According to a bio on the Heritage Foundation website, Mike Gonzalez “spent close to 20 years as a journalist, 15 of them reporting from Europe, Asia and Latin America.” He then turned to speechwriting before becoming the Angeles T. Arredondo E Pluribus Unum Senior Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, which is to say he has what sounds like a plum position on the wingnut welfare circuit.
In the Mandate for Leadership, he targets the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which funds the public media outlets NPR and PBS. The CPB has long been the subject of ire on the right, as it is perceived by many on the right as having a strong left-wing bias. According to the Ad Fontes Media bias chart, however, PBS generally provides “thorough fact reporting or fact-dense analysis” and a “mix of fact reporting and analysis or simple fact reporting.” Much of PBS’s reporting lands right on the line of “middle or balanced bias,” while the rest lands slightly leftward but not very much so.
But in the eyes of Mike Gonzalez, PBS and NPR are “lopsidedly progressive (nay, woke),” and amount to “a taxpayer-funded programming system that [ignores] half the country.” Because of this, Gonzalez argues, public broadcasting should be defunded. Gonalez is not afraid to use his speechwriting skills, for example by saying that money spent on public broadcasting is “squandered on leftist opinion” and by quoting Thomas Jefferson as saying “To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagations of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical.”
To counter this argument, one may turn to an article written by Craig Aaron, a journalist and co-CEO of Free Press, an independent organization devoted to “diverse and independent ownership of media platforms, and journalism that holds leaders accountable and tells people what’s actually happening in their communities.” In his article, Aaron points out that he does not “represent NPR, PBS or the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.”
Aaron goes on note that public broadcasting reaches “tens of millions of weekly listeners, who rely on the service for fact-checked journalism, local viewpoints and international coverage.” Aaron also points out that NPR reaches “more than 1,000 local radio stations providing essential information to communities large and small” and has been subject to “trumped-up charges of bias.”
Aaron defends American public broadcasting by comparing it to that found in other countries. He writes: “the United States spends a pittance per capita on public media when compared to other healthy democracies. That’s just $3.16 per capita a year in public funding compared to $75–$100 per capita or more annually in countries like England, France, Germany and Norway.”
PBS’s about page touts the media group’s awards for “documentary, news and public service” programs. These includes educational media, children’s programming, music and cooking shows, dramas, a forthcoming factual series on dinosaurs, and a documentary that won an academy award.
So, if PBS provides largely centrist “fact reporting” as well as award-winning nonpolitical content, and if NPR provides fact-checked journalism and local viewpoints, why do the two organizations, which Aaron describes as “incredibly popular and trusted among the American public,” provoke such ire on the right?
According to an analysis by Oliver Darcy for CNN, the “the elephant in the room” regarding the right wing’s criticism of NPR is that “by 2023, Trump and the MAGA Media machine had spent years waging a brutal war on truth and the media organizations that espouse it.”
Or, as a review of a book by journalist Amanda Marcotte puts it, “for years now, the purpose of right wing media…has not been to argue for traditional conservative ideals, such as small government or even family values, so much as to stoke bitterness and paranoia in its audience.” The targets of right-wing media include “journalists, activists, feminists, city dwellers, [and] college professors.”
If those people sound like the stereotypical listeners of NPR, NPR would like to clarify something. NPR plays a vital role in rural communities as well. In a press release on that topic, NPR points out that “rural public radio remains an essential service for rural Americans across broadcast and digital platforms, and continues to keep rural residents informed” with “local news, emergency alerts and public safety news, local music, and cultural preservation.”
What NPR does not do is provide air time to those voices on the political and religious right that dominate talk radio and AM radio in particular. Those voices do not need NPR’s help, but evidently there is resentment on the right that largely centrist NPR and PBS exist at all.
