Marjorie Taylor-Greene attacks NPR and PBS as ‘communist,’ calls for funding to ‘end’

(CNN) — Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene on Wednesday used a DOGE subcommittee hearing to call for the defunding and dismantling of the company that provides NPR and PBS with federal funds.

For Taylor-Greene and other House Republicans, today’s hearing was about tarnishing PBS and NPR with accusations of bias and targeting them for defunding. For the broadcasters, today was about defending their existence.

The hearing, titled “Anti-American Airwaves: Holding the heads of NPR and PBS Accountable,” started at 10 am ET, and featured testimony from NPR CEO Katherine Maher and PBS CEO Paula Kerger, as well as a local station operator and a conservative critic of taxpayer-funded media.

The hearing, which was chaired by Taylor-Greene, was meant to advance long-held Republican arguments against PBS and NPR, including that their programming is “communist.”

In the final minutes of the two-hour hearing that saw repeated conservative attacks on the public broadcasters, Taylor-Greene said that “we can look no further than the Corporation for Public Broadcasting” as the culprit for US debt.

“After listening to what we’ve heard, today, we will be calling for the complete and total defund and dismantling of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting,” Taylor-Greene said.

President Donald Trump on said Tuesday that the networks are a “waste of money” and claimed “he would love to” defund them. And yet the funding bill passed by Congress and signed into law by Trump earlier this month included $535 million for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the entity that disburses funds to 1,500 local radio and TV stations. Congress budgets money for CPB two years in advance, so the recent bill means public broadcasting is funded through 2027.

Congressional sparring

Throughout the hearing, legislators pressed Maher and Kruger on their roles in allegedly circulating disinformation, accusing the pair of fostering newsrooms that cater to elite audiences.

“NPR and PBS have increasingly become 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,” Taylor-Greene said at the hearing’s overture before accusing the pair of “grooming and sexualizing” children, using DEI for listener demographics, and wasting taxpayer dollars.

Maher and Kruger also faced attacks from Rep. James Comer, who, in addition to accusing NPR and PBS of peddling “disinformation” and “propaganda,” claimed the public broadcasters are obsolete in an age marked by a “menu of media options” that includes podcasts and satellite radio.

Congressional Republicans repeatedly peppered Maher and Kruger with accusations regarding their coverage of the COVID-19 origins lab leak theory, Russian collusion, and Hunter Biden’s laptop.

Maher said that the public broadcaster was “mistaken” in “failing” to cover the Hunter Biden laptop story sooner and more aggressively. When Cloud asked Maher about the lab leak theory, the NPR boss emphasized that the outlet’s current editorial leadership recognizes that “the new CIA evidence is worthy of coverage,” stressing that it has reported just that.

Local needs

Maher and Kruger spent the two-hour hearing defending their respective organizations, pushing back against conservative claims by stressing that most Americans trust public broadcasters to service local communities and provide a wide variety of reporting and educational programming. To elucidate her point, Maher noted that more than 60% of all Americans — and more than half of Republicans — trust public broadcasting to deliver fact-based news. Kruger noted “there’s nothing more American than PBS as a membership organization.”

Local TV and radio stations also used the opportunity to justify their federal funding. From North Country Public Radio in upstate New York, to New Mexico PBS in Albuquerque, to Hawaiʻi Public Radio in Honolulu, publicly supported stations are using the right’s political attacks to galvanize grassroots support and raise money from donors.

Hawaiʻi Public Radio CEO Meredith Artley, the former editor in chief of CNN Digital, wrote that her news and classical music stations are “94% community supported,” with the remaining 6% coming from CPB. If the federal funds were diminished, the Hawaii stations would survive, but “there would likely be damage to the nationwide system that provides programming and infrastructure that HPR and many other stations rely on,” she wrote.

That’s the key point: It’s a system. And smaller stations tend to need more help from the system. At KTOO Public Media in Alaska, for example, fully 30% of the budget comes from CPB. “This federal funding is essential in ensuring that Juneau’s only local-owned newsroom can continue to deliver you the news from our community,” the station said.

Congressional Democrats came to the public broadcasters’ aid throughout the hearing, stressing that journalism and the free press are currently under attack by “extremists” and are needed “more than ever.”

“Public broadcasting is a tool for education, for emergencies, and a cherished part of our national fabric,” Rep. Robert Garcia said. “The majority and our chairwoman should drop this attempt to silence media voices they don’t like.”

Rep. Greg Casar chastised the committee for focusing on defunding NPR and PBS instead of DOGE’s head, Elon Musk, whose companies — which include X, SpaceX, Tesla, and Starlink — make billions each year while still taking home $3 billion per year in government contracts.

“That’s six times the money that goes to all of public broadcasting. Private insurers and Medicare Advantage overcharged taxpayers $83 billion,” Casar said. “Just last year, that could pay for public broadcasting 160 times over.”

“To borrow a phrase from Sesame Street, the letter of the day is C and it stands for corruption,” he said.

Press freedom groups have also defended the public broadcasters. Ahead of the hearing, the Center for Democracy & Technology’s president and chief executive, Alexandra Reeve Givens, called the meeting an attempt by the Trump administration “to bully their perceived enemies and silence legitimate journalism.” Reporters Without Borders executive director Clayton Weimars said he was “deeply concerned the House hearing on bias in NPR and PBS is a political stunt that will create a slippery slope towards politicians dictating the programming of public news outlets.”

Stations large and small also highlighted their local responsibilities.

“Whatever happens in Washington, DC — WQED is not going anywhere,” Jason Jedlinski, CEO of Pittsburgh’s PBS station, wrote on LinkedIn. His post listed recent features (segments about a local farm, a reading club, and so on) that, quite frankly, few other media outlets would spend time on.

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