The New York Times editorial board compared the GOP efforts to cut federal funding for public news stations to calls to defund the police and abolish ICE. (SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)
The Times published the editorial on the same day that the U.S. Senate is set to vote on President Donald Trump’s $9 billion rescission package, a bill set to cut shy of $8 billion from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and over $1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), the government-backed funding arm for NPR and PBS.
Trump and Republicans have made the case for the cuts, saying they are scraping back funding for "woke" programs. NPR and PBS have other funding mechanisms besides the government, including grants and individual and corporate contributors, but proponents have said cutting federal funding could be ruinous.
The Times board said the cuts would leave many U.S. communities less informed.
President Donald Trump wants the federal spigot for NPR to be shut off. (NPR logo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images. Trump photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
"If the rescission bill becomes law, hundreds of cities and towns, especially those outside major metropolitan areas, will be affected. Nearly one in five NPR member stations could close down without federal funding, one analysis found. Listeners in the Midwest, South and West would be the hardest hit, becoming less informed about their communities," the board wrote.
The editorial board acknowledged concerns about liberal bias in public news are justified. However, it argued that the potential cuts might not have much of an impact on the content at NPR.
"Republicans complain, not always wrongly, that public media reflects left-leaning assumptions and biases," the editorial board wrote. "And they can fairly tell NPR and PBS to do a better job of reflecting the citizenry that is subsidizing them. Yet the ‘national’ part of NPR (or National Public Radio, as it used to call itself) that chafes conservatives may well be just fine without federal funds."
Fox News Digital that the editorial board are "blowhards" that are "utterly out of touch."
"The sanctimonious blowhards at the New York Times Editorial Board are utterly out of touch, and their comparison of cutting taxpayer funds to leftist media organizations with cutting funds for law enforcement officers is jaw-dropping," he said. "Democrat paper-pushers masquerading as reporters don’t deserve taxpayer subsidies, and contrary to what the Democrats believe, funding police is common sense. However, that would require Democrats to embrace commonsense ideas."
Fox News Digital’s Alex Miller contributed to this report.
