Democracy will die in darkness if your taxpayer dollars don't pay for NPR and PBS to post tweets. At least, that is what the big-box media would like Americans to believe about the ongoing drama between the publicly funded outlets and new Twitter CEO Elon Musk.
In taking on NPR, Musk on April 4 poked the progressive ruling establishment press at its most sensitive spot: its deeply felt sense of credentialed authority status.
Protecting ‘Our Journalism’
"NPR's organizational accounts will no longer be active on Twitter because the platform is taking actions that undermine our credibility by falsely implying that we are not editorially independent," an April 12 statement from the broadcaster read. “We are not putting our journalism on platforms that have demonstrated an interest in undermining our credibility and the public's understanding of our editorial independence.”
That same day, federally funded television network PBS stood in solidarity with NPR by also bravely deciding to stop crafting social media posts for the Blue Bird. Musk did not seem impressed. “Publicly funded PBS joins publicly funded NPR in leaving Twitter in a huff after being labeled ‘Publicly Funded,’” he crisply tweeted.
Musk has honed in on a major element of NPR’s pique: its claim that the federal money it receives is insignificant. “Less than 1% of our operating budget” is the canned line parroted by NPR whenever it is challenged on its ties to its D.C. financial backers.
Yet any calls to remove that funding immediately lead to a swelling hue and cry that place the “99% independent” assertion in serious doubt. It turns out the big government purse strings are far tighter than NPR wants to admit.
PBS, NPR and The Big Swamp Daddy
Vivian Schiller is an executive at the uber-connected globalist elitist think tank, The Aspen Institute. Her employment history is quite interesting. Schiller has worked at one time as President and CEO of NPR, “Global Chair of News” at Twitter, general manager at The New York Times, and Chief Digital Officer at NBC News.
In a telling series of April 13 tweets seeking to defend her former employer NPR, Schiller noted just how state-affiliated a publicly funded broadcaster can be. “It is true that NPR received a de minimis amount of funding directly from the federal government, less than 1% of total revenue budget,” she wrote. “That said, NPR gets about one third of its funding in the form of programming and membership fees from its hundreds of local member stations. And those stations collectively receive well over $100 million from the US government” via the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Hilariously, Schiller doesn’t even take a breath before adding, “to be clear: NPR news coverage is in no way influenced by that funding. Zero, nada. nothing. You may not like the coverage all the time, but it's not because the journalists are pulling their punches for fear of fed funding loss.”
Vivian Schiller (Photo by Sean Mathis/Getty Images for SXSW)
Did you get that? Schiller provides 100 million reasons why NPR is journalistically compromised in its reporting on the ruling establishment in Washington and then expects Americans to simply take it from her when she says it’s not a problem at all.
PBS similarly enjoys feigning pained bewilderment whenever Republicans bring up the subject of defunding. “For the third year in a row, the Trump administration’s proposed federal budget would zero-out funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting,” Politico reported in March 2019. “And PBS President and CEO Paula Kerger doesn’t understand why. ‘I wish I knew,’ Kerger said in an interview for Politico’s Women Rule podcast. ‘I don’t understand why we seem to be perennially in this fight.’”
Perhaps this will shed some light.
Trump’s American Carnage was the title of the PBS Frontline episode for Jan. 26, 2021. The allegedly unbiased news program aired just three weeks after the Jan. 6 unrest at the US Capitol. But that was merely a launching pad for an all-out attack on President Donald Trump and his supporters by PBS. A synopsis at PBS.org reads:
“From his first days as president to his last, how Trump stoked division, violence and insurrection. Frontline investigates Trump’s siege on his enemies, the media and even the leaders of his own party, who for years ignored the warning signs of what was to come.”
The transcript is even more over the top: “Donald Trump’s presidency ended in a violent assault on American democracy,” the narrator intones. “Just four years before, he stood at this very place, lighting the fires that would become an insurrection.”
What did Trump say as he began his White House term that was so spooky? “The establishment protected itself, but not the citizens of our country. Their victories have not been your victories. Their triumphs have not been your triumphs,” Trump is heard exclaiming in a video clip.
Back to the ominous narrator. “From his early days as a candidate, Donald Trump came out fighting... rallying distrust and anger against the government... targeting Washington’s leaders.”
The closing remarks to the April 14 PBS NewsHour provide further evidence of the network’s exotically progressive “journalism” nature. “Remember, there is much more online, including a look into maternal health disparities and why Black women face a greater risk of death and trauma from childbirth,” anchor Geoff Bennett chirps.
“And watch PBS News Weekend tomorrow for a story on a Native American tribe in Louisiana forced to move because of climate change.”
These are the missing tweets your tax dollars won’t be paying for.
