Let’s Stop Paying for Propaganda

Perhaps using taxpayer money to fund our own softcore version of Pravda is not the way to go?

Imagine you live on the 99^th floor of a 100-story apartment building which, for reasons unknown, has an elevator that only goes up to floor 50. Every day after work, you come home and exhaustedly trudge flight after flight up to your floor—cursing the elevator, your landlord and the occupants of every floor you pass on the way. One day, examining your utilities bill, you notice it includes a recurring ‘Elevator Service Fee’. The blood drains from your face. Since living in this hellish skyscraper, you’ve been paying for a service which, not only can you not use, but which has become the symbolic bane of your daily existence, taunting you ever more devilishly with each stair climbed.

It may surprise you to learn that the schmuck in this diabolical fantasy, is you. Also me.

What I’m referring to, of course, is the public fraud known as the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (‘CPB’), and the fact that, for decades, we—the American taxpayer—have been paying to have bias and propaganda pumped down our own throats.

Just like the useless elevator in the hypo, the CPB provides a ‘communal service’ that only serves half the community that funds it (at best), and serves only to infuriate and antagonize the other half.

The CPB

In 1967, President Lyndon Johnson created the CPB, a publicly funded corporation designed to “ensure universal access to non-commercial, high-quality content and telecommunications services.” The idea was for the CPB to act as a kind of middle-man—distributing federal funds to public broadcasting stations to produce objective, informational programming. In 1969, the CPB formed a public television network, the Public Broadcasting Service (‘PBS’), and in 1970 a network of radio stations, National Public Radio (‘NPR’). Each year, the CPB distributes Congressional funds to PBS and NPR for the informational benefit of the American public…

The problem is that (you guessed it) for years, programming on PBS and NPR has shifted ever further left. Indeed, the intoxicating bias from these so-called ‘public utilities’ has long since alienated half the country, with studies from as far back as 2011 showing NPR and PBS already had “among the bigger partisan gaps in believability”… and that was before the Trump era.

And, in case you were wondering, this isn’t just about perception—the substantive bias truly is as bad as we say. So bad, in fact, that it essentially nullifies any useful information these stations may still provide. During last year’s election cycle, PBS and NPR were oft-used channels for the “Trump is a threat to democracy” line, while presenting Kamala as a refreshing, stable politician who was actually kind of moderate! And it’s only getting worse. Take NPR for example. Just over a decade ago, 26% of NPR listeners identified as conservative. Today, this number is down to just 11% (most of whom we can safely assume are RINOs and/or masochists).

Perhaps the most galling aspect of this propaganda-crusade is that it’s clearly intentional. Last year, Katherine Mahr, NPR’s new CEO, had the temerity to claim that NPR’s “reverence for the truth” was a “distraction … preventing us from finding consensus and getting important things done.” I’m not sure what Ms. Mahr thinks her job is, but it certainly doesn’t seem to be CEO of a publicly-funded informational utility.

So yes, any percentage of my Federal Income Tax Withholding devoted to these propagandists is a huge, proverbial slap in the face. But it’s not just that. It’s also a real problem that has contributed to the erosion of trust in our media and in our government. Not because NPR and PBS are cultural behemoths that control the flow of news (they aren’t/don’t), but because government funding means something. Or at least, it should. The fact we are devoting taxpayer money to this enterprise provides a veneer of objectivity and seriousness to these corporations—one they no longer deserve. The label ‘public radio’ suggests a journalistic neutrality which is belied by statistics showing 71% of Americans believe NPR leans left, while only 9% believe it leans right. And these beliefs appear well-founded, as our ‘neutral broadcasters’ have generally taken the Leftist side of practically every issue. In October 2020, PBS labeled the Hunter Biden Laptop story “Russian disinformation”, while NPR said even airing the story would be a “waste of time”. We now know that suppression of the Laptop Story had a sizeable impact on Joe Biden’s victory in that year’s election. But it was a waste of NPR’s precious time.

This is the sound of your tax dollars hard at work, folks.

Tonight’s the Night?

Despite every Republican President for the last 50 years attempting to dissolve or reform public broadcasting, these efforts have failed in large part due to CPB lobbyist groups. Every time Congress looks like it might fix this broken structure, some weak Republican Congressman with a corporate lobbyist in his ear swoops in to vote across the aisle and rescue the CPB.

To save face with their constituents, these Republican holdouts are typically armed with a ready-made excuse for voting to preserve the CPB. The latest such example is the claim that public broadcasting stations play “crucial roles” in supplying information and emergency alert services to “news deserts”—rural parts of the country that wouldn’t receive news or emergency broadcasts if not for publicly-funded local stations. And just like that, defunding the CPB becomes a safety issue. We know full well there are countless ways to provide emergency broadcasts to remote areas without having to fund a corrupt media landscape. But ironically, the liberal media stranglehold has allowed these types of ‘soft lies’ to go unchecked for years.

What’s Changed?

We know Congress remains rife with weak-kneed Republicans who, as we were reminded this week, are more than willing to vote against party lines. So won’t they just vote to preserve the CPB once again, using the public safety claim as a red herring?

Well, whether it’s the Trump Effect or the demise of Mainstream Media, these sleight of hand tricks aren’t catching us out like they used to. For example, in previous years, major California fires would’ve fueled a month-long, overdramatized Climate Discussion (despite being a relative non-sequitur). In 2025, the fires have instead sparked the real possibility of a shift in Californian politics.

These developments are emblematic of the broad attitude shift we’ve experienced since the election. Conservatives and John Fetterman alike suddenly feel empowered to stand their ground on common sense issues—ignoring the media narrative altogether. No longer are we forced to accept the media’s preferred (leftist) framing of every issue. Dan Bongino has coined this tactic Rock ‘em Sock ‘em Politics. I call it fairness. Whatever you call it, it feels like the country is waking from a decades-long haze, in which we were forced to play a rigged game we never signed up for. It’s our game now.

WDRC!

This attitude shift is precisely why this clip of VP Vance’s interview with Margaret Brennan went so viral this week. Discussing the dangers of allowing unvetted Afghan immigrants into the country, Brennan constantly attempts to split hairs and reframe the issue in her favor. Vance finally stops her and replies, now famously: “I don’t really care, Margaret.” He then proceeds to reassert the bottom line (that there’s good reason to believe continuing Biden’s refugee policy would compromise National Security). Rather than getting bogged down in Margaret’s semantics, Vance gets to the very heart of the matter—refusing to even entertain the skewed framing he was given. Case closed.

Like Vance, we need to cut through the obfuscation and refuse to accept anything less than the CPB’s full-scale dissolution. The bottom line is there’s absolutely no reason for $575million of taxpayer money to be annually re-routed to a partisan propaganda enterprise. None.

The good news is that there will shortly be an opportunity to put an end to this fraud. In 2024, the House Appropriations Committee voted to remove federal funding for the CPB, but this was never put to a full House vote. In February, a new appropriations bill will be made publicly available—expect the defunding of the CPB to be a major topic of discussion.

When this discussion does arise, there are two actions we should all take. Firstly, email your Congressional representatives and explain that we will not tolerate another compromise on the CPB. Either it’s gone or they are. (Enter your zip code here to find your representatives’ contact info).

Secondly, as soon as you see the headline that will inevitably be parroted by the likes of Margaret Brennan and co. (“Republicans Willing to Jeopardize Safety of Their Own Constituents to Censor Speech”)—take a deep breath and double-down.

“We don’t really care anymore, Margaret.”

And it feels good.