Defund NPR and PBS. They Aren't Just Biased—They're Tax-Funded Activism.

0:00 Wait, if racism is a disease, can I get it? If racism is like a disease, can I get it? What have we become? This was 2020, not 1960. Hey there, friends, fans, and foes of Dad Saves America. John Papa here, and I thought I would take this Friday to talk about the budgetarily insignificant, but culturally meaningful defunding of NPR and PBS. President Trump issued an executive order overnight instructing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to halt all funding for PBS and NPR, which would impact those two networks, the roughly 1,500 public media stations nationwide, as well as national programs like the NewsHour. The president ordering the end of federal funding for both public news outlets, which the White House in the past has accused of biased and partisan news coverage and programming. Federal funding notably counts for about 15% of PBS's and 1% of NPR's budget with the rest largely coming from outside donations. So, it's likely not going to shut down either. So this is one talking point that uh both organizations but especially NPR uses namely that uh well we don't really get very much money from the government actually which right away runs into the problem of if you really don't need the money why are you taking it and why are you so worried about it being cut if it was fundamentally insignificant then surely you would just say please relieve us of the political pressure that comes along with relying on taxpayer uh expense. But as friend of mine Liz Wolf and writer at Reason points out, this 1% story is a little more complicated. For example, as of 2017, NPR got 38% of its funding from individual donors, 19% from corporate sponsors, 10% from foundations, 10% from university licensing, which a lot of government money coming in by way of that backdoor, and 4% from the government. However, and that's already 4x the claim that it's 1%. Um, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting still funds NPR via its member stations, this network of local stations. So, there's National Public Radio, the entity, uh, and then there's all the member stations, and then there's all the programming that gets supplied, the actual shows. So, there's a complex layer cake of government funding baked throughout the system. So roughly to the tune of 10% nowadays is how the membership the member station's funding comes from government. PBS for its part gets roughly 15% of its funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting with a hefty chunk coming from individual and corporate donors. Let's look a little deeper into what President Trump is asserting with his executive order and uh what's true and not true about it because frankly having read the um the summaries and and the order itself, it's it's pretty damning stuff. This executive order directs the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to stop all direct federal taxpayer funds from going to NPR and to PBS. Um, the president argues that public media in general has a liberal bias and that taxpayers should not be supporting that. And the idea that that's not true doesn't pass anybody's sniff test, including I like NPR actually mostly. Uh, but to believe that it isn't politically biased is to be living under a rock. Last month, the president wrote this quote, "Republicans must defund and totally disassociate themselves from NPR and PBS." The radical left monsters that so badly hurt our country. The radical left monsters.

4:03 The radical left monsters. The radical left monsters. You know, subtle subtle as always, Mr. President. This clip will come back. Trust me. We should say, as we have before, the heads of PBS and NPR reject that categorization. Of course they do. Maybe he was being playful. Maybe the radical left monsters he was talking about were of a more uh colorful variety. They look upset. People are upset because racism is a huge problem in our country. I'm bringing this sign to the protest at the community center later.

4:43 Oh. Oh. Can you tell me about anti-racism? I spent the part of my career in animation and kids entertainment. So, uh, I'm actually personally pretty close to this subject. Um, and I'm going to come back to that, but let's look a little closer at the claims of, well, the radical left monsters. Paula Ker, the head of PBS, called this uh, EO quote blatantly unlawful. Katherine Maher, the head of NPR, said it will quote, "challenge this executive order using all means available." So, what are we talking about specifically? What are the radical left monsters actually? The radical left monsters hiding under our beds, stealing our money. As uh this summary from white house.gov of points out there's several instances of things that the president and frankly I think a lot of Americans find uh inappropriate for our tax dollars to support. An NPR editor found that registered Democrats outnumbered Republicans 87 to0 which I think means mathematically infinite.

5:47 When the denominator is zero there is infinitely more Democrats than Republicans in the newsroom. This is this has actually played out true across the board. There was a a book years ago that studied newsrooms and found that there isn't a single county in the United States that votes more partisan than America's corporate press newsrooms. That even at places like the Wall Street Journal, which are generally more conservative on the editorial side, their newsroom is almost entirely Democrats.

6:18 This has always been true and it is a problem if you care about understanding the world more broadly than one point of view. To illustrate its partisan capture, NPR management asked its editors to avoid the term biological sex when discussing transgender issues, and we're going to come back to that. NPR refused to cover the Hunter Biden laptop story, calling it a waste of time and a distraction despite that it was highly relevant to the presidential election.

6:46 obviously was also known to be real. Um, and as reporters Matt uh, Taibbe and Michael Shelonburgger are both friends of the show have uh, have pointed out, they were running simulations of what to do if an alleged laptop came out from the Aspen Ideas Festival. So, this stuff's all deeply ingrained and embedded in these institutions, this sort of left-wing group think. Couple other examples. Research shows that congressional Republicans faced 85% negative coverage compared to 54% positive coverage for congressional Democrats on PBS's flagship news program. A PBS station featured drag queen Little Miss Hot Mess on a program meant for kids ages 3 to 8.

7:34 PBS produced a movie titled Real Boy, which celebrates a transgender teens transition. And of course, PBS's coverage of the 2024 Republican National Conventions, was 72% negative, while its coverage of the 2024 Democratic National Convention was 88% positive. Now, having worked in media, this is all obviously true. This is an instance where you can actually more or less take this at face value. Let's look at this with our eyes and our ears because the text doesn't do it justice. Going back to the COVID times, this is what our kids were being subjected to at taxpayer expense. And now a message from Arthur.

8:17 I got to call Buster. Hey Arthur. Hey Buster. Did you see that video? Yeah, I just watched it. It was awful. I can't believe someone would be hurt like that. They're talking about the George Floyd death just because they're black. Racism is so unfair. Racism is like a disease. If you don't treat it, it's just going to get worse. And then of course, in comes the teacher to fill in the kids on um a sort of critical race theory Ibram X Kendi um you know, identity Marxism uh story. Wait, if racism is a disease, can I get it? Buster, don't worry. This isn't about you. Actually, it is. It's about all of us. About you, Buster. If racism is like a disease, can I get it? What have we become? This was 2020, not 1960.

9:12 It's not enough to just say, "I'm not racist. It's not my problem. We have to actively fight against racism." 2020 really broke everything, but it it it shined a light on these institutions that we the people are forced to pay for. Do you have your mask? You're going to wear a mask, right? Only sick people need masks, Francine. And I am not sick. What? Although I did stub my toe in the pool, I have this little bruise which you can toe when I wear sandals. Too muffy. If you're going out in public, you 100% need a mask.

9:49 How do I look like a kind and thoughtful person who cares about other people? I've been in these writer rooms and been the odd man out who sometimes had to bite my tongue and keep my mouth shut. And they're openhearted people to be perfectly honest. They're just captured in their bubble. You were super duper today getting your COVID vaccine, Elmo. Yeah, there was a little pinch, but it was okay. Elmo was really glad to have daddy and baby David there with him.

10:16 Just can't even stand it. This was not necessary. Baby David, where are you? I had a lot of questions about Elmo getting the COVID vaccine. Was it safe? Was it the right decision? Will he get myocarditis? Is it a wholly unnecessary application of a a drug that isn't necessary because the fatality rate for my son is practically zero? Oh, wait. No, he didn't get any of that because he's on PBS. I talked to our pediatrician so I could make the right choice.

10:47 I learned that Elmo getting vaccinated is the best way to keep himself, our friends, neighbors, and everyone else healthy and enjoying the things they love. That's right. Because of course, it's going to keep him from contracting the virus and spreading it, even though it definitely won't keep him from spreading it. And they knew that right from the beginning. This is what we've been paying for, folks. And uh th this in some ways isn't even the worst of it because the worst of it, as we heard, uh is literally a hot mess. PBS was the outlet that featured the child predator drag queen on the education show for kids ages 3 to 8 years old. And to clarify the record, because our witness, Miss Kger, lied under oath and said it wasn't featured on PBS, this show was aired on PBS on April 1st, 2021. And we will take a look at this video right now. Get your singing voices ready. And we're going to start with our hips. The hips on the dragon go swish swish swish swish swish swish. The shoulders on the dragon they go [Music] shah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. The mouth of the dragon goes blah blah blah all through the town.

12:18 Yeah. The shoulders go shimmy shimmy shimmy. That's repulsive. There's another word for this thing. I mean, 100%. Totally crazy. If you aren't seeing Red as a parent when seeing this, and and this isn't the only instance of pushing explicitly radical sexual content on our kids at PBS, then I'm I'm deeply worried about you, frankly, because it means you're captured by something dark. As I said, I used to work at Nickelodeon. I used to work on Blues Clues promos and and work with this talent. And by and large, it's openhearted creative people that love kids. And then occasionally the kid love goes to a different place.

13:09 I don't want to pay for that. I I don't mind paying for the prison, though. The prison this guy belongs in that that I'm okay with paying for. But the thing is, when I was in kids entertainment, it was a totally different time. It was 20 years ago. It was the Houseion days of the early 2000s. A time that stretches farther back, a time of sanity. I grew up watching Mr. Rogers, loving Mr. Rogers. And even Mr. Rogers, where he alive today, God rest his soul, would think that this is crazy. And there's this clip from the Johnny Carson show that I'm just going to play in full because it's it's incredible. It is a time warp. It is. It reminds us of a better time. Do you ever discuss? Now, we were discussing sex when we did the takeoff on your show. Did you ever do you ever are they too young for that?

13:57 You ever get into That's where they learn the differences. Yeah. Hate speech right from the start. They're learning the differences. Now, how do you handle it? What do you do to explain? What's your age range, would you think, who watch the show? Mostly preschoolers, but I hesitate to say that because there's many older people who Absolutely. But there's a song called Everybody's Fancy that I sing. Some are fancy on the outside, some are fancy on the inside, everybody's fancy. Everybody's fine.

14:24 Your body's fancy, and so is mine. Now, for those of us that grew up with Mr. Rogers, this is just pure love, nostalgia. He was a good man. He loved kids in the best way possible. But get ready for the second verse. It's very important. Boys are boys from the beginning. Girls are girls right from the start. Everybody's fancy. Everybody's fine. Your body's fancy and so is mine. Because sometimes children think that they might change. They might have to change after a while. And you know, we laugh about that now. Listen to the audience. But it's because we had that concern when we were little. Yeah.

14:59 Because you're really not sure. And you thought maybe you'd become a girl or a girl would become a boy. Right. Exactly. And happens frequently out here. This is where we were. We aren't there now. Uh, we're not in Kansas anymore when it comes to PBS or NPR, but that's just the stuff for kids. That's just the radical weirdo propaganda that our kids have been fed at taxpayer expense. NPR is of an entirely different sort and woven into something frankly far more vast and far more um politically diabolical. Frankly, the bulk of the criticism fell on NPR CEO Katherine Maher, who acknowledged shortcomings in some of NPR's past coverage. We were mistaken and failing to cover the Hunter Biden laptop story more aggressively and sooner are current. She also expressed regret about old comments made in 2018 before she worked at NPR where she called President Trump racist. A lot of your thinking as expressed by your public statements is deeply infused with economic and cultural Marxism. Do you believe that America is addicted to white supremacy? Um, I believe that I tweeted that and I, as I've said earlier, I believe much of my thinking has evolved over the last half decade.

16:16 It has evolved. Why did you tweet that? I don't recall the exact context, sir, so I wouldn't be able to say. Maybe it's the radical left monsters. Do you believe that America believes in black plunder and white democracy? I don't believe that, sir. The shock. Why would you How would you Why would you say such a thing about me? I wouldn't I would never I would never How dare you in reference to a book you were reading at at the time, apparently, The Case for Reparations. I don't think I've ever read that book, sir. You tweeted about it. You said you took a day off to fully read the case for rep reparations. You put that on Twitter in January of 2020.

17:03 The radical left monsters. Yeah. Apologies. I don't recall that I did. Okay. No, I no doubt that yours your tweet there is correct, but I don't recall that. Okay. Do you believe that white people inherently feel superior to other races? I do not. You don't? You you tweeted something to that effect. You said, "I I grew up feeling superior." Ha. How white of me. Why did you tweet that? Why did you tweet that? Could it be because the radical left monsters? Just Just saying. Just Just putting it out there. Maybe maybe maybe that's the reason. All right.

17:37 Uh, speaking of um the the monstrous nature of this stuff, Matt Taibbe, a man historically of the left, somebody who used to be a reporter at the Rolling Stone who I first encountered during the financial crisis when he was writing about Wall Street in excruiating, blistering critiques of the banks, the banking system, and essentially America American capitalism and and what went wrong. Well, and I didn't agree with everything he had to say on that front, but on this we do certainly agree. NPR should be axed because it's anti-thought, not anti-Trump. And this NPR head, Katherine Mayor, is is like assembled. She's like formed in a mold of the group think elite. In this piece, Matt points to a satirical book called The Dictionary of Received Ideas by Gustav Flowbert. I'm probably mispronouncing that. In which it sort of summarized the kind of like half-wit or midwit cliches that he would hear among, you know, te-ipping elites and and the, you know, the sort of, you know, faux intellectual gobbledygook that basically represented most of that congressional testimony. Each one of these radical sounding cliches are are copy and paste jobs. They are the received ideas of this institutional sort of corporate elite that we have all been forced to pay for. Matt writes, "What if all these dead phrases and canned non-thoughts were mandatory? What if they were factory produced as part of a state enterprise? What if received ideas were dumped on the public with military regularity and in conjunction with prohibitions against saying anything else? This is what we've experienced.

19:34 This is the kind of sylon war against humanity that we have all been enduring by this cohort of people. In fact, when I think about her, I can't help but notice she bears a striking resemblance to one of the villains in one of my all-time favorite shows, Battlestar Galactica. That is, of course, Capria 6. In fact, because I'm going to play some clips from a from a source that likes to be latigious, I think Capria 6 will be the standin for Miss Mayor moving forward. So, let's hear what's below the surface of this uh, you know, quintessential midwit elite. Uh, it is lovely to be with you here this evening.

20:20 So, as you just heard, my name is Katherine Maher and I used to be until very recently the CEO of the Wikipdia Foundation, the CEO of the Wikipdia Foundation, which is the organization behind Wikipedia. And my tenure coincided with a very strange time for information, a global crisis of fake news and disinformation, which meant that our free knowledge movement really sort of stood alone. One thing to remember about Wikipedia is that it's not merely a uh, you know, a bottomup sort of crowdsourced encyclopedia for the internet. It is actually woven into lots of products. When you ask Siri and it happens to answer because Siri's profoundly broken at this point, but when it does answer some factoid, it is often pulling from Wikipedia. Wikipedia is woven into lots of software, lots of platforms. It is a super spreader of its information and often it's misinformation. In fact, the co-founder of Wikipedia, Larry Sanger, said it has now become a propaganda device for left-leaning establishment types like Miss Mar, that is one of the architects of this system that she then became the CEO of. But what what does real information sound like? How do we know if something's real? What should we do with information? Well, in this same speech, um, Miss Maher offers a very strange formulation of how to think about the pursuit of truth. Perhaps for our most tricky disagreements, seeking the truth and seeking to convince others of the truth might not be the right place to start. In fact, our reverence for the truth might be a distraction that's getting in the way of finding common ground and getting things done.

22:07 All right, let's break this down for a second. So for our most difficult disagreements, so this is areas where you and I aren't on the same page. I believe one thing is right and you believe another thing is right. She's saying that trying to figure out what's true isn't maybe the place to start. Then which one of us picks? Which one gives way to the other? If we can't rely on a pursuit of the actual truth, what consensus will we rely on then? Because if we disagree, we are not in a consensus. We are in disagreement. I think climate change is not that big of a deal. And you think it's an existential crisis for humanity. Well, um, who wins? And the answer is the Sylons win. If you're a Sylon, prove it to me right now. I don't have to. You know, I'm telling the truth. You see, stating something as the truth doesn't necessarily make it so, cuz the truth of the matter is I don't believe a word of it. You don't need to believe a word of it. You just have to accept it. These are the ideas we all must accept to be admitted into polite society. That's what these institutions have become.

23:14 Matt writes, "For every unnerving addition to the censorship toolkit that's come out of this presidency, like the reported expansion of anti-BDS rules, there remain dozens of federally funded entities that exist for one of two reasons. to promote group think like all that anti-racist neo-Marxist gobbledygook that she was trying to disavow in congressional testimony and that's being pushed on our kids as if it's fact instead of monstrous murderous fiction or to stamp out the absence of it. So you either believe what we believe or you better shut the hell up.

23:52 NPR is at the top of the list. Its problem isn't that it's anti-Trump or that it retains a weird addiction to stories like bringing diversity to Maine's nearly all-white lobster fleet or fat phobia and its racist past and present. Although that stuff is nuts, but because it's the most visible symbol of a thought-suppressing bureaucracy that's not really compatible with our system of media and government. I mean in a sense it has been our system of media and it is what our government wants to be. This is what Matt and Michael call the censorship industrial complex. The network of institutions and organizations almost entirely polluted by taxpayer funds managed by essentially an unelected bureaucratic elite who are the ones screaming loudest right now about Doge and cutbacks to things like NPR and PBS. This is what we're up against. This is what is standing in the way of us getting something important done, which is allowing the pursuit of truth to become the dominant mode of operation once again in our culture.

24:59 This stuff isn't actually all that new. When you look at the history of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, what you find is that this web, this intention, the desire of those in political power to control the narrative is at the absolute heart of it. The argument that gets made is that well, we need NPR and PBS because they represent a a missing voice in the marketplace. That has proven to be utterly ridiculous today because we have so much media choice. But at least when they were founded, we had limited spectrum. We had broadcast over the airwaves regulated by the FCC because it's hard to own the property of radio spectrum. And so you did have a common problem that the government stepped in to try to mitigate with the FCC. And that gave rise to government seeing itself as having a role in moderating fairness over the airways. This is where the fairness doctrine comes in on on broadcast news like ABC, CBS, and um I don't even remember them. I don't know who watches these things anymore. I don't. Regardless, there were three, but there were more than three actually. So, let's look back. What about the the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the CPB, which we should reiterate is a congressionally created corporation that directs about $500 million to both PBS and NPR every year. What have they said in response? The the head of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Pat Harrison, cited that fact that you just stated, which is that CPB was created by Congress, not by the White House. And so the the the executive office has no authority over their governance. In her statement, she went on to say, quote, "In creating CPB, Congress expressly forbade any department, agency, officer, or employee of the United States to exercise any direction, supervision, or control over educational television or radio broadcasting or over CPB or any of its grantees or contractors. This is false but this is equally scary. So this is the idea of this independent agency mindset that the government that our elected Congress somehow has been granted the power by a constitution that is mostly about what Congress shall not do to create entities that get funded perpetually with no oversight whatsoever. That is what she's asserting that there is no oversight that we just give the Corporation for Public Broadcasting the money and they can do whatever they want. And who is working for this uh permanently funded entity?

27:47 Well, we don't I I don't know. How do they get a how do they get into their roles? I don't know. I guess you start off by working for places like Wikipedia. This is a horrible idea. Th this is not independence in a way that makes any sense or is good for anybody. This is the dole. This is this is a permanent taxpayer screw job. But it's not even the true story because the true story is even more nefarious than this. And um um a buddy of mine, Trevor Burrus, wrote about this in great detail and in a link that we'll put over at dadsavesamerica.com where we'll put the links to all this stuff. He writes, "In fact, privately funded independent non-commercial television networks predate public broadcasting and our modern public broadcasting system was partially created to supplant them."

28:38 Like as so many things in our government, there was a private solution to creating alternative educational media. Uh there were more than one, but the largest was National Educational Television, which was created in 1952 with the Ford Foundation providing the lion's share of the funding. They were able to air hard-hitting, if not subversive, documentaries, including ones that criticized the Vietnam War. So, who didn't want this? Well, in this case, NE understood that government money was always going to come with strings. A mid1 1960s NE pamphlet explained how there would be a furer in Congress if a publicly funded entity presented a quote candid documentary on segregation or socialized medicine or birth control. Again, this was a left-wing org but still private and part of living in a free society and which is why NE is skewed government funding. When the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was created in 1967, President Johnson and then President Nixon hoped that a controlled CPB could put NET out of business. This is what this is all about. Control.

29:51 Putting alternative voices out of business. Controlling the narrative. A 1969 memo, this is really interesting, outlined the administration's goals. creating a new public media network to compete with more independent sources such as NE. That network could be controlled because the White House would quote have a hand in picking the head of such a major new organization if it were funded by the corporation. That major new organization became PBS. After PBS began broadcasting, NE was finished as a separate network. Some of its programs such as NE Journal and facilities, New York's WNET were picked up and maintained by PBS. The government swept in and crowded them out and then bought them up. That is what happened. That is the origins of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which created NPR and funds PBS. That's what's going on here. That's the story that nobody is actually talking about right now, that these entities are state-run media, the radical left monsters. In fact, when Elon first bought Twitter and took it over, he noted that NPR was government media and they took umbrage at this fact, which is strange because of course their name is National Public Radio. But this is the kind of double speak uh that you get out of the censorship industrial complex. This is the craziness that we have to put up with from people who pick our pockets to fill their coffers. This is not to say that everything done by PBS and NPR is terrible and completely untrustworthy.

31:42 It's not. Sometimes they even put uh free marketeteers like myself on the air. NewsHour economics correspondent Paul Salman has the wrap on the man behind the idea of government intervention in the economy. But thanks to the financial crisis and all the stimulus spending based on his theories, Kanes is back. This is big daddy. Perhaps bigger and better than ever. As in this educational ramp video from producer director John Pola and economist Russes wrote the book on modern macro.

32:16 So, I actually launched this video, Fear the Boom and Bust, initially before it went public, on this special on PBS NewsHour. In a lot of ways, I actually owe them a debt. Um, I I want these organizations not to die, but to be free, to be free from picking my pocket, to be free from the political winds, and to be truly independent organizations. That would be better. That would be the solution. The answer in these situations when you hear about the government cutting this or that when you hear about this or that being shut down it doesn't mean they have to go away. We know for a fact that there is a vibrant ecosystem of media out there. You know that is what we are trying to do here with this show and with our organization Emergent Order Foundation. And to that fact actually um we are actively producing alternative educational content one might say in a similar vein.

33:13 Here's a little preview of something coming out next week. Why hello there Greta. How are you? Can you share your point of view? How am I? Well, I'll tell you. You have stolen my dreams. It's true. People are suffering. People are dying. Selfish adults get rich by lying. Stealing our future. Sealing our fate. This is why I'm so I rape. Want to halt the devastation? Have less kids? Shrink population. Wait, you want less of me? Mom, I feel climbing anxiety. Now, now little sample of our upcoming rap battle about climate change. And in this case, you'll actually hear the other side of the story. This is the story that NPR and PBS love to tell. There is another side of that story, and that's the side that we get to tell as well. So, I hope you'll check that out. It'll be over over at our other YouTube channel, Radical Discourse. Um, if you want to dig into this history of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting or the debate going on here, um, head over to dadsavesamea.com. Check out the links.

34:17 They're all provided there. And, um, and let me know what you think in the comments. And of course, have a great weekend.