NY Times compares defunding NPR to progressive ‘excesses’ of defund the police, abolish ICE movements
The New York Times compared the GOP’s push to cut federal funding for public news stations to some of the most radical left-wing defund movements in a new editorial.
The liberal editorial board slammed conservatives on Wednesday for trying to defund NPR and PBS as an excessive one, that can be compared to the defund the police and abolish ICE movements.
“We are reminded of the excesses of the ‘defund the police’ and ‘abolish ICE’ movements on the other side of the ideological spectrum. They adopted a fatalistic view of vital government services, suggesting that their imperfections justified their elimination,” the board wrote. “They were wrong, and so are the conservatives who want to defund public media.”
The Times published the editorial on the same day that the U.S. Senate is set to vote on President Donald Trump’s $9 billion rescission package, a bill set to cut shy of $8 billion from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and over $1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), the government-backed funding arm for NPR and PBS.
Trump and Republicans have made the case for the cuts, saying they are scraping back funding for “woke” programs. NPR and PBS have other funding mechanisms besides the government, including grants and individual and corporate contributors, but proponents have said cutting federal funding could be ruinous.
The Times board said the cuts would leave many U.S. communities less informed.
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“If the rescission bill becomes law, hundreds of cities and towns, especially those outside major metropolitan areas, will be affected. Nearly one in five NPR member stations could close down without federal funding, one analysis found. Listeners in the Midwest, South and West would be the hardest hit, becoming less informed about their communities,” the board wrote.
The editorial board acknowledged concerns about liberal bias in public news are justified. However, it argued that the potential cuts might not have much of an impact on the content at NPR.
“Republicans complain, not always wrongly, that public media reflects left-leaning assumptions and biases,” the editorial board wrote. “And they can fairly tell NPR and PBS to do a better job of reflecting the citizenry that is subsidizing them. Yet the ‘national’ part of NPR (or National Public Radio, as it used to call itself) that chafes conservatives may well be just fine without federal funds.”
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White House spokesperson Harrison Fields told Fox News Digital that the editorial board are “blowhards” that are “utterly out of touch.”
“The sanctimonious blowhards at the New York Times Editorial Board are utterly out of touch, and their comparison of cutting taxpayer funds to leftist media organizations with cutting funds for law enforcement officers is jaw-dropping,” he said. “Democrat paper-pushers masquerading as reporters don’t deserve taxpayer subsidies, and contrary to what the Democrats believe, funding police is common sense. However, that would require Democrats to embrace commonsense ideas.”
Fox News Digital’s Alex Miller contributed to this report.
