Since the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 became law, PBS and NPR have ignored the law’s language about maintaining “strict adherence to objectivity and fairness” in programming. Instead, these networks have long been taxpayer-funded narrative factories for the Left.
Now that Congress is set to consider President Trump’s request to rescind funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, let’s make a little list of the worst hot takes coming from supposedly civil PBS and NPR since Donald Trump became a powerful force in politics in 2016.
David Brooks Compares Elon Musk to Historic Mass Murderers
“There are mass murderers in the world, Pol Pot, Mao Zedong, Stalin. We don't have anybody on the list from America. And I don't think it's the same as committing the kind of genocide they did. But by taking away that agency and being at least semi-responsible for the deaths of probably, by the end of this, hundreds of thousands of millions of people, that's Elon Musk's legacy.”
— PBS contributor David Brooks on PBS News Hour, May 30, 2025.
Jonathan Capehart: People Watching Fox News = Giving Up on Democracy
“I was mystified by what was going on. And now I can’t help but think that if this election seems to be — if it proves out that the millions of people who are watching Fox News, if that ends up being the case, then I can’t help but wonder if the American people have given up on democracy.”
— Washington Post Associate Editor/PBS contributor Jonathan Capehart on PBS’s live election coverage, November 6, 2024.
Jonathan Capehart: Ron DeSantis Finds Blacks "Worthy of Extermination"
“[Florida's so-called anti-woke legislation, what’s happening with the teaching of Black history in Florida public schools. That sends a message not only to the Black community that the governor does not think much of you or your history or your contributions to this country, but it also sends a signal to those people, deranged or not, who believe that Black people are inferior and therefore are worthy of extermination.”
— PBS contributor Jonathan Capehart on PBS News Hour, September 1, 2023.
Tamara Keith: 70 to 80 Percent of House Republicans "Want to Burn It All Down"
"What's happening in the House is a reflection of a broader divide in the Republican Party, where there's maybe like 20 percent or 30 percent of Republicans who don't want to burn it all down and who have discomfort with Trump… there really is this divide between Republicans who realize that governing requires some bipartisan compromise just because of the sheer math, and those that don't care.”
— NPR White House Correspondent Tamara Keith in her regular Monday political panel on the PBS News Hour, October 24, 2023.
NPR Airs the Sound of a Baby Being Aborted
KATE WELLS: That's Brandee. She's one of the staffers. Her job is to monitor vital signs, but it is also to hold the patient's hand and talk her through this. Whether it's a birth or an abortion, it is often women guiding other women.
DR. AUDREY LANCE: You're going to hear this machine turn on now, OK? It makes a loud noise.
UNIDENTIFIED PATIENT #1: Okay.
(SOUNDBITE OF ASPIRATOR RUNNING)
BRANDEE: Blow it out. Blow it out. Breathe through it. Breathe through it. Blow it out. Listen to me. Blow it out. If you hold your breath, it just makes it harder for you. Keep breathing. Keep breathing.
WELLS: Just keep breathing, Brandee tells her over and over.
— NPR's Morning Edition airing an abortion at Northland Family Planning outside Detroit, November 3, 2022.
Christiane Amanpour: Trump Is Like Nazi Book-Burners, Biden Returns Us to Truth!
“This week, 82 years ago, Kristallnacht happened. It was the Nazis’ warning shot across the bow of our human civilization that led to genocide against a whole identity. And, in that tower of burning books, it led to an attack on fact, knowledge, history and truth. After four years of a modern-day assault on those same values by Donald Trump, the Biden/Harris team pledges a return to norms, including the truth. And, every day, Joe Biden makes presidential announcements about good governance and the health and security of the American people, while the great brooding figure of his defeated opponent rages, conducting purges of perceived enemies and preventing a transition.”
— Host Christiane Amanpour on PBS’s Amanpour & Co., November 12, 2020.
NPR News Boss: The Hunter Biden Laptop Is a "Pure Distraction"
“We don’t want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don’t want to waste the listeners’ and readers’ time on stories that are just pure distractions...and quite frankly, that’s where we ended up, this was… a politically driven event and we decided to treat it that way.”
— NPR Managing Editor for News Terence Samuel to NPR 'Public Editor' Kelly McBride, October 22, 2020.
Hateful Trump Like a “Meth Head With a Machete on Cops”
“Trump has achieved the brink of the Republican nomination, according to the candidate himself, by being himself, no matter how politically incorrect, except that his supposedly courageous candor is contaminated with the most cowardly hate speech — racism, xenophobia, misogyny, incitement, breathtaking ignorance on issues, both foreign and domestic, and a nuclear recklessness, reminiscent of a raving meth head with a machete on an episode of Cops.”
— NPR’s On The Media host Bob Garfield, May 13, 2016.
The Communist Manifesto, a "Stirring Refuge"?
“Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ slender volume appeared in 1848. For many of those betrayed by the so-called free market, in the years since, the pamphlet has offered refuge, inspiration and argument....Like Hamlet’s ghost, The Manifesto is both impossible and imperative in its call for action....It is stirring. It scans!””
— NPR’s On the Media host Brooke Gladstone talking about The Communist Manifesto, February 24, 2023.
Being Kissed by a Castro “Like Getting the Blessing of the Holy Trinity”
“I walk into this lush, beautiful villa, and I am introduced to Ramon Castro. And it’s kind of jarring because even though he was Fidel’s older brother, he looks a lot like him. As he’s presented to me, he leans over and gives me a kiss on one cheek and says, ‘This is from Raul,’ kisses me on the other cheek and says, ‘This is from me,’ and then he kisses me on the forehead and says, ‘This is from Fidel.’ It was kind of like getting the blessing of the Holy Trinity.”
— NPR reporter Lourdes Garcia-Navarro on All Things Considered, recalling a 2004 meeting with Ramon Castro, the older brother of Fidel, February 24, 2016.
