On Friday, MRC President David Bozell joined The Scott Jennings Show to discuss a historic victory: the House vote to defund PBS and NPR. Hosted by Jennings, CNN’s lone voice of reason and MRC’s Bulldog Award winner for “Outstanding Achievement Behind Enemy Lines,” the show spotlighted MRC’s decades-long campaign to end taxpayer funding for these far-left outlets.
Bozell credited MRC’s persistent evidence-gathering for exposing the progressive bias that fueled this legislation, declaring, “The MRC’s been bringing the receipts on NPR and PBS for 38 years.” He highlighted a recent MRC study showing PBS was 93% negative toward Trump and Republicans from April to June, even as their funding was at stake. Bozell argued that these outlets failed to even “fake” balance, underscoring their disconnect from impartiality and public interest.
On NPR and PBS’s long drift into extremism. Bozell pointed out, “NPR aired the sound of an abortion. And they still demand your tax dollars. This was never about education — it’s about enforcing a progressive worldview on your dime.” He mentioned that throughout the years, every time “Republicans got close to defunding these guys for going off the rails and being so militantly left-wing, Big Bird or Elmo or Snuffleupagus would show up at a congressional hearing room, and no Republican wanted to have an ad dumped into their districts suggesting that they killed Big Bird.”
Bozell reminded listeners that Sesame Street was sold to HBO in 2015, “and the seas started to part a little bit.”
Bozell mentioned that the major tipping point with congressional Republicans who may have been on the fence was NPR’s absence during the Kerrville, Texas floods, as reported by MRC, where they failed to provide emergency broadcasting, instead lobbying to preserve their funding. This, Bozell argued, dismantled their claim of being essential public services.
Jennings and Bozell agreed that NPR and PBS’s militant leftward shift, which built steam in the Trump era, turned the public broadcasters from journalists into activists. For example, a recent MRC study found NPR’s Fresh Air featured 36 left-wing journalists in six months versus zero conservative reporters. And on the PBS News Hour, we found conservatives labeled “far right” 42 times more often than liberals. On issue after issue and show after show, their bias was undeniable.
As Jennings noted, taxpayer funding shouldn’t prop up such one-sidedness. Bozell wished PBS and NPR “good luck” in the free market, but expressed doubt about their survival.
Jennings closed by praising the MRC: “I thank you, David, and your dad and the Media Research Center for pushing this campaign for years and finally getting it over the finish line.”
