U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) is considering introducing legislation that would ban National Public Radio (NPR) from receiving federal funding, according to Fox News.
Blackburn’s consideration comes days after an editor for the publication, Uri Berliner, was suspended for publicly exposing the outlet’s left-wing bias among its newsroom.
Berliner resigned from NPR on Wednesday. He shared his resignation letter on X, which read:
I am resigning from NPR, a great American institution where I have worked for 25 years. I don’t support calls to defund NPR. I respect the integrity of my colleagues and wish for NPR to thrive and do important journalism. But I cannot work in a newsroom where I am disparaged by a new CEO whose divisive views confirm the very problems at NPR I cite in my Free Press essay.
Despite Berliner’s view that NPR should not be defunded, Fox News reports that Blackburn is “planning to propose new legislative action” that would threaten to cut the publication’s federal funding, which it receives through the form of grants from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB).
“The mainstream media has become obsessed with doing the Left’s bidding and taking down strong conservatives — and NPR has led the pack,” Blackburn said in a statement to Fox. “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.”
Wisconsin U.S. Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) has also mulled the idea of defunding NPR following Berliner’s suspension, saying that the editor’s suspension “shows how grotesquely partisan NPR has become.”
“I would really question: Why is the federal government funding such a partisan institution? We shouldn’t,” Johnson said.
In the U.S. House of Representatives, Texas Congressman Ronny Jackson (R-TX-13) introduced a bill last year called the No Partisan Radio and Partisan Broadcasting Services Act that would defund both NPR and PBS.
Jackson renewed his call for lawmakers to pass his bill on Wednesday.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
Photo “Marsha Blackburn” by Marsha Blackburn. Background Photo “NPR Building” by Aude. CC BY 2.5.
