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HA! NPR Got $1.9M Grant to Improve Objectivity, Add ‘Diverse Viewpoints’ -– But Bias Rages On
Last October, National Public Radio (NPR) was awarded a $1.9 million grant to make “editorial enhancements” – such as improving its objectivity – but, seven months later, the leftist bias of the taxpayer-funded public radio content organization rages on.
“CPB Awards $1.9 Million to NPR for Editorial Enhancement,” the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) announced in an October 18, 2024 press release, noting that “Funding provides increased oversight to ensure objective, balanced, transparent, fact-based journalism.”
The grant was intended to improve NPR’s “fairness, balance, objectivity” and ensure NPR meets its “obligation to include diverse viewpoints,” CPB explained at the time:
“The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) has awarded a $1.9 million grant to NPR to help further strengthen its editorial operations and meet the challenges of producing 24/7 news content on multiple platforms that consistently adheres to the highest standards of editorial integrity – accuracy, fairness, balance, objectivity, and transparency, and the obligation to include diverse viewpoints.”
“Specifically, the grant will enable NPR to fill 11 new positions,” including “two content strategy analysts to provide data around the mix of content being produced and its impact,” CPB noted in its announcement.
Nonetheless, the Media Research Center’s NewsBusters division continues to disprove the “nonpartisan” NPR thesis several times a week.
Likewise, Republicans working with President Donald Trump to defund public media are taking to the floor of the House and Senate to explain why taxpayers shouldn’t have to pay for the overwhelmingly anti-conservative bias at NPR, PBS and CPB (which funnels taxpayer money to them).
As CNSNews has reported, Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) recently displayed a series of egregiously slanted headlines by NPR and PBS:
“This is the kind of reporting that’s being done today – with your tax money,” Sen. Kennedy said. “That’s opinion journalism,” Kennedy explained, commenting on a NPR story titled “Arguments that trans athletes have an unfair advantage lack evidence to support.”
Kennedy went on to read other NPR headlines off the list, such as “What can the White House do to control the narrative around Biden’s ability?” “It wasn’t a narrative. It was just a fact” that Pres. Biden’s cognitive abilities had declined, Kennedy said.
“Now, I don’t want to just pick on NPR,” Sen. Kennedy said, moving on to headlines from a list of PBS stories “paid for with your tax dollars,” including “The Other Olympians:’ Transgender Athletes in the Nazi Era.”
A NewsBusters study of PBS News Hour published on Tuesday documents the lopsided nature of the program’s choice of guests:
■ Liberal-Democratic guests outnumbered conservative-Republican guests by 173-41, a ratio of 4.2 to 1.
■ Of 18 total appearances by Republican officials, eight were coded as anti-Trump. Of 24 total appearances by Democratic officials, none were pro-Trump.
■ When elected officials and political appointees were removed from the guest count, the ideological disparity of show guests becomes even more striking, with liberal-leaning guests outnumbering conservative-leaning guests 149-23, for a ratio of 6.5 to 1.
■ Liberal journalists made 22 appearances as guests, compared to just one appearance by a conservative journalist.
■ The ideological breakdown of guests on the News Hour’s new “On Democracy” segment was nearly balanced, 6-5 liberal-conservative. But the difference in hostility during the interviews themselves showed PBS’s liberal ideology had not changed.