WASHINGTON—The Heritage Foundation released the following statements today praising a Trump administration proposal calling on Congress to eliminate funding for public broadcasting.
Heritage President Dr. Kevin Roberts:
“At the House DOGE subcommittee hearing last month, NPR CEO Katherine Maher lied under oath and told members that NPR was not biased, along with other falsehoods that had to be corrected in real-time. NPR has lost the trust of conservatives and after decades of being lied to, we can no longer believe promises made by them that they will change. This day has been long in coming, but it has finally arrived.”
Mike Gonzalez, the Angeles T. Arredondo E Pluribus Unum senior fellow at Heritage who recently testified before Congress on the need to end taxpayer funding for the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and National Public Radio (NPR), added:
“Today is another great day for the Trump administration. This appears to be getting rid of the money that Congress appropriated for the CPB in the past two years. Of course, Congress needs to follow through now by dissolving the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
“PBS and NPR, along with the CPB, have no one to blame but themselves. For the past 50 years, conservatives have been telling them that they are extremely biased, and they have brazenly refused to reflect and change ways. How can they justify to themselves continuing to ask conservatives to pony up?”
Lindsey Burke, PhD, director of the Center for Education Policy at Heritage, noted:
“State-run media is anathema to the ideals of limited government and freedom of expression in America. What may have garnered support in the 1960s—publicly funded television and radio that were sold as ‘educational’—is clearly not needed in the era of multiple networks, radio stations, satellite radio, YouTube, and the endless stream of educational content available at our fingertips thanks to the internet. This is a good day for American taxpayers and American families, who are done subsidizing the leftist monoculture broadcast by the CPB.”
Gonzalez and The Heritage Foundation have called for ending federal funding of public broadcasting for more than a decade.
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