The family of Hersh Goldberg-Polin appears on a screen via video link during a news conference in Tel Aviv

Former US president Trump's hush money criminal trial continues in New York City, USA - 13 May 2024

Trump

The Washington Post

US-POLITICS-JUSTICE-COURT-TRUMP

Contributor

For The Washington Post

(Chris Gash for The Washington Post)

APTOPIX Israel Holocaust Remembrance

op-allen-democracypromo

Stormy Daniels

UGCR

RUSSIA-US-DIPLOMACY-BASKET-COURT

(Michelle Kondrich/The Washington Post)

**ONE TIME USE ONLY FOR OP-LAMOTT

Sonia Sotomayor,Clarence Thomas,John Roberts,Samuel Alito,Elena Kagan,Amy Coney Barrett,Neil Gorsuch,Brett Kavanaugh,Ketanji Brown Jackson,Michael Dreeben

Children holding hands

ONE TIME USE FOR OP-CARNEY KIDS 

FEDERALISTGALA

Four Dalmatian Puppy

other

People visit the site of the Nova festival, in Reim

Fake Electors Indictment Arizona

Respond to prefers-color-scheme dark in app web views

Follow section front redirects in Spectrum

Enable NLP source in PCS for load testing

Switch off the News Alerts Survey Widget when we have enough responses

Poll to determine if new LUF updates are available

Allows the winning A/B test variant to be turned on without Spectrum deployment

Show infinite scrolling sections in Assembler MultiView

Show option for NLP article summaries in Action Bar

Show NLP summaries collection recirc on article pages

A general feature flag for Recipe Features that aren't yet released

Feature flag for media team features that aren't yet released

Use new Orca video player for preroll plugin in Spectrum

Show the snow tracker (instead of the heat tracker) on Spectrum

Elections 2024 live updates: Biden continues outreach to Black voters; Trump heading to Minnesota

At campus protests, ‘DO NOT TALK TO THE MEDIA’!

CNN gets a presidential debate — and a much-needed win

Why this company’s biggest fans turned against it

These ISIS news anchors are AI fakes. Their propaganda is real.

Even remote and hybrid work can burn you out. Here’s how to avoid it.

No one is rocking in the ‘free world’

Kenyan president aims to attract green investment during U.S. visit

On Gaza, Biden is right and Netanyahu is wrong

In photos: The scene in Houston after severe storms killed at least 4 people

Rep. AOC's 'people-first' approach

Rep. Delia Ramirez on organizing power and money

Tariffs against China hamstring the transition to a clean energy future

The Post’s choices in Northern Virginia’s U.S. House primaries

States see legalized sports betting as a tax windfall — but at what cost?

Did Trump’s lawyers catch Michael Cohen in a ‘lie’? Let’s take a look.

Now playing off-Broadway: Trump’s synchronized sycophants

Trump’s courtroom enablers

The world’s coolest hotels want to tell you a story

6 Airbnb red flags to spot before you make a booking mistake

Some cruise prices are about to get a little more clear

Puppy abandoned with heart-rending note is adopted, named Minerva

Man, 91, shocks tiny firehouse with $500K gift: ‘Nobody knew how much I’d saved’

Retired cop meets abandoned baby he helped 23 years ago: ‘What are the odds?’

Look to the cloud to protect the life documents saved on your computer

Can you spot bad financial advice on TikTok? Take our quiz.

5 myths about Social Security as the program faces a funding crisis

Miss Manners: Longtime friends lose minds over canceled dinner plans

Carolyn Hax: After holiday meals, guests rush the kitchen to claim the leftovers

Ask Amy: Retired couple misses social activities since the pandemic

Bryce Harper, Joey Gallo and a bond forged by baseball since they were kids

Walter Johnson’s jersey from 1920 showdown with Babe Ruth is up for auction

A taco will always be a taco — no matter what we call it

John McDonnell

<i>Paul Haaga, former chairman of Capital Research and Management Company, was chairman of the board of NPR from 2017 to 2020 and its interim CEO from 2013 to 2014.</i>

I am a lifelong Republican. I am also a longtime NPR listener and supporter and, at times, have been a manager.

As you can imagine, I have a few thoughts about the firestorm set off last month when an <a href="https://www.thefp.com/p/npr-editor-how-npr-lost-americas-trust" target="_blank">essay</a> in the Free Press by a now-former NPR senior editor laid out all the ways he has seen an increasingly liberal bias play out in NPR’s coverage. <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/11/media/npr-uri-berliner-left-bias-right-wing-media/index.html" target="_blank">Plenty has been said</a> and written about the concerns he raised, so I will leave it to others to address the specific incidents. I am here to offer one conservative’s intimate understanding of a frequently misunderstood institution, and explain why I strongly oppose the calls for Congress to defund NPR.

“National Public Radio” is somewhat of a misnomer — in fact, a better name for the system would be “Community Public Radio.” NPR was not established as a top-down national network. On the contrary, a group of community and educational radio stations created NPR in 1970 as a jointly managed provider of shared services, after the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 had established the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Other broadcast licensees have joined the system over the years so that there are now 247 NPR member organizations operating more than 1,080 stations.

The great majority of federal money that the CPB gives to public radio goes directly to qualified individual stations, partly based on their need for funding and the demographics of their audiences. Because rural and Native American stations face challenges in raising money, <a href="https://ruralpublic.org/policy-and-research/report/" target=_blank>the federal government steps</a> in to provide around 25 percent of revenue for rural stations and more than 50 percent in the case of Native American stations, compared to as little as 5 percent of the revenue of the largest, urban stations. Stations pay dues to NPR; they license some programs from NPR but also from independent sources, including American Public Media, the Public Radio Exchange, and numerous cultural and music program producers and distributors.

Local public stations employ teams of excellent reporters and investigative journalists who cover local issues and civic affairs. (Stations with a music format, meanwhile, play an important role in celebrating and preserving musical heritage and featuring local artists.) And the widely reported death of newspapers in small and medium-size cities has often left the public radio station reporter the only journalist covering civic activities in a particular community.

I have long known that most of NPR’s D.C.-based journalists are Democrats, and, while I wish there were a few more Republicans like me in the building, I have been fine with it. This is because I have always known that I was listening to people who were professional journalists first and Democrats only after that. Like others, I have occasionally pointed out pieces that could have been fairer, more objective or better balanced, and I have always felt that my comments were taken seriously. And although I haven’t been privy to internal newsroom discussions since the Free Press essay was published, I feel certain that the author’s concerns are being taken very seriously.

Furthermore, I know that NPR has structures in place to course-correct. For one, its public editor, <a href="https://www.npr.org/people/831682772/kelly-mcbride" target="_blank">Kelly McBride</a>, is a vigorous ombudsman who has touched on many of the issues of bias in<a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.npr.org/sections/publiceditor/2024/02/08/1230029580/nprs-2024-reporting-priorities__;!!M9LbjjnYNg9jBDflsQ!HT4UQ6UNDRS7A_jwXkJjgUPLTJVQb2M51BcpF8J6jgcHsmzTtw87uVKfEIzv1moV5736bYrhQlaaN8qoiQ$" target="_blank"> recent coverage</a>. Across the country, NPR member stations doggedly report and dig deeply into important stories — covering Democratic as well as Republican strongholds. A <a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.wbur.org/news/2024/03/07/massachusetts-subsidized-public-housing-vacancy-apartment-reduction__;!!M9LbjjnYNg9jBDflsQ!HT4UQ6UNDRS7A_jwXkJjgUPLTJVQb2M51BcpF8J6jgcHsmzTtw87uVKfEIzv1moV5736bYrhQlbXUKirGw$" target="_blank">WBUR investigation with ProPublica</a> last year found that deep-blue Massachusetts failed to achieve its goal to “significantly reduce” vacancies in public housing, even as the numbers of homeless families were rising; a 90-day push by the state had “barely made a dent.” An investigation by <a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/series/hot-stops/2023/09/28/464091/the-data-was-staggering-public-officials-react-to-hot-stops-investigation/__;!!M9LbjjnYNg9jBDflsQ!HT4UQ6UNDRS7A_jwXkJjgUPLTJVQb2M51BcpF8J6jgcHsmzTtw87uVKfEIzv1moV5736bYrhQlbJccS8vQ$" target="_blank">Houston Public Media</a> found last year that in Democrat-led Houston summertime temperatures at public bus stops often rose so high they were a threat to commuters’ health.

Just as I would encourage the leadership at NPR to take seriously the concerns of those who believe a system powered in part by federal funding regularly excludes certain voices and ideologies, I would also encourage the network’s critics to consider the true value of a system that serves communities all across the United States — including their own.

Defunding public media might feel good as a way to punish some inside-the-Beltway journalists for the occasional lapse in objectivity. (By the way, I am certain that a survey of the party registrations of member-station journalists would not be nearly as lopsided as one of the D.C. newsroom.) But the knock-on effect of defunding would be to further harm local journalism to the serious detriment of our democracy. We know what happens when local news goes away: Turnout in local elections declines, public officials can act with impunity and political discourse becomes more polarized. In certain rural areas, public radio stations are the <i>only </i>sources of local news and operate an essential public service by disseminating lifesaving emergency alerts.

NPR is one of the top American journalism organizations, and it is part of the public radio network that is essential to our nation. Let’s protect it. As president and CEO, Katherine Maher is a new leader for NPR. I’ve met with her and strongly believe we should give her a chance.

Paul Haaga 

washpost

Defund NPR? This Republican says no. 

the-washington-post

National Public Radio's new headquarters 

THE WASHINGTON POST

staff

Editorials

Columns

Guest opinions

Cartoons

Submit a guest opinion

Today's Opinions newsletter

Opinions

Sign up for the Prompt 2024 newsletter for opinions on the biggest questions in politics

Washington Post Opinions

The Washington Post Opinions section features opinion articles, op-eds, editorials by the Editorial Board, global opinions and letters to the editor on the issues of the day. Offerings include columns by Washington Post opinion writers, political cartoons by editorial cartoonists Ann Telnaes and Michael de Adder and podcasts by Jonathan Capehart.