‘Big Bird protection’ won’t work this time as Trump – Latest News
President Donald Trump has fought loads of political heavyweights, however now he’s up towards a foe far more durable than Hillary Clinton or Kamala Harris: Big Bird.
The president is ordering federal businesses and the taxpayer-funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting to stop supporting National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service.
His May 1 government order is titled “Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Biased Media.”
U.S. Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA) speaks in entrance of poster of Big Bird during a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee listening to on the U.S. Capitol on March 26, 2025 in Washington, DC. Getty Images
How biased are NPR and PBS?
They principally appeal to members of one political occasion, in line with Pew Research: 32% of Democrats and Democrat-leaning respondents surveyed say they repeatedly get information from NPR, and a related quantity — 31% — say the identical about PBS.
Only 11% of Republicans and GOP-leaners report they get information from PBS, and the determine for NPR — 9% — is even worse.
Something about NPR is thrice more agreeable to Democrats than to Republicans.
Should everybody be taxed to pay for radio and TV programming that caters primarily to Democrats?
Public radio and TV executives disguise behind yellow feathers every time they’re criticized.
“Big Bird Taken Off Death Row,” introduced a Washington Post headline in June 1995 when Newt Gingrich, the primary Republican speaker of the House of Representatives in 40 years, backed down from makes an attempt to defund CPB.
“Sesame Street” was simply too common with mother and father.
National Public Radio (NPR) headquarters in Washington, DC with textual content mentioning President Trump’s 2025 government order to cut funding for NPR and PBS JIM LO SCALZO/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
Today’s face of public broadcasting, nonetheless, isn’t Big Bird or Elmo — it’s Katherine Maher, NPR’s outspokenly progressive CEO.
“America is addicted to white supremacy,” Maher — who’s white — claimed on Twitter in 2020.
But she didn’t make NPR woke — simply the alternative: Maher’s in charge as a result of she completely represents NPR’s preexisting institutional bias.
Before Maher, NPR was already appending “trigger warnings” to readings from the Declaration of Independence, with disclaimers showing not solely on gadgets newly revealed on its web site after the 2020 George Floyd riots however utilized retroactively as effectively.
“The audio of this story quotes the US Declaration of Independence — a document that contains offensive language about Native Americans, including a racial slur,” warns the observe prefixed to “The Declaration: What Does It Mean to You?” a “Morning Edition” story from July 4, 2013.
PBS Kids show characters together with the title character from “Arthur” embellish packing containers on the Arizona PBS workplaces within the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication in Phoenix, Friday, May 2, 2025. AP
Maher not too long ago testified to Congress that “much of my thinking has evolved over the last half decade” since she characterised different Americans as white-supremacy addicts.
Before her evolution, Maher additionally referred to as President Trump a “deranged racist sociopath” and “fascist.”
She was government director and CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation, writer of Wikipedia, on the time. Before that, she was the inspiration’s chief communications officer.
Get opinions and commentary from our columnists
Subscribe to our every day Post Opinion publication!
Thanks for signing up!
If Maher has “evolved” solely up to now 5 years, she’s hardly cut out to run any media group, not to mention a taxpayer-funded one.
But if she actually does suppose the president’s fascist and America’s racist, and is now mendacity about these inconvenient convictions, what does that say about her character?
Whatever the reply, she has no business main any group that claims to be nonpartisan. (Maher’s mom, as it occurs, is a Connecticut state senator — a Democrat.)
President/CEO of National Public Radio (NPR) Katherine Maher and President/CEO of Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) Paula Kerger testify during a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee listening to on Capitol Hill on March 26, 2025 in Washington, DC. AFP through Getty Images
She can’t have it each methods, insisting America is within the grip of fascism one second, then soliciting authorities assist the subsequent — who’d need to be funded by a fascist’s authorities?
Shouldn’t it’s a level of delight for people like Maher to simply accept no money from fascists or racists?
NPR’s chief is an ideologue but additionally an opportunist, and her public statements reveal not simply her animosity towards the Republican president however her nihilistically relativist worldview.
“Our reverence for the truth might be a distraction that is getting in the way of finding common ground and getting things done,” she mused in a 2022 TED Talk.
“We all have different truths,” she added. “They are based on things like where we come from, how we were raised, and how other people perceive us.”
This would possibly sound like mush, but it surely signifies that goal reality — truthful reality, one would possibly say — is simply too divisive a normal and as a substitute “truth” should derive from id, and id politics.
NPR’s programming and practices mirror that philosophy as a lot as its alternative of CEO.
When somebody does communicate up for a true reality at NPR, he can count on to be punished.
That was the expertise of Uri Berliner, a senior editor with 25 years’ tenure at NPR, who was suspended with out pay after he wrote an essay for The Free Press final 12 months exposing the “lack of viewpoint diversity” inside the broadcaster.
PBS isn’t as egregiously slanted as NPR, however that’s not saying a lot.
“Public broadcasting” is just a misnomer: These companies are “public-private partnerships,” which suggests in follow they take public money to advertise personal beliefs that align with one occasion’s left wing.
Big Bird’s common enough to thrive with out subsidies.
NPR and PBS have grow to be megaphones for messages like Maher’s, and it’s high time taxpayers stopped being compelled to pay for them.
Daniel McCarthy is the editor of Modern Age: A Conservative Review.
