Taxpayer-funded National Public Radio is under fire. Former NPR senior editor Uri Berliner’s recent Free Press article about the far-left ideological capture of the government radio network’s newsroom and revelations about the radical progressivism of its new CEO has triggered new calls to defund NPR.
Yes, NPR is biased, but Congress should defund it for a more basic reason: Taxpayers should not have to pay for a government radio network, even if it were the most neutral outlet on the market. Running a radio network is simply not the government’s job.
NPR was founded in 1970 by a group of public radio stations that successfully lobbied for federal funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a nonprofit organization funded entirely by our tax dollars. Many of these stations produce worthwhile content, as former NPR chairman Paul Haaga argued in this weekend’s Washington Post. Haaga and other defenders, however, ignore that federal funding gives NPR an unfair advantage over its competitors and that NPR is not transparent with the public about how much federal funding it receives.
NPR likes to remind the public that only about 1% of its funding comes from taxpayers. At first glance, this appears to be true: 51% of its funding comes from corporate sponsorships and private donations and 31% from licensing fees, meaning the majority of its money comes from voluntary contributions and payments like any other media outlet.
But if this is true, why does it need any taxpayer funding at all? NPR should sustain itself on corporate sponsorships, licensing fees, and private donations like its competitors without an unfair, if minimal, advantage from federal funding.
Sadly, the claim that only 1% of its revenue comes from the forced donations of taxpayers isn’t true. On the same webpage where NPR claims this minimal taxpayer investment, it also says federal funding is “essential” to its mission. Well, which is it?
The answer lies in the 31% of its budget that comes from licensing fees. This significant chunk of its revenue, which was as high as 37% as recently as 2010, comes from member stations paying to license NPR-produced content such as All Things Considered and Morning Edition. These stations receive $128 million in federal grants annually to pay in fees back to NPR. The most recent audit of NPR from 2022 reveals that it receives $93 million in revenue from these stations, which would account for 73% of the CPB grants to affiliates.
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As it turns out, a shell game is afoot. Your tax dollars are given to the CPB, which passes a few million on to NPR so it can claim the taxpayer contribution is negligible while the rest is laundered through local affiliates who kick the federal subsidy back up to NPR. This public radio financing system is so opaque that no one is actually certain how much federal funding NPR receives. Affiliates are required to keep track of how much of their federal grants end up back with NPR, but a 2011 Government Accountability Office audit of 29 stations found that the majority did not maintain these required records. Saul Goodman couldn’t design a better laundering operation.
Congress should take this opportunity to rein in NPR’s shady accounting and make it compete on a level playing field with the rest of the radio market. Whether you like NPR’s content or not, you and I shouldn’t be forced to pay for it.
James Erwin is the federal affairs manager for telecommunications at Americans for Tax Reform and executive director of Digital Liberty.
