- Voters want to pull the plug on tax dollar flows to public broadcaster
- Most Republican voters say NPR should lose federal support for biased news
- READ MORE: NPR journalist blows whistle on network's obsession with DEI
Voters by a wide margin seek action against National Public Radio (NPR) after a whistleblower last month came forward and accused the station of liberal-biased news coverage, a poll shows.
Fully 44 percent of respondents to a DailyMail.com/TIPP survey said the broadcaster should lose its taxpayer cashflows over its political leaning.
Another 26 percent of more than 1,400 US adults said it should keep its government support; and 31 percent said they were not sure.
NPR was rocked last month when one of its senior editors, Uri Berliner, accused his employer of overly woke news coverage, with a fixation on stories about race and identity.
In an open essay for The Free Press, the 25-year NPR veteran slammed it for being heavily dominated by Democrats, sidelining conservative voices, and for having 'lost America's trust.'
NPR devoted ample coverage to claims of then-president Donald Trump being a Russian asset, but held back on stories about Hunter Biden's laptop and the Covid lab leak theory, Berliner said.
Meanwhile, historic tweets from NPR's new chief executive Katherine Maher resurfaced, in which she embraced liberal causes, praised leading Democrats Black Lives Matter protestors and called Trump a 'racist.'
Berliner later resigned, saying he had faced criticism from Maher.
Republicans reacted angrily to the revelations, saying they confirmed long-held fears about NPR.
Trump on social media called the broadcaster a 'LIBERAL DISINFORMATION MACHINE.'
'NO MORE FUNDING FOR NPR, A TOTAL SCAM!' he posted.
NPR directly receives 1 percent of its budget from taxpayers — but gets many more times that indirectly through its local member stations, says the American Enterprise Institute, a center-right think tank.
New York Republican lawmaker Claudia Tenney distilled these concerns into a bill, the Defund NPR Act of 2024, which says no taxpayer dollars can be 'directly or indirectly' sent to the radio network.
The network had become a 'partisan propaganda machine,' Tenney said.
There are few signs that the bill could make it into law.
The Oversight and Investigations subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee held a hearing on May 8 about alleged biases in the public broadcaster's coverage.
Our survey of 1,435 adults reveals widespread support for defunding NPR.
Men, people aged 65 and above, and adults aged under 25, are especially keen on cutting federal cashflows to the broadcaster.
Perhaps understandably, there is a strong partisan leaning — more than half of Republican voters want to cut NPR's funding, compared to just a third of Democrats.
The nationwide survey has a +/-2.7 percent error margin. It was carried out earlier this month by TIPP, which has been noted for the accuracy of its polls.
ICYMI
