Tom Pappert, lead reporter at The Tennessee Star, said National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) are afraid of losing their “brand status” if a Republican-led effort to strip the media entities of federal funding is successful.
A bill filed last week in the U.S. House called the No Partisan Radio and Partisan Broadcasting Services Act would strip all federal funding from NPR and PBS.
Introduced by U.S. Representatives Ronny Jackson (R-TX-13) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA-14), the bill’s list of cosponsors continues to grow.
President Donald Trump on Tuesday also advanced calls to strip NPR and PBS of federal funding, writing in a Truth Social post, “REPUBLICANS MUST DEFUND AND TOTALLY DISASSOCIATE THEMSELVES FROM NPR & PBS, THE RADICAL LEFT “MONSTERS” THAT SO BADLY HURT OUR COUNTRY!”
Pappert said by being funded by taxpayers, NPR and PBS currently reserve the ability to brand themselves as “the thinking man’s” media networks, which, with no federal funding, would leave the outlets to compete with the media market without a special branding.
“That’s what gives them this sort of leg up on all of their competition. It’s an unfair competitive advantage where they get to go to their predominantly leftist audience and say, look, we are so good. What we do is so perfect in terms of journalistic excellence that we get money from the government. We are state funded media. You can trust us to be the thinking man’s network because the government has appointed us as such,” Pappert explained on Tuesday’s edition of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show.
“If they lose that sort of marketing ploy that they’ve had going for five decades, I think they’re going to lose because why would you watch PBS or listen to NPR if not that they are the thinking man’s networks?” Pappert added.
Pappert further pointed out that stripping federal funding for NPR and PBS and forcing them to compete with other outlets is an interest of Republicans as the move would essentially be taking away two outlets the left uses to push its “propaganda.”
“On the left, there is no organic interest in their thoughts. They have to propagandize children for 12 years through the education system and then convince them to tune in every morning to their local NPR station and watch PBS when they get home for their news. There’s no way that if they lose this government funding and this status that it gives them that they’re going to be able to continue to do this or at least keep this brand status,” Pappert explained.
“I think that is a worthy goal for these Republican lawmakers to do. I think that they’re going to be successful this time,” Pappert added.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
Photo “National Public Radio Headquarters” by Ted Eytan CC2.0.
