DOGE Subcommittee Chairwoman Marjorie Taylor Greene Opens Hearing with NPR and PBS Executives

WASHINGTON— Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency (DOGE) Chairwoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) today delivered opening remarks at the panel’s hearing on “Anti-American Airwaves: Holding the heads of NPR and PBS Accountable.” In her remarks, Chairwoman Greene outlined how NPR and PBS have increasingly become radical, left-wing echo chambers catering to a narrow audience of mostly wealthy, white, urban liberals and progressives. She emphasized that taxpayers should not be forced to fund biased news, and stressed that Congress must decide whether Americans will continue funding these leftist media outlets. Chairwoman Greene concluded by stating that NPR and PBS executives will be held accountable at today’s hearing and must explain to the American people why they believe they deserve taxpayers’ hard-earned money.

Below are Subcommittee Chairwoman Greene’s remarks as prepared for delivery.

Good morning. At the DOGE subcommittee, we are continuing our war on waste. That means rooting out spending that is unnecessary, wasteful, or frankly un-American.

Today, we are looking at the more than half a billion dollars federal taxpayers spend annually to fund public radio and television.

A big chunk of this subsidy flows to National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service. NPR and PBS are the big, DC-based entities that create and distribute much of the news and educational content heard and seen on public radio and tv stations across the country.

When Congress adopted the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, it did so because it thought at the time that federal dollars were needed to provide objective news and education content to the entire nation, including rural residents who lived “off the grid.”

Fast forward a few decades and A LOT has changed.

The invention of the internet, for instance, and social media. It’s made news and information widely available to those living in remote areas. Americans are increasingly consuming digital media and podcasts. The audience of public radio and television is declining. And I know this because I represent a rural district where farmers listen to podcasts and internet-based news while they drive their tractors.

At the same time, NPR and PBS have increasingly become radical, Left-wing echo chambers for a narrow audience of mostly wealthy, white, urban liberals and progressives, who generally look down on and judge rural America.

PBS news is not just Left-leaning, but it actively uses taxpayer funds to push some of the most radical Left positions like featuring a drag queen on the show “Let’s Learn” – a show targeted toward young children ages 3 to 8 years old.

This is not the only example of them sexualizing and grooming children. They’ve been doing it over the last decade. In 2015, PBS-produced Frontline put out a documentary, Growing Up Trans, that “takes viewers on an intimate and eye-opening journey inside the struggles and choices facing transgender kids and their families.”

This means that PBS is one of the founders of the trans child abuse industry, all while on the taxpayers’ dime. Brainwashing and transing children is an issue so hated by parents across the country that it was a driving force in the landslide Republican victory in the 2024 election cycle and presidential race.

The “news” that these entities produce is either resented—or, increasingly, tuned out— by most of the hard-working Americans who are forced to pay for it. They no longer view NPR and PBS as trusted news sources.

In fact, when Elon Musk put his hand over his heart, extended it, and told the American people his heart goes out to them, PBS News posted the clip, called it a fascist Nazi salute, and described how it was similar to the same “Heil” used by Nazis at their victory rallies.

Not once did they report on the numerous accounts of Democrats making the same gesture.  

“Here’s How We Lost America’s Trust” was in fact the title of a powerful essay written last year by Uri Berliner, a veteran NPR editor.

In his essay, Berliner described how NPR’s downward spiral accelerated greatly during the first Trump Administration.

He said NPR dedicated efforts to damage the Trump presidency via relentless pursuit of “Russia-gate” rumors that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia over the election.

NPR hosts interviewed Adam Schiff, then the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, twenty-five times about Trump and Russia. But they made no apologies when the Mueller report found no evidence that the Trump campaign had colluded with Russia.

Berliner also described NPR’s passionate embrace of the left-wing DEI ideology that Americans clearly reject, as evidenced by the November elections.

NPR’s language and style guides were shaped by race and gender-based “affinity groups” that dominated the internal culture of the organization.

And NPR journalists were to ask everyone they interviewed their race, gender and ethnicity­—and enter it into a centralized tracking system. 

This tracking system embeds DEI into the fibers of its content. It’s a software attached to NPR’s content management system where reporters and producers submit information about their sources’ race and ethnicity, gender identity, geographic location, and age range. The tool allows NPR to track the demographics of their sources in real time to allow for “source diversity”.

The irony in these supposed “diverse sources” is that NPR has NO interest in real diversity—like having diverse viewpoints. Berliner tried to sound the alarm on this when he checked voter registration records of editors at DC’s NPR headquarters and found 87 registered Democrats and zero registered Republicans.

But NPR treated Berliner like a political dissident in the old Soviet Union.  He was driven out of the organization and forced to resign.

And the ringleader of that effort was NPR’s then newly appointed CEO, Katherine Maher, who is before us today. She dismissed Mr. Berliner’s wake-up call as “profoundly disrespectful, hurtful and demeaning.”

In other words, instead of viewing it as a chance to finally right the ship at NPR, she doubled down. In doing so, she made it clear how any further internal dissent would be dealt with on her watch. Sounds just like Communist China.

And no one should be surprised. NPR installed her in the top job after Ms. Maher was firmly on the record with a litany of public comments and social media posts displaying her ultra-progressive views, her scorn for free speech, and her fondness for censorship.

So, now it’s up to Congress to determine if Americans are going to continue to provide her – and the organization that put her in charge — with taxpayer funds to continue to pursue their progressive, or rather Communist, agenda.

For far too long, federal taxpayers have been forced to fund biased news. This needs to come to an end, and now.

So, I am glad Ms. Maher and Ms. Kerger accepted our invitation to show up today and be held accountable. I look forward to them answering our questions in full public view and explaining to the American people why they think they deserve Americans’ hard-earned money.

And with that, I yield to Ranking Member Lynch for his opening statement.