
A conservative media watchdog has a new top priority — defunding NPR and PBS.
The Media Research Center (MRC) is leading a push to defund both public media outlets, urging President Donald Trump, congressional leaders, and governors to strip taxpayer subsidies to these “far-left media outlets,” the group revealed exclusively to The Daily Wire.
The watchdog urged the Trump administration to include the “complete defunding” of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and its affiliates, PBS and NPR, in a rescission package that could soon be sent to Congress.
“Taxpayers should not be forced to subsidize a media entity that has outlived its original purpose and refuses to operate in a transparent manner,” the MRC wrote in its letter to Trump.
The watchdog is calling on the CEOs of NPR and PBS to subject themselves to public audits and asking members of Congress to refuse to meet with their lobbyists until those audits are done.
The MRC is also calling on congressional leaders to repeal the legislation that created the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Finally, the group is calling on state governors and federal agencies to halt all discretionary grants to PBS and NPR until the outlets are audited.
A coalition of critics joined the MRC in signing letters to elected officials, including Seth Dillon, owner of the Babylon Bee; Mike Gonzalez, senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation; Terry Schilling, president of the American Principles Project; Steven Ertelt, editor at LifeNews.com; and Austin Ruse, president of the Center for Family and Human Rights.
“This action is in concert with your historic promise and rapid delivery of cutting waste, fraud, and abuse across the federal government,” the coalition wrote to Trump.
The group argued that the “original justification” for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting “no longer holds.”
“In today’s media-rich environment, Americans have unlimited access to news, entertainment, and educational programming,” they wrote in their letter to Trump.
“NPR’s and PBS’s demonstrable, documented bias further erodes CPB’s credibility,” the group wrote. “NPR’s audience overwhelmingly identifies as liberal, reinforcing the reality that public broadcasting is not a neutral service but a taxpayer-funded ideological platform. Americans should not be forced to finance a network that caters to one side of the political spectrum.”
Dan Schneider, vice president of the MRC, told The Daily Wire that defunding PBS and NPR is his organization’s “top priority right now.”
The goal is to “eliminate every dime of taxpayer money that subsidizes these liberal media behemoths,” Schneider said.
“This is the most focused and aggressive takedown these outlets have ever faced. It may be the last, best chance taxpayers will ever have to unburden themselves from these leftist propaganda outlets once and for all,” he said.
Source link