Marsha Blackburn Pushes to Defund Taxpayer-Funded NPR

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) is pushing to defund NPR’s budget, which taxpayers subsidize by nearly 11 percent.

Blackburn’s effort supports former President Donald Trump’s belief that NPR must be defunded due to bias within the network.

NPR editor Uri Berliner resigned from the network Wednesday after he revealed NPR’s Washington, DC, office employed zero registered Republicans and 87 registered Democrats.

NPR’s chief news executive, Edith Chapin, denied her employee’s claims, citing nuance and inclusion.

“The mainstream media has become obsessed with doing the Left’s bidding and taking down strong conservatives — and NPR has led the pack,” Blackburn told Fox News on Wednesday.

“It makes no sense that the American people are forced to fund a propagandist left-wing outlet that refuses to represent the voices of half the country. NPR should not receive our tax dollars,” she continued.

Berliner, who worked for 25 years at NPR covering business news, opposes defunding NPR. “I don’t support calls to defund NPR,” he said in his resignation statement. “I respect the integrity of my colleagues and wish for NPR to thrive and do important journalism.”

NPR’s business model appears in decline. The taxpayer-funded organization laid off ten percent of its workforce, going from approximately 1,200 to about 1,050 employees after the left-wing outlet failed to generate enough revenue, the organization announced in 2023.

“The number one challenge” in the fight against disinformation is “the First Amendment in the United States,” making it “tricky” to censor “bad information” and “the influence peddlers” who push it, NPR’s censor-in-chief Katherine Maher said this week.

Wendell Husebo is a political reporter with Breitbart News and a former GOP War Room Analyst. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Follow Wendell on “X” @WendellHusebø or on Truth Social @WendellHusebo.