Any public need for government-funded media evaporated long ago, and any justification for taxpayer subsidy along with it.

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Should American taxpayers be compelled to subsidize Fox News or The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page?  

The very absurdity of the question prompts an obvious answer.  The renewed debate over taxpayer funding for National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), however, allows the question to provide helpful perspective.  

In today’s era of media abundance – from innumerable channel options to podcasts to internet sites to streaming services to on-demand journalism – the idea that taxpayers should continue subsidizing NPR or PBS isn’t simply anachronistic.  It’s fundamentally unjust.  

When established via the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 to provide educational and cultural programming, NPR and PBS inhabited a very different era of media scarcity.  With just three major television networks and radio limited primarily to the AM band, taxpayers funded novel programming that the commercial marketplace wasn’t providing, particularly to rural and underserved areas.  

Whatever sense taxpayer subsidy might’ve made then, it’s laughable today.  

Americans of all income levels enjoy a cornucopia of content from every conceivable ideological, educational, cultural and entertainment perspective.  Cable, satellite, social media, streaming apps, podcasts and internet sites like YouTube offer consumers a universe of high-quality (and not-so-high-quality) journalistic, historical, scientific, cultural and entertainment content for free or nearly free.  Any public need for government-funded media evaporated long ago, and any justification for taxpayer subsidy along with it.  

Even if market realities still justified public subsidy, however, such support is indefensible in those networks’ current ideological form.  Their programming has become a tiresome echo of the urban progressive outlook while marginalizing and caricaturing conservative and libertarian perspectives.  

That bias was exposed from within in 2024 when NPR employee Uri Berliner went public with his honest and reflective critique of the organization’s ideological monoculture.  Berliner confirmed the “unspoken consensus about the ‘correct’ view on just about every issue,” and ultimately felt compelled to resign following the hateful blowback.  

PBS fares no better, with programs like “PBS NewsHour” routinely offering content through its leftist lens, including pundits parroting the same orthodoxy.  Rather than pluralistic programming as originally intended, NPR and PBS constitute mouthpieces for a narrow ideological elitism underwritten by the broad swath of American taxpayers who obviously don’t share those orthodoxies.  

The injustice of taxpayer subsidy becomes amplified when one considers the audience profile of both NPR and PBS.  Far from offering a programming lifeline to underserved audiences, both networks cater to one far wealthier, leftist and urban than the general population.  

Accordingly, federal subsidy forces working-class and middle-class taxpayers to subsidize the media consumption of more affluent urban leftists who remain more than capable of subsidizing those outlets voluntarily.  

That’s not a public service.  It’s a regressive tax that turns the entire premise of the networks’ original founding on its head.  Rather than serving needier Americans, taxpayer funding for NPR and PBS amounts to a wealth transfer from average Americans to the more privileged.  Working-class Americans, many of whom would feel alienated or even outright maligned by the content of NPR and PBS programming, are forced to prop up programming preferences of wealthier consumers who could pay for it themselves.  

Indeed, they already do.  Both NPR and PBS boast deep donor lists as well as “philanthropic” and corporate support.  Why should they also continue to impose financial burdens on working-class taxpayers?  

Our nation’s worsening fiscal situation also undermines any argument in favor of continuing taxpayer subsidy for NPR and PBS.  

With our national debt surpassing $36 trillion and rising, every dollar directed toward NPR and PBS is a dollar not spent on core constitutional functions like national defense, infrastructure or public safety.  And with everyday Americans struggling to make ends meet, the idea that their taxes should subsidize niche programming and ideologically driven outlets approaches farce.  

Additionally, government subsidies for NPR and PBS raise legal and constitutional concerns.  After all, First Amendment free speech principles would suggest that the government shouldn’t favor or suppress particular points of view.  By funneling taxpayer dollars toward ideologically driven programming, however, the federal government violates that ideal in elevating some political and cultural perspectives over others.  

Government simply shouldn’t be in the business of funding and promoting ideological narratives, even indirectly.  That responsibility belongs to free markets and voluntary consumer choices.  

Accordingly, the federal government’s role in subsidizing NPR and PBS must end.  In addition to the Trump administration’s order to end such subsidies, Congress should legislatively zero out funding, and force NPR and PBS to operate like any other media outlet offering its product to the public.  They possess the infrastructure, donor base and brand recognition to make that work.  

Whether government support for NPR and PBS made sense in the 20th century is a debatable proposition.  In the 21st century, any logic favoring it has long since evaporated.