A coalition of nearly two dozen conservative organizations is asking legislators to implement a three-pronged effort to compel PBS, NPR and their cash cow, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), to submit to formal, independent audits and release the results.
The Media Research Center-led coalition has sent letters to members of Congress, governors and Executive Branch heads calling for them to help prompt PBS, NPR and CPB to subject themselves to the independent audits and make the results public.
The coalition’s effort has three stages, each of which is more forceful than the last:
Letters sent to the CEOs of NPR, PBS, and CPB call for them to subject their organizations to formal, independent audits and make the results public.
Letters sent to governors and Executive Branch heads demanding them to motivate NPR and PBS to conduct the audits by putting holds on all discretionary grants until the audits are conducted and the results released.
Letters sent to all members of Congress demand they refuse to meet with the broadcasters’ army of lobbyists until the results of formal audits are made public.
Letters sent to Congressional leaders urge them to legislatively repeal the statute authorizing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), the organization that funnels taxpayers’ money to NPR and PBS, if the broadcasters fail to conduct the audits and release their results.
Ultimately though, complete and permanent defunding of taxpayer-funding of media is the coalition’s top priority, as it explained in a letter to President Donald Trump.
The letter urges the president to use a process known as “rescission” to cancel appropriations for funding public media that have already been authorized, but have yet to be obligated. This move, if successful, would save taxpayers $1.1 billion over the next two years.
Rescission may well be “the last, best chance taxpayers will ever have to unburden themselves from these leftist propaganda outlets once and for all,” MRC Vice President of External Affairs Dan Schneider said, commenting on the letter to Pres. Trump.
Sign the petition to help defund PBS and NPR at defundpbsnpr.org.
Related: Trump Urged to Use ‘Rescission’ to Defund NPR, PBS in Conservative Coalition’s Letter