National Public Radio isn't always a civil space. Sometimes it becomes a platform for what they call "hate speech." Henry Rodgers at the Daily Caller found that in Baltimore, the "Final Call Radio" show airs every Sunday night on NPR affiliate WEAA 88.9. The program labels itself as “The Official Voice of the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan” and plays his speeches that include antisemitic comments.
Congressman Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) sent a letter to Patricia Harrison, chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and NPR CEO John Lansing asking about the use of taxpayer funds to play Farrakhan's often-vituperative comments.
“Americans would be shocked to learn that black supremacy, ethnic extremism, or historical revisionism of any kind, especially of this magnitude, is being funded by their tax dollars. Sadly, if they accessed WEAA 88.9’s website, they would see that the station received $251,815 in taxpayer funds through the congressionally authorized Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) in 2021,” Gaetz wrote in the letter.
Gaetz asks in the letter:
- How much taxpayer money has WEAA 88.9 been allocated by CPB in 2022 and 2023?
- What vetting processes do CPB and NPR use to ensure taxpayer funds are not being allocated to organizations that platform extremist content?
- What vetting processes do CPB and NPR use to ensure taxpayer funds are not being allocated to organizations that platform pseudohistorical and historically revisionist content?
- What other hate groups do CPB and/or NPR fund with taxpayer dollars?
Rodgers noted the radio station is owned by Morgan State University, a historically black public university that received $46 million in federal grants and contracts in 2022.
This could be a good story for NPR media reporter David Folkenflik, who used to be a media reporter for the Baltimore Sun.
MRC Business vice president Dan Schneider said writing Harrison the CPB chief is a "waste of time," since she is a "complete RINO." She's been at CPB since 2005, but formerly served as a co-chair of the Republican National Committee. "GOP Partisan Tops CPB," warned Variety back then, but she's much like a CNN Republican or an MSNBC Republican. She's there for the illusion of bipartisanship.
This is not the first time there's been an anti-Semitism controversy in public radio. Thirty years ago, radical Pacifica Radio affiliate KPFK in Los Angeles came under fire for an "Afrikan Mental Liberation Weekend" which included anti-Semitic speakers. They ran Elijah Muhammed of the Nation of Islam declaring: "I would not say that the white man is a descendent of Satan, because that would be wrong. We didn't have a Satan before the white man. So the white man is Satan himself."
Victor Gold, then a member of the CPB Board of Directors -- no Patricia Harrison -- called for disciplinary action against the tax-funded Pacifica network. But there was no discipline. Then-CPB Chairman Sheila Tate -- a former Bob Dole aide -- cited the First Amendment. Now imagine an NPR affiliate aired an hour of Mark Levin on Sunday nights....
