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NPR's Katherine Maher and PBS's Paula Kerger are sworn in at a hearing of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency in Washington, DC, on March 26, 2025.
Congress grills NPR and PBS over alleged bias
On Wednesday, NPR’s CEO and President Katherine Maher, along with PBS CEO and President Paula Kerger, testified before the House Oversight Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency, where they faced accusations of left-wing bias. At stake: the $535 million they receive from Congress through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
This subcommittee, chaired by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, was established as a counterpart to Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. The public media outlets were accused of spreading misinformation, focusing too much on stories about transgender people, and being biased against the president.
The outlets tried to shift the focus to their non-political content. PBS highlighted much of its programming geared toward education, in particular at preparing preschool-aged children who may not be able to afford daycare to enter school. NPR pointed to the critical role local radio plays during natural disasters – particularly in rural and remote areas – and argued that it was key to keeping local news alive since it is the only news outlet with a network of nearly 3,000 local journalists. Maher also said she regretted past tweets disparaging Trump and that the station made mistakes covering the Hunter Biden laptop story.
But their arguments didn’t seem to convince Republicans, with many saying that the rise of podcasts makes NPR less vital for getting news to rural areas than it was in the past. “I don’t think they should get a penny of federal funds,” said Congressman James Comer. We will be watching whether public media maintains its funding in the budget Republicans are working on over the coming weeks.Fmr. U.S. President Donald Trump delivers remarks on the day of his court appearance in New York after being indicted by a Manhattan grand jury. Photo taken in Palm Beach, Florida, U.S., April 4, 2023.
Hard Numbers: Trump leads early, NPR & PBS quit Twitter, stopgap for Darien, global warming juices baseballs
49.3: FiveThirtyEight launched its national polling averages for the 2024 Republican presidential race this week, and Donald Trump leads the pack with 49.3% support. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis trails well behind with 26.2%, while fmr. VP Mike Pence and fmr. UN ambassador Nikki Haley are at 5.8% and 4.3%, respectively. Research finds that national polls done a year ahead of the election can reasonably predict the nominee.
2: NPR will stop posting on Twitter, becoming the first major outlet to ditch the bluebird since the platform began labeling news orgs that receive government funding as “state-affiliated media.” That designation is normally applied to outlets in autocratic countries that allow no editorial independence. Twitter CEO Elon Musk recently told the BBC (another “state-affiliated” media outlet) that he may change the label to “publicly funded.” PBS followed NPR's lead on Wednesday, so two major US media outlets have now said "bye-bye birdie."
88,000: The US, Panama, and Colombia are launching a two-month campaign to stem the northward flow of migrants across the perilous Darien Gap, which spans the Colombian-Panamanian border. Since January, more than 88,000 people have braved the crossing, over six times the number from the same period last year.
1: Did the Sports Almanac account for this? A recent study analyzing the past six decades of baseball and temperature data finds that thinner air from global warming accounted for 1% of home runs from 2010-2019. The number is expected to jump to 10% by 2100 – though the data is inconclusive on whether this can help the Mets.
Is the GOP still a MAGA party? Or just Trump's party?
There's a lot of hand-wringing going on right now within Republican ranks after the GOP's worse than expected midterm results.
The big question is: Is the Republican party still the party of Trump? NPR White House correspondent Tamara Keith tells Ian Bremmer that there may be no going back to what the party used to be.
"There's just a lot of people in the Republican party who don't see themselves going back to the nice, polite Mitch McConnell, Bob Dole Republican Party," Keith says in this week's episode of GZERO World.
Why? A lot of it has to do with how voters have become as polarized as the candidates they're electing.