On July 17, 2025 congress passed a $9 billion dollar rescissions package to help push the administration’s agenda of reducing waste, fraud, and abuse.
The nine billion dollar package makes law cuts to various federal programs and an additional one billion dollar cut to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting or CPB.
The CPB provides federal funds for the Public Broadcasting Station (PBS) & additionally National Public Radio. (NPR) NPR may receive a small portion of its funding from the federal government, however its local member stations are the most at risk of the effects of the new law.
In a deeper sense, this is something the administration and on more specific terms the conservative establishment has wanted to enact. Many conservative lawmakers and most notably president Donald Trump have voiced their concern and distrust of NPR. As Trump stated that PBS & NPR are “radical left ‘monsters’ that so badly hurt our country.” Additionally, many within the conservative sphere have believed that NPR has lost its vision of independent journalism. As they see it, NPR is a media tool for the political left and goes against the Trump administration and the conservative base.
These accusations from right wing politicians begs the question If NPR is biased then what is Fox News?
Journalism is meant to be a free practice and within its limits can be a source to educate and inform the public in a way that can be unfiltered from bias.
I find it vastly interesting that some conservatives support the narrative of NPR being biased towards the left, but don’t hold the same regard for Fox News. A platform essentially supports and reaffirms conservative talking points without actually trying to create discourse or an argument for the other side.
When you have the president of the most powerful country—a nation that has prided itself on free press—when you have him projecting a negative perception of media he disagrees with, we’re fundamentally losing our credibility and values that we have come to appreciate about the United States.
This move from the administration emboldens the political divide, prompting his supporters to fall in line and completely disregard a different source of information.
NPR isn’t a perfect news source and we still should recognize that and question their reporting just as much as we should with any other publication. If we want to create steps to heal as a people we must allow ourselves to be open to different sources, viewpoints, and experiences, from our own.
As the political divide deepens, so does our core understanding of what makes our nation successful.
This hypocrisy is blasphemous and the further I look to try and understand it the more I beg the question If NPR is biased what is Fox News?
