Bozell: It's Time For Congress To Stop Using American Taxpayer Money to Fund Left-Wing Propaganda

Alexandria, VA – Today the Media Research Center (MRC) releases a comprehensive compilation of the 20 most memorable leftist excesses of the Public Broadcasting System and National Public Radio following a proposal in the draft Fiscal Year 2012 Labor, Health and Human Services Funding Bill that would prohibit Corporation for Public Broadcasting funds to support National Public Radio (NPR), and requests a report from CPB on how to wean NPR off of federal funds by fiscal year 2014.

'Their officials claim fairness and balance, but PBS's and NPR's smugness toward the American middle class, Christians, and conservatives is documented and ongoing,' said Brent Bozell, president of the MRC. 'It's an outrage that federal money has been an enabler for NPR and PBS since 1967 in their efforts to undermine conservatives and Christians. In this current era of huge deficits, surely this is the most non-essential spending. The pattern of bias from PBS hosts and contributors is more than severe. Now is the time for Congress to finally put an end to it.'

Some of the 20 instances in the MRC's report on NPR & PBS include:

  • PBS host Tavis Smiley insists America has a terrible Christian terrorist problem. In 2010, he told an author that Christians blow up people 'every day' in the United States.
  • NPR reporter Nina Totenberg wishes Jesse Helms death from AIDS. When Helms insisted in 1995 that AIDS drew a disproportionate amount of federal funding, Totenberg was disproportionately mean-spirited.
  • PBS regular Julianne Malveaux hopes Clarence Thomas dies young of heart disease. On the talk show To the Contrary in 1994, panelist Malveaux proclaimed, 'I hope his wife feeds him lots of eggs and butter and he dies early like many black men do, of heart disease.'
  • Longtime PBS host Bill Moyers proclaims GOP officials wearing flag pins after 9/11 remind him of communist China. On his weekly show Now in 2003, Moyers ranted, 'When I see flags sprouting on official lapels, I think of the time in China when I saw Mao's Little Red Book.'

Read the full MRC report, "Counting the Reasons to Defund: The 20 Most Memorable Leftist Excesses of Public Broadcasting"

Download the PDF of the full report (20 pages, plus a 2-page executive summary)