As Republicans Denounce NPR and PBS, Democrats Mock Hearing (2025)

Congressional Republicans laced into PBS and NPR on Wednesday, accusing the country’s biggest public media networks of institutional bias in a fiery hearing that functioned as the latest salvo against the American press by close allies of the Trump administration.

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia Republican who organized the hearing — which she called “Anti-American Airwaves” — derided PBS and NPR as “radical left-wing echo chambers” that published skewed news reports and indoctrinated children with L.G.B.T.Q. programming.

In her opening remarks at Wednesday’s hearing on public media, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene accused PBS of using “taxpayer funds to push some of the most radical left positions like featuring a drag queen on the show.”

The Republican from Georgia pointed at a photo of Lil Miss Hot Mess, a drag queen, calling her a “monster.”

And that’s a wrap! The most noteworthy revelation from today’s hearing appears to be Katherine Maher’s admission that NPR’s leadership acknowledges it made mistakes in its coverage of the Hunter Biden laptop story. She also said that she regretted some of her previous tweets about President Trump.

Supporters of public media seem to be breathing a sigh of relief about two hours into the hearing. One longtime public media executive texted me to say that neither chief executive had made a major error yet.

Under questioning by Representative Tim Burchett, Republican from Tennessee, Katherine Maher, who became NPR’s leader last year, said she regretted her 2020 tweets describing President Trump as a “racist” and “sociopath.”

Katherine Maher said NPR’s failure to cover the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop prior to her tenure was wrong, adding, “Our current editorial leadership thinks that was a mistake, as do I.”

Some back-and-forth here between Rep. William Timmons, a Republican from South Carolina, and PBS’s Paula Kerger. At issue was “Drag Queen Story Hour,” a digital segment featuring drag queens reading stories to children. Kerger said that the segment never aired on PBS and was removed after it was mistakenly added to its website.

We are a little over an hour in, and today’s hearing has unfolded along predictably partisan lines. Marjorie Taylor Greene has derided the leaders of PBS and NPR as overseers of “radical left-wing echo chambers” that publish skewed news reports and indoctrinate children with L.G.B.T.Q. programming. Democratic committee members have mocked the hearing as a craven partisan exercise and tried to shift focus onto the Trump administration, including the revelation that top security officials inadvertently included the editor of The Atlantic on a group chat planning a military operation. PBS and NPR’s leaders have been mostly calm, denying claims of bias and arguing that their stations are a crucial source of accurate information for Americans, particularly those who live in rural areas.

Mike Gonzalez, the senior fellow from the Heritage Foundation, said that “Sesame Street” was “sold” to HBO several years ago. That is not correct. Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit that produces “Sesame Street,” licensed that program to HBO. But that deal has now ended, and Sesame Workshop is trying to line up another streaming deal. My colleague John Koblin has a great story about that here.

Some choice quotes from Representative Robert Garcia, Democrat from California, in that spirited back-and-forth with PBS’s Paula Kerger: “Is Elmo now, or has he ever been, a member of the Communist Party?” “Are we silencing pro-cookie voters?”

The congressional hearing on Wednesday into supposed political bias at PBS and NPR represents another front of the attacks on the American media spearheaded by the Trump administration.

In the two months since President Trump took office a second time, the White House has barred The Associated Press from attending certain events, broken decades of tradition by hand-selecting the media outlets that can participate in the presidential press pool, and sought to dismantle the federal agency that oversees Voice of America, the federally funded broadcaster with a history of independent news reporting.

“I don’t even recognize NPR anymore,” says James Comer, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight & Accountability. He adds that in his youth living in rural Kentucky he relied on public radio for news. He now likens NPR to “propaganda.”

Chairwoman Marjorie Taylor Greene is attacking NPR’s C.E.O. for her public statements, made before she took over at NPR, criticizing President Trump. Katherine Maher’s general response is that NPR supports free speech.

Speaking now is Ed Ulman, president and chief executive of Alaska Public Media, providing the voice of local member stations that drive the main bastion of funding and programming for the national parent organizations. “We are more than nice to have. We are essential,” Ulman said, “especially in remote and rural places where commercial broadcasting cannot succeed.”

I texted Uri Berliner, a former senior business editor at NPR, to ask him what he thought about his essay being used to argue for defunding NPR. He told me he doesn’t think NPR should be defunded, but he believes it should turn down federal support and “openly acknowledge and embrace its progressive orientation.”

“If they did that, they wouldn’t have to deal with threats from MTG,” he said, referring to Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Next up is Mike Gonzalez, senior fellow of the conservative Heritage Foundation. He’s accusing public media groups of “egregious bias.” Gonzalez’s most recent book is “BLM: The Making of a New Marxist Revolution.”

Now comes Paula Kerger, the chief executive of PBS. She is making the case for the network’s coverage of local events, including high school sports and debates, and its emergency warning system that alerts Americans in rural areas to disasters. “There’s nothing more American than PBS,” she said.

In comparatively measured public remarks, Katherine Maher, the chief executive of NPR, is making the case for “unbiased, nonpartisan, fact-based reporting” from the public media organization. She said that NPR has 43 million listeners from every state in the nation and added that 60 percent of all Americans trust public broadcasting.

Representative Stephen Lynch, Democrat of Massachusetts, says he is disappointed that the subcommittee is using its power to “go after the likes of Elmo and Cookie Monster” for teaching children the alphabet. He then addressed news that senior government officials texted attack plans to Jeffrey Goldberg, the top editor of The Atlantic magazine. He said the committee would rather go after Big Bird than President Trump. “If shame was still a thing, this hearing would be shameful.”

Wearing sneakers and a wry smile, Representative Greg Casar, Democrat of Texas, has abruptly left the hearing. It was unclear why.

Marjorie Taylor Greene is now citing an essay by Uri Berliner, a NPR business editor, that was published by the independent website The Free Press last year. It argued that NPR had become infused with liberal bias. The essay is often cited by conservatives who are eager to strip NPR of federal funding and will probably come up often today. Berliner later resigned.

Chairwoman Greene’s opening salvo is a notable contrast with her subdued comportment in the subcommittee’s first hearing, on Medicaid fraud.

In her opening remarks, Marjorie Taylor Greene said that a big chunk of funding from the government-backed Corporation for Public Broadcasting goes to NPR and PBS. In fact, about 1 percent of NPR’s budget comes directly from the government, with about 15 percent of PBS’s budget coming indirectly from the government. NPR does get some funding indirectly from the government through program licensing fees paid by local stations, but that’s still a relatively small part of its overall budget.

In fiery opening remarks, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican from Georgia, has labeled PBS and NPR “radical left-wing echo chambers for a narrow audience of mostly wealthy, white, urban liberals and progressives who generally look down on and judge rural America.” I suspect the leaders of PBS and NPR will offer a rebuttal to that characterization.

Now Representative Greg Casar, Democrat from Texas, has taken his seat.

Calls to eliminate government funding for NPR and PBS may have reached a peak, but the two networks have been living under that threat for decades.

Congressional Republicans have periodically attempted to defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the government-backed organization that administers hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer funding directed to public broadcasters across the United States.