After his boat-rocking testimony before a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on the leftist tilt of National Public Radio on Wednesday, NewsBusters Executive Editor Tim Graham appeared on The Bottom Line with Dagen & Duffy on Fox Business. Host Sean Duffy said it was unfair to make taxpayers fund a “radical liberal machine.”.
NPR CEO Katharine Maher declined an invitation to the hearing, and Graham said “Maybe she didn’t want to show up because we had all of the examples today…. NPR likes books like In Defense of Looting. NPR likes the movie How to Blow Up a Pipeline and then it’s everything they have to say about the Republicans, being ‘hard right’ Republicans who want to drive the country off a cliff. I don’t know how you can defend all that. We had Democrats today trying to claim what NPR does is objective, you just don’t like objective reporting, which is comedy. You can’t provide a laugh track when they say that, because it impolite. But you sure wanted to.”
Co-host Dagen McDowell suggested the Democrats don’t listen to NPR so they can be “blissfully ignorant” when they call it unbiased, so they “can stay that without laughing.” She called NPR a “sewage lagoon.” They discussed how NPR claims they only receive one percent of the budget from the federal government, but in reality, the government funds the local affiliates, who send money back to Washington in “programming fees.” So a defunding would be dramatic for them.
Tim said “What they really need to do is just take that threat, and say we getter go back to what we are supposed to be doing, which is allowing both sides to speak, let both parties speak. That is not what they are doing, they have softballs for Democrats and hardball for Republicans — when they get a chance [to be interviewed].”
See highlights from Tim’s hearing here.