Is the Defunding of NPR a First Amendment Violation?

Congress last week rescinded $1.1 billion earmarked for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) – a move that severs federal support for National Public Radio (NPR) and its member stations.
Weeks before, in a lawsuit before a federal court, NPR claimed that an executive order by President Trump to cut off its funding was “textbook retaliation and viewpoint-based discrimination in violation of the First Amendment.” Does this view fairly characterize the subsequent vote of a conservative Congress to silence a media organization widely seen as left-leaning?
We say no. Protect The 1st firmly supports the congressional cut-off. Why we think so, however, has nothing to do with the prevailing partisan narratives of Washington, either of the left or the right.
 
Conservatives argue that NPR’s left-leaning reporting and the self-parodying ideological pronouncements of its president and chief executive officer, Katherine Maher, justify the cut-off. Among NPR’s top Washington-based editors, 87 are registered Democrats and exactly none are Republicans. This latter fact was revealed by NPR journalist Uri Berliner, who was pressured to leave after he issued a public essay in which he accused NPR’s bias of costing it the public’s trust.
 
During the 2020 election, NPR haughtily dismissed the Hunter Biden laptop story (one editor declared “we don’t want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories”). When NPR found itself on the chopping block before a Republican Congress, Maher apologized, “NPR acknowledges we were mistaken in failing to cover the Hunter Biden laptop story more aggressively and sooner.”
 
All true. These are the viewpoints that had conservatives sharpening their axes. But we are unmoved by these concerns. We have a different, deeper problem with NPR: Regulating editorial viewpoints necessarily involves the federal government in the regulation of speech. We would also object if NPR had trimmed its sails to the prevailing wind and became an echo chamber of conservative media and the Heritage Foundation. Maher’s editorial pliability on the Hunter Biden laptop story demonstrates this potential for government influence over news coverage.
 
Our stand is simple: Government should not be in the business of subsidizing viewpoints. The law requires NPR to practice “objectivity and balance in all programs or series of programs of a controversial nature.” But objectivity and balance are subjective judgments that can never be well defined by a statute and regulated by law.
 
Defenders of NPR note that only 2 percent of NPR’s budget came directly from CBP and taxpayer dollars. As Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) demonstrated, these taxpayer funds were intermingled with funds from “left-wing non-profits looking to advance their own narratives in the press.” We add that “mega-donors,” be they left-wing, right-wing, or libertarian, have every right under the First Amendment to subsidize any speech they wish. The problem arises when American taxpayers are compelled to enrich those subsidies. Mingling the funds of private donors with the funds of the federal government is not a healthy elixir.
 
Unlike many, we take no joy in this moment. We hope that smart NPR content like Radiolab and news service to rural and underserved communities will continue. But we also see government-subsidized speech as inherently problematic. A government forbidden by the First Amendment from abridging the freedom of the press should also be forbidden from subsidizing the news – because official sponsorship of the news is the flip side of censorship.

DONATE & HELP US PROTECT YOUR FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHTS