U.S. House committee takes aim at NPR amid claims of liberal bias

A Congressional committee led by Spokane Republican Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers criticized NPR for its perceived political bias at a hearing yesterday.

“We are holding this hearing today to discuss accusations from within National Public Radio, or NPR, that the organization’s D.C. bureau is actively censoring viewpoints, all while enjoying funding from Americans’ hard-earned tax dollars,” McMorris Rodgers said.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee held the session to discuss allegations by former NPR editor Uri Berliner that the network has a liberal slant in its news coverage.

“It is especially troubling that an organization funded with taxpayer dollars has mocked, ridiculed and attacked the people who fund their organization. As if the problem wasn’t self-evident, a 25-year veteran of NPR’s national news desk outlined it in an op-ed just a few weeks ago,” she said.

One note: NPR does not directly receive federal tax dollars. NPR member stations get money from the federally-funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting and use some of it to purchase the network’s programming. One panelist, Howard Husock from the American Enterprise Institute, acknowledged that, but said public money eventually does make its way to NPR.

Husock said he believes NPR's coverage is not reflectifve of the country as a whole, citing Pew Research polls that find great majorities of NPR listeners identify themselves as Democrats. He says that compares with the demographics of viewers of nightly network TV news broadcasts, which he says is closer to 50-50.

Husock suggested Congress revise the 1967 Public Broadcasting Act, which created public media in the U.S. He says that could allow taxpayer money that is now funneled to NPR to instead be directed to local public radio stations to help them bolster their news coverage at a time when newspapers around the country are closing.

“Public radio can help to fill this void as well as to fulfill its mandate as per the 1967 Act to help communities ‘solve civic problems.’ To do so, we have to let public radio stations across the country keep more of their taxpayer dollars for their own news gathering rather than having to send them to NPR in Washington,” he said.

He suggests NPR could instead fill its financial needs by raising more from private sources, including on-air underwriting announcements.

Two other panelists, James Erwin from Americans for Tax Reform and Tim Graham from the Media Research Center and newsbusters.org, argued at the hearing that the federal government should stop funding public broadcasting. Conservative groups have long argued that government funding gives public media an unfair advantage in the marketplace over commercial broadcasters.

Craig Aaron from Free Press (which is separate from The Free Press, the online site that published Berliner’s column) says the U.S. public broadcasting system can do more to fulfill its mission and the mandate set out in the 1967 law.

“But this will not be accomplished by tarnishing the reputation of NPR’s journalists, tearing down an institution or starving it of funds,” he said. “Inquiries like today’s will likely make NPR leadership more timid and I imagine that’s the point. But threats of NPR defunding don’t just harm NPR executives. They endanger the work of more than 1,000 local radio stations providing essential information and to communities large and small.”

NPR CEO Katherine Maher did not appear at the hearing, though she was invited. She chose instead to attend a previously-scheduled meeting with her board of directors.