition and development of the nation’s public broadcasting system.
“We believe that they can all hate us on their own cent,” said Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
In conjunction with President Donald Trump’s explanation on Tuesday that he would “love” federal financing, the nation’s public broadcasting system with perhaps the greatest threat to its existence since its first foundation in 1967.
The Republicans have often grumbled that PBS and NPR -news programs were on the left, but the efforts to shorten or eliminate the financing are usually faded because legislators want to protect their local stations – 336 on their own, whereby those in rural areas are most dependent on tax money.
The hearings in the name of the novel administration are one of several fronts in which Trump and its allies challenge aggressively, and in some cases the American media sanctioned, which the president has been criticizing for years.
This week alone, he repeated the Atlantic to publish texts from the signal messaging app under high-ranking defense officers who are planning a military attack. Trump also took measures against the Voice of America and other media financed by the government and excluded the Associated Press from the White House press pool and other events.
A problem that doesn’t disappear quietly
A episode of GOP legislators complained bitterly about alleged bias, especially NPR stations, and made it clear that this was not a problem that disappeared quietly.
Kentucky Rep. James Comer said that as a youthful farmer he often listened to NPR programs on his tractor decades ago, as it was often his only option. But now he has to hear podcasts and other things.
“I don’t even recognize the station anymore,” said Comer. “There are no news. It feels like it is propaganda. I have the feeling that it is every time I hear NPR.”
Greene showed a picture of what she described as a “drag queen” that appeared in a PBS program that had geared towards children and complained about documentaries with transgender people. Paul Kerger, Managing Director of PBS, said in the reference “Drag Queen” it was about something that wrongly moved to the website of the New York PBS station and never in the air. The transgender people appeared as part of the adult programming that reflected the experiences of different Americans, she said.
The Democrats described the hearing as a distraction of more vital topics, such as the revelation of this week that a journalist from the Atlantic was included in a text chain of the Trump government who describes a US military strike in Yemen. “If shame were still one thing, this hearing would be shameful,” said Stephen Lynch, Rep. Massachusetts.
Some Democrats tried comedy. California MP Robert Garcia asked if the Red “Sesame Street” character “Is Elmo now or was he ever a member of the Communist Party?”
“He is a puppet,” said Kerger. “But no.”
Add to some earlier mistakes
The circulars recognized errors.
NPR President Katherine Maher said that the radio network was wrong, what was wrong on Hunter Bidens laptop as a non-story laptop. After repeating republicans in the committee, Maher said that she regretted that she had published some anti-Trump tweets before working for NPR.
Although she is not responsible for editorial content, Maher made the detailed efforts of NPR to ensure that a gigantic number of political points of view are represented. The weekly audience of NPR decreased from 60 million to 42 million between 2020 and 2024, according to the internal documents published by the New York Times, although Maher rose on Wednesday last year.
“I don’t think we are politically biased,” said Maher. “We are an organization that has not been biased.”
Uri Berliner, a former NPR editor who, after complaining about the news agency last year, was written on Wednesday at Free Press in Free Press that NPR should no longer accept tax money so that it could “accept the public from its mission statement and progressive”.
“Don’t try to hide what everyone knows,” he wrote.
The members of the Republican Committee found that NPR led the hearing in fundraisers on Wednesday, and Maher was asked whether the system would survive without public money. “It would be incredibly harmful to the national public radio system,” she said.
Kerger emphasized the service that PBS offers the local communities, especially with his educational program for children, and said that she was concerned about the future of the smaller stations.
“That,” she said, “is an existential moment for her.”
After the hearing, the committee to protect journalists NPR and PBS Essential Public Services for millions of Americans.
“As propaganda machines that do not daring the support of taxpayers, you are a dangerous failure characterization that the Americans deprive of the most important reporting that you need to make decisions about your life,” said Jodie Ginsberg, CEO of the committee.
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David Bauder writes about the media for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbaududer and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauauder.bsky.social
