Video News Clips: In Their Own Words

Karoline Leavitt Scoffs At NPR CEO Claiming Cuts To Her Network Are ‘Public Safety’ Risk

[Screenshot/The White House]

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt derided National Public Radio (NPR) CEO Katherine Maher’s claim on Thursday that slashing federal funding to her network would potentially be a “risk to the public safety” of the U.S.

Before the Senate passed a rescissions package that includes major cuts to NPR and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), Maher told CBS News that public broadcasting plays a “critical part” in responding to emergencies and disasters. While responding to a question raised by Daily Caller White House correspondent Reagan Reese, Leavitt outlined how both networks had become “propaganda voices” for the political left.

“[Maher] is claiming that the cuts to their network will be ‘a real risk to the public safety of this country. [Republican Alaska Sen. Lisa] Murkowski has argued that public broadcasting stations save lives. Could you respond to these concerns?” Reese asked.

“The NPR CEO said cutting NPR will be a risk to public safety. I’m not sure how NPR helps the public safety of our country, but I do know that NPR unfortunately has become, really just a propaganda voice for the left. So just a few examples for you, in 2020, NPR refused to cover the Hunter Biden laptop scandal in the run up to the election. They said ‘their assertions don’t amount to much,’ writing [that] they did ‘not want to waste the listeners and readers’ time on stories that are just pure distractions.’ That does not sound like an unbiased opinion, that sounds like a partisan opinion to me, and this is a taxpayer funded organization,” Leavitt said.

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Leavitt then cited Maher calling Trump a “racist” in 2018 and pointed to her outward support for former President Joe Biden. She then listed the biases presented by PBS, which included former PBS White House correspondent Yamiche Alcindor characterizing President Donald Trump’s speech at Mount Rushmore in 2020 as a love letter to “white resentment” on MSNBC.

In 2017, PBS put together an entire panel to educate its viewers on what it means to be “woke” and how to define “white privilege.” The network also produced an entire movie in 2017 called “Real Boy” that promoted a teenager’s so-called “changing gender identity.”

The press secretary also pointed to PBS’s Washington Week roundtable attempting to cover-up Biden’s mental decline in 2023. The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg appeared on the program to call Biden “quite acute” while another panelist accused Republicans of “lying” about the then-president being “senile.”

“These are not honest news organizations. These are partisan, left-wing outlets that are funded by the taxpayers and this administration does not believe it is a good use of the taxpayers’ time and money,” Leavitt continued.

Trump’s rescissions package, which the Senate narrowly passed in a 51 to 48 vote, slashes $9 billion in previously appropriated funding to a public broadcasting nonprofit that financially supports NPR and PBS, as well as foreign aid.

NPR has notably published stories that show a bias toward the political left and have refused to acknowledge or correct its own reporting. In November 2018, the network falsely reported that Donald Trump Jr. lied to the Senate Judiciary Committee during his September 2017 testimony about plans for a Trump Tower in Moscow, which actually referred to an entirely different project.

The network also downplayed the idea that COVID-19 originated in a lab in  Wuhan, China, and stopped airing Trump’s coronavirus task force briefings in the Seattle, Washington, area in March 2020.