The Katherine Maher case for defunding NPR

Taxpayers should have stopped funding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting long ago, but National Public Radio CEO Katherine Maher’s cowardly, disingenuous, and dishonest testimony before Congress on March 26 must surely convince reluctant lawmakers that now is the time to cut the cord.

Long before Maher took the helm, defenders of NPR and the Public Broadcasting Service have always played a disingenuous game regarding taxpayer support. On the one hand, these organizations claim that federal funding makes up just a tiny part of their overall budgets. But then they turn around and say taxpayer money is essential to what they do.

The reality is that CPB direct payments to NPR and PBS are small. But also CPB gives hundreds of millions in smaller grants to local

Continue reading