The great public broadcasting swindle

After decades of denial, NPR and PBS finally admit that they receive massive amounts of taxpayer money.

American public broadcasting services like PBS and National Public Radio have denied their dependence on taxpayer funds for decades. Whenever criticized on the subject, they have almost always resorted to the standard claim that they “don’t receive much money from the federal government” or the like. This is usually followed by rants about meanies trying to kill Big Bird.

Generally speaking, public broadcasters implied or outright stated that the millions required to run their networks came from grants and donations from corporations, foundations, and other non-profits, as well as from loyal listeners and viewers. In any event, they were certainly not from the federal government.

NPR’s website, for example, claims: “On average, less than 1% of NPR’s annual operating budget comes in the form of grants from CPB [Corporation for Public Broadcasting] and federal agencies and departments.”

This was meant to reassure taxpayers that they were not being forced to subsidize media that, relatively speaking, very few of them were actually watching or listening to.

This was necessary for several reasons, but politics was often first among them. Put simply, public broadcasting in the US is blatantly left-wing and, by and large, shamelessly so. It is, in fact, little more than the propaganda arm of the American progressive left.

Progressive leftists, of course, routinely assert that public broadcasting simply reflects reality. More or less everyone else knows this is nonsense. There is a reason that NPR is widely known in the Jewish community as “National Palestinian Radio.” There is a reason many of us stopped listening to it 23 years ago when its 9/11 coverage quickly collapsed into an orgy of anti-American self-loathing.

The overwhelming majority of Americans—including most Democrats—are not progressive leftists. Therefore, it is unsurprising that a great many Americans have not been happy about paying for a progressive leftist propaganda network. In such a situation, deception on the part of the propagandists is a necessity, if only to keep the lights on.

And it most definitely was deception. Indeed, any thinking person knew that NPR, PBS, and other public broadcasters were being disingenuous about their dependence on taxpayer subsidies. If they were not dependent on those subsidies, after all, they would never fight so hard to keep them.

And fight hard they most certainly did. In the 1990s, for example, their reaction to the Gingrich Congress’s bid to cut their funding was to charge Republicans with planning to commit some sort of vaguely defined Muppet genocide, perhaps by feeding Big Bird to a wood chipper. Sadly for the taxpayer, it worked.

Now, however, the truth has been confirmed by the broadcasters themselves via none other than the New York Times—the bible of the progressive aristocracy.

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In the Dec. 27 Times article “NPR and PBS Stations Brace for Funding Battle Under Trump” (I don’t link to systemically antisemitic publications), the major public broadcasting networks openly admit that they are not only massively dependent on federal funds but could not possibly exist without them. Moreover, these funds are in excess of half a billion dollars a year.

In short, NPR and PBS admitted that they don’t just receive money from the federal government but receive immense amounts of money from the federal government.

Indeed, the article states right off that the sums bestowed on these networks are enormous. Regarding Elon Musk’s current campaign against government waste, the Times states:

This passage alone puts the lie to claims like NPR’s above. One way or another, a lot more than 1% of NPR’s budget seems to be coming from the federal government. Indeed, given the amount of money involved (“hundreds of millions”) it is all but impossible that the majority of the network’s funds are coming from anywhere else.

The Times essentially confirms this:

It must be noted that those “local stations” do not just “buy shows”; they buy shows from NPR. They also pay fees to NPR for what the network describes—with strategic ambiguity—as “an array of digital content, tools, and platforms, and a suite of services designed to drive audience engagement and support.”

In other words, the Times confirmed what most people have long suspected: However intricate NPR’s (presumably legal) money laundering operation may be, it is a simple fact that it not only receives a much larger amount of taxpayer funds than it is prepared to admit, but it could not possibly exist without those funds.

So, while such networks surely welcome grants, donations, etc. from corporations, foundations, and individuals, these funding sources are ultimately irrelevant. Public broadcasting exists at the sufferance of the taxpayer and the taxpayer alone. When networks like NPR claim otherwise, they are being misleading at best and deceptive at worst.

Throughout the Times article—not by coincidence—there are almost no specific numbers given. The reason why is revealed, in fact, by the only specific number given, and it is certainly a startling one:

This means that half a billion dollars in taxpayer funds are dispersed annually to the CPB alone. As the Times states, those dollars are then sent to PBS and NPR in such numbers as to be essential to their operations.

This is, or ought to be, something of a national scandal. It means that, for many decades, numerous public broadcasting institutions have obfuscated the nature and sources of their funding. In some cases, such as NPR, this was almost certainly a campaign of deliberate deception.

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This forces us to ask: Why now? Why has the public broadcasting establishment begun to talk openly about the extent of its taxpayer funding? And why is a sympathetic progressive media suddenly reporting on it honestly?

The answer is obvious: For the first time, public broadcasting’s government largesse is seriously threatened. Previous attempts at ending public broadcasting’s feast at the public trough have never come close to succeeding. Admonitions about rescuing Elmo from oblivion have usually been enough to fend off accountability. This time, it appears, public broadcasters think the situation is far more serious.

They may or may not be right. Certainly, Donald Trump’s reelection has stunned the progressive aristocracy—public broadcasting’s core and often only audience—and there is an overall sense that the country has shifted to the right for good this time. Public broadcasters may have concluded that, with Musk off the leash and an ascendant conservative movement sick and tired of being their punching bag, the time has come to unleash every weapon in their arsenal.

They may believe that the cost of finally admitting to the extent of their dependence on the taxpayer may prompt the taxpayer—now terrified at the prospect of losing “Fresh Air” and “All Things Considered” forever—to step in and put a stop to it all. After all, if the taxpayer wants to pay for public broadcasting, even Elon Musk has no right to prevent them from doing so.

This tactic could work, at least in the short term. The New York Times may be the Holy Writ of the progressive aristocracy, but PBS and NPR are its High Church. Often, it is more or less all the aristocracy watches or listens to. I have known people who, wherever they may be and whatever they are doing, are listening to NPR all the time. I would not be surprised if they fell asleep and woke up listening to it. It is literally the soundtrack to their lives.

This is a rarified audience, but it is an audience of sorts, and one with influence well beyond its numbers. They might be able to make just enough trouble to force Musk and Trump to stand down, if only to avoid a costly fight on a relatively minor issue. After all, $535 million is a relative pittance in the context of a multi-trillion-dollar federal budget. Even if, as I suspect, more than $535 million is at stake, Americans may decide that it is a small price to pay to save Elmo’s hide.

On the other hand, a great many Americans may decide that their children are doing perfectly well with Peppa Pig and Bluey. Since they are already paying for Nick Jr. and Disney Junior, they may have no desire to be forced to pay for the public equivalent. The same may go for everything else broadcast by PBS and NPR, which has long since been superseded by cable, streaming, and podcast shows of higher quality.

Most of all, public broadcasting’s decision to finally go public with the extent of its taxpayer dependence could backfire spectacularly. Even Americans inclined to be sympathetic toward public broadcasting might find themselves somewhat outraged that they have been systematically misled for decades.

As for unsympathetic Americans, the outrage might be larger by orders of magnitude. They now know for a fact that, for years, billions of their dollars have gone to networks determined to deride their beliefs and frustrate their political hopes. That the beneficiaries of their largesse were deceptive about where they got the money will only exacerbate the intensity of the backlash.

What is clear is that, if public broadcasting does go down or, at least, is made to pay its own way, it will be no great tragedy. Americans will have lost very little and saved a great deal of money. Those few programs that remain popular will find homes elsewhere. Those who believe it is their calling to reeducate Americans into properly progressive ways of thinking will enter the podcast world or retreat into the confines of a totalitarian academia more than willing to welcome them. The republic will survive.

As for those few who will no longer be able to make a comfortable living by forcing people to buy what they don’t want, no one ought to shed any tears on their behalf.