Below is my column in the Hill on the termination of funding for National Public Radio. Now that we have ended government-sponsored media, the question is whether the media will cease acting like a state media. The good news is that the market could force a correction that the media has largely refused to make.
Here is the column:
With the final elimination of public funding for National Public Radio as part of a $9 billion savings package, the era of the American state media will technically come to an end. However, what makes for state media is not state support alone.
So, the state media is dead — long live the state media.
That variation of the traditional mourning cry of the British monarchy will be heard more in whispers than proclamations this week in Washington. The government subsidy for NPR has long been a subject of controversy. Many opposed NPR for its open bias in reporting news, a record that thrilled the left and outraged many on the right. Just before the final vote, NPR CEO Katherine Maher gave another interview that left many agape. She denied any such bias and asked whether anyone could point to a single story that showed a political or ideological slant.
Ignoring a myriad of such examples, Maher then went from defiant to delusional, insisting that NPR was trying hard to “understand those criticisms.”
It was a bit late for Maher to feign surprise or confusion, particularly as a CEO whose selection to take over the struggling NPR many of us opposed. Her glaring and overt bias did not seem like the antidote to NPR’s shrinking audience and revenue. In 2024, NPR had a window to actually “understand” the criticism and make adjustments. Instead, it treated the government subsidy as an entitlement, backed by Democratic members in Congress. The board would have done better to select a neutral journalist. Instead, it doubled down, hiring a candidate with a long record of far-left public statements against Republicans, Trump, and others.
This is the same CEO who attacked respected senior editor Uri Berliner when he tried to get NPR to address its bias and restore greater balance on the staff. Berliner noted that NPR’s Washington headquarters has 87 registered Democrats among its editors and zero Republicans.
Maher slammed the award-winning Berliner for his “affront to the individual journalists who work incredibly hard.” She called his criticism “profoundly disrespectful, hurtful, and demeaning.” Berliner resigned after noting how Maher’s “divisive views confirm the very problems at NPR” that he had been pointing out.
But I have argued that NPR’s well-established bias and publication of baseless conspiracy theories are not the real reasons for taking away its federal funding. The truth is, NPR represented an embrace of a state media model used in other countries that Americans thoroughly reject.
Maher bizarrely tried to rally support for government funding by insisting that we must “keep the government out” of the media. Congress just did precisely that by clawing back NPR’s funding.
The government has occasionally supported the media, but generally to benefit all media outlets. For example, in 1791, Madison declared that Congress had an obligation to improve the “circulation of newspapers through the entire body of the people” and sponsored the Post Office Act of 1791, giving newspapers reduced postage rates.
Notably, those same Democrats in Congress who decried the reduction of funding for NPR would have revolted over funding for more successful radio outlets, such as Fox Radio. Indeed, some of the same members had previously pushed cable carriers to consider dropping Fox News, the most popular cable news channel.
What Congress did with prior funding of a single preferred media outlet was wrong. Liberals and Democrats fought to protect the funding even though NPR’s shrinking audience is now overwhelmingly white, affluent, and liberal.
However, the end of government subsidies will not necessarily mean the end of an effective state media. As I noted in my book “The Indispensable Right,” we have seen how the media can create the same effect as state media by consent rather than coercion. For years, media outlets have echoed the same party line, including burying negative stories and repeating debunked stories. Actual readers and listeners abandoned the mainstream media in droves. “Let’s Go Brandon” became a national mantra mocking journalists for their inability even to see and hear if the sights and sounds don’t fit their preconceived narratives.
Just as Maher has expressed utter confusion on how anyone could view NPR as biased, these editors and journalists will cling to the same advocacy journalism, rejecting the principles of objectivity and neutrality. However, there is still one hope for restoring traditional journalism: the market.
Now that NPR is off the public dole, it will have to compete fairly with other radio outlets for audiences and revenue. It is free to alienate most listeners who have center-right viewpoints, but it will have to sustain itself on a smaller share of the market.
Other outlets are facing the same dire choice. Recently, the Post encouraged writers and editors to leave if they were unwilling to get on board with a new direction at the newspaper. Previously, Washington Post publisher and CEO Will Lewis had told his writers that the newspaper was experiencing massive losses in readers and revenues because “no one is reading your stuff.” It triggered a revolt on the staff, which would have rather run the paper into insolvency than return to objectivity and neutrality.
The same preference was seen with the cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s late-night show. What had been David Letterman’s formidable program had become a shrill echo chamber for the far left as Colbert engaged in nightly and mostly unfunny diatribes against Trump and Republicans. As its ratings and revenues fell, Colbert was unmoved. At the same time, Fox’s Greg Gutfeld continued to crush the competition as viewers abandoned CBS and other broadcast networks.
The year’s second-quarter ratings showed Fox News’s “Gutfeld!” drawing an average of three million viewers. Gutfeld’s more conservative takes on news remain unique among these late-night shows. In comparison, “The Late Show” with Stephen Colbert came in second last quarter with an average 2.42 million viewers, despite being a far more costly program.
As liberals expressed outrage over the cancellation and alleged that CBS’s owner, Paramount, was seeking to garner favor with the Trump Administration, even CNN admitted that the show under Colbert had become “unfortunately unprofitable.” Colbert’s show was reportedly losing $40 million a year with a bloated staff and declining audience.
Paramount issued a statement insisting that Colbert’s cancelation was “not related in any way to the show’s performance.” Perhaps, but media companies are hardly in the habit of cancelling profitable, high-performing programming.
Ultimately, the market is correcting what the media would not. Roughly half of this country is center-right, and 77 million people voted for Trump. They are turning to social media and new media rather than remain a captive audience to a biased legacy media committed to advocacy journalism.
As media outlets fail, there may also be more pressure on journalism schools to return to core principles rather than crank out social justice warriors no one wants to read or hear from.
In the meantime, Maher and NPR can continue to stay the course and try to make up in pledge drives what they lost in public subsidies. However, the whole thing will now have to pay for itself without passing along costs to the rest of the non-listening country.
The Associated Press reported last week that federal officials are preparing to deploy state-employed hunters to kill nearly half a million owls across the Pacific Northwest in the name of “conservation.”
“U.S. wildlife officials are embracing a contentious plan to deploy trained shooters into dense West Coast forests to kill almost a half-million barred owls that are crowding out their cousins,” the AP reported. “Documents released by the agency show up to about 450,000 barred owls would be shot over three decades after the birds from the eastern U.S. encroached into the West Coast territory of two owls: northern spotted owls and California spotted owls.”
The Fish and Wildlife Service is targeting owls across Oregon, Washington, and California. According to an agency press release, no public hunting of the barred owls will be permitted while the government carries out the mass execution of roughly half a million birds. Only certain indigenous tribes, government agencies, and select companies and landowners will be granted permission to “implement barred owl management” under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.
“Barred owl removal, like all invasive species management, is not something the Service takes lightly,” said Service Oregon Office state supervisor Kessina Lee. “The Service has a legal responsibility to do all it can to prevent the extinction of the federally listed northern spotted owl and support its recovery, while also addressing significant threats to California spotted owls.”
“The notion of killing one bird species to save another has divided wildlife advocates and conservationists,” the AP reported. “It’s reminiscent of past government efforts to save West Coast salmon by killing sea lions and cormorants that prey on the fish, and to preserve warblers by killing cowbirds that lay eggs in warbler nests.”
The government’s owl program is also reminiscent of far-left environmental efforts to compromise traditional views in pursuit of favored policy goals, such as the destruction of forests and farmlands for solar fields or the possible killing of whales for offshore wind projects. A Harvard study reported last year “thousands of acres of forests, farms, and other carbon-rich landscapes are being converted to host large-scale solar,” driving up emissions as a result. And according to National Review, nine whales washed up on a beach in New Jersey last year, with another 22 humpback whales stranded between December 2022 and March 2023.
“More than 180 of the animals have washed ashore dead between Maine and Virginia since offshore-wind-energy development began in 2016,” the magazine reported. “And those that have washed ashore may only represent a small portion of those that have died.”
Massive wind operations have also been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of birds, including federally protected species. According to the AP, federal officials under then-President Donald Trump “stripped habitat protections for spotted owls at the behest of the timber industry.”
“Those were reinstated under President Joe Biden after the Interior Department said political appointees under Trump relied on faulty science to justify their weakening of protections,” the wire reported.
Trump’s director for the Bureau of Land Management, William Perry Pendley, called the charge “nonsense” in an interview with The Federalist.
“That’s the common accusation,” Pendley said of the “faulty science” label slapped on the Trump administration’s environmental agenda, adding “I don’t have any confidence” in the assessment.
Concerns over the spotted owl, Pendley explained, were used as a political instrument to terminate timber contracts throughout the Pacific Northwest. “So-called experts had to shut down timber harvesting,” Pendley said, and they “killed all those communities” as a result.
A 2013 article in National Public Radio (NPR) titled, “Loss of Timber Payments Cuts Deep in Oregon,” chronicled the hardships faced by residents of hollowed-out timber towns. In Josephine County, the sheriff, who was forced to lay off 80 percent of deputies, warned victims of domestic violence in a press release to “consider relocating to an area with adequate law enforcement services.”
Now, bureaucrats in the Biden administration have pivoted from blaming the timber industry on the “threatened” status of the spotted owl to pointing the finger at a rival species. “A few years ago, these experts were saying ‘it’s logging,’” Pendley said. “Nobody was saying ‘maybe it was logging’ or ‘maybe it was the barred owl.’ Now they’re saying ‘oh sorry, my bad.’”
“It’s so unnecessary what they did to the logging industry,” Pendley said.
According to the American Bird Conservancy, just 15,000 spotted owls remain in the wild, and their population is trending downward. Pendley said officials lack numbers, however, on how many spotted owls are living in federally protected wilderness areas safe from logging, such as national parks. When career officials in the administrative state were pressed several decades ago on the number of owls required to save the species, the question was met with the denial of a “magic number.”
Pendley was succeeded at the Bureau of Land Management by Tracy Stone-Manning, a virulent opponent of the timber industry who lied about her participation in a 1989 tree spiking case during her confirmation process. Tree spiking consists of inserting metal rods into trees. The rods then become deadly projectiles when the trees are processed in the mill. While intended to intimidate workers in the timber industry, spiked trees have also injured firefighters hastily working to extinguish blazes. Tree spiking was used by left-wing radicals as a form of ecoterrorism in the 1980s and 1990s.
Stone-Manning took a plea deal with prosecutors in exchange for cooperation in the case, which the lead investigator on the case characterized as “extremely difficult.”
Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist and the author of Social Justice Redux, a conservative newsletter on culture, health, and wellness. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com. Sign up for Tristan’s email newsletter here.
The government-funded pundits at National Propaganda Radio (NPR) seem to have a toxic fixation with race.
On Tuesday, the outlet blamed the success of American country music on racial prejudice. In a podcast episode titled“How racism became a marketing tool for country music,” NPR brought on a historian to outline the myriad ways country music is a vehicle for white supremacy. The host, Britany Luse, introduces the episode by previewing questions to Amanda Martinez, a country music historian at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. Luse wants to know “how country music became this symbol of racism” and why country music stars remain popular despite artists who currently lead the charts “peddling racist rhetoric today.”
“Is racism really what it takes make country music number one?” Luse asks. “I wanted to know how country music became this symbol of racism.”
The episode went to air over recent allegations of racism against country music stars currently at the top of the charts. Jason Aldean’s recent number-one hit, “Try That In A Small Town,” drew controversy over the suggestion that inner-city riots such as the record-devastating outbursts that erupted in 2020 wouldn’t be tolerated outside major metropolitan areas. Aldean didn’t try to hide the message, as if he even needed to.
“That sh-t may fly in the city. Good luck trying that in a small town.”
“Unfortunately, I think that these three very successful songs at the top of the charts only encourages the country music business to continue what it’s always done,” Martinez said, “which is making a product for a white conservative base.”
Aldean, Martinez added, is “calling for a suppression of those calls for greater freedoms” embedded in the 2020 riots.
According to NPR, the song is racist because of its condemnation of deadly uprisings brought about by Black Lives Matter under the righteous banner of social justice.
The podcast host also brought up Morgan Wallen, because he used the N-word one time, and Luke Combs, because the song that has him in the number three spot is apparently adapted from a black queer woman. While social justice warriors might otherwise be flattered by Combs’ tribute to 1988 Grammy winner Tracy Chapman, the cancellers have to see victimization in everything, so they manufacture a narrative about race so they can continue to label everything “white supremacist.” NPR has now decoded country music as a primary pillar of systemic racism, courtesy of the taxpayer.
“I think we’re continuing to see conservatives kind of hold up country music as supposedly morally superior to an alternative, youth-oriented black popular music,” said Martinez.
But let’s examine the obscenity that’s come to define rap music.
“Fukumean,” currently the number one rap song in the country by Gunna, is an anthem about the rapper’s own superiority and unapologetic determination to stay at the top of the social hierarchy.
F-cking this b-tchh like a perv, smack from the back, grab her perm. Ice the burr, sh-tin’ on all you lil’ turds.
In 2020, Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s “WAP,” which stands for “Wet A– P-ssy,” topped the Billboard charts for at least four weeks. The lyrics are so obscene that they are not suitable for publication. Readers can read them here.
But more specifically, let’s examine some rap lyrics about Jews. In 1989, a militant rap group called Public Enemy released “Welcome to the Terrordome.” The lyrics read, “Crucifixion ain’t no fiction: so-called chosen, frozen/Apology made to whoever pleases. Still, they got me like Jesus,” followed by “Backstabbed, grabbed a flag from the back of the lab, told the ‘rab, get off the rag.”
In 2017, Jay-Z’s “Story of O.J.” played on Jewish stereotypes of financial dominance.
You wanna know what’s more important than throwin’ away money at a strip club? Credit. You ever wonder why Jewish people own all the property in America? This how they did it.
Rap music has also mocked Arabs and Asians. Ice Cube released “Black Korea” in 1991, deriding “funky little stores” run by Asian-Americans.
Every time I wanna go get a f-ckin’ brew I gotta go down to the store with the two Oriental one penny countin’ motherf-ckers that make a n-gga mad enough to cause a little ruckus … Pay respect to the fist or we’ll burn your store, right down to a crisp.
Now let’s look at some of the commentary from NPR celebrating the genre. In June 2020, NPR published a list of 50 songs deemed significant to black history that they claim “lift music itself” and represent the “spirit of resistance” against racial injustices. To NPR, rap music represents a revolutionary response in support of a righteous cause, and country music represents the worst elements of American racism.
NPR’s Pattern Of Divisive Coverage
The racial lens through which NPR produces coverage has driven the government outlet to produce some bizarre takes on race. In the summer of 2020, NPR flat-out invented a racist crime altogether.
“Rightwing extremists are turning cars into weapons, with reports of 50 vehicle-ramming incidents since protests erupted nationwide in late May,” NPR tweeted. The story featured an image of a Buick sedan surrounded by demonstrators. Local coverage of the incident revealed it was the protestors, not the driver, who will face charges after the altercation. It was the driver who was assaulted by armed rioters.
Just two weeks prior, the outlet published commentary that called on followers to begin “decolonizing your bookshelf.” NPR claimed it was “Republican leaders” the following year who were trying to “ban books.”
In essence, "decolonizing your bookshelf" is about actively resisting and casting aside the colonialist ideas of narrative, storytelling, and literature that have pervaded the American psyche for so long, says @itsjuanlove. https://t.co/pbSBx8Z4So
Guests on NPR in 2020 also declared the George Floyd riots “‘Acts of Rebellion’ Instead Of Riots” and authored books on the “Defense of Looting.” In the “All Things Considered” podcast that same year, host Sacha Pfeiffer characterized then-President Donald Trump’s initiative to promote patriotic education as an exercise in “cultural division.” Federalist Editor Joy Pullmann reported the comment came after Trump said this:
We must clear away the twisted web of lies in our schools and classrooms and teach our children the magnificent truth about our country. We want our sons and daughters to know that they are the citizens of the most exceptional nation in the history of the world
In 2019, an NPR affiliate also decried struggling to pronounce foreign names as “racist.”
If someone wanted to incite a race war, they would pull from the NPR playbook, inserting an element of racial animus into every story. The pattern of coverage from the taxpayer-funded outlet reveals an agenda on race that’s far more corrosive to national discourse than if Aldean had even tossed the N-word into his number-one hit.
Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist and the author of Social Justice Redux, a conservative newsletter on culture, health, and wellness. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com. Sign up for Tristan’s email newsletter here.
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American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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