“NPR has strayed far from its ethos of ‘independent journalism in the public interest’ by allowing its liberal donors to buy desired ‘news’ coverage” 

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senate Commerce Committee Ranking Member Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is asking National Public Radio (NPR) to turn over documents and information regarding its funding sources, including millions of dollars in donations from liberal mega-donors who appear to be buying desired news coverage.

While NPR is required by law to “adhere to objectivity and balance in all programs or series of programs of a controversial nature” as a condition of receiving federal funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), recent reports have shed light on NPR’s unwillingness to cover newsworthy events that fail to align with its liberal views.

In a letter to NPR President and Chief Executive Officer Katherine Mayer, Sen. Cruz raised questions about NPR’s private, left-wing mega-donors and their corresponding influence on NPR’s news coverage:

“As it turns out, NPR’s selective reporting may be driven not only by preexisting political bias within the organization but also by its private donors. The timing and content of certain NPR articles align with earmarked, multi-million-dollar donations from left-wing nonprofits looking to advance their own narratives in the press.  In other words, NPR may be engaged in a Payola scheme to leverage its dwindling credibility as a nonpartisan news organization to ‘help’ partisan, left-wing mega-donors.”

As Sen. Cruz points out in the letter, U.S. taxpayers provide millions of dollars in both direct and indirect funding to NPR. While NPR conceals the total amount it receives through taxpayer funds to local stations, it has acknowledged that such funding “comprise[s] a significant portion of NPR’s largest source of revenue” and that “[t]he loss of federal funding [from CPB] would undermine the stations’ ability to pay NPR for programming.” 

In addition to the millions it collects each year from taxpayers, NPR receives substantial support from left-wing mega-donors like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. As Sen. Cruz lays out in his letter and a corresponding memo, after pocketing these hefty sums, NPR churned out content mirroring its donors’ agendas.

The memo details the following donations from left-wing organizations and related NPR news coverage:

• In November 2023, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has stated that “every country needs to undertake urgent and significant development and growth transitions to adapt to the consequences of ongoing climate change, and to fast track the move to a green economy,” donated $4 million “to support NPR’s ongoing coverage of global health and development issues and data infrastructure.” Two months later, NPR published an article highlighting “buzzwords in the world of global health and development,” such as “climate mobility,” and quoting Bill Gates as saying that the “2024 elections will be ‘a turning point for both health and climate.’”
• In January 2023, Carnegie Corporation of New York, which claims it is working to “fortify” elections due to “barriers to voting on the rise,” donated $1 million to NPR. In the year following, NPR reported extensively on issues such as “counter[ing] false election claims” and “Republicans aim[ing] to stop noncitizen voting in federal elections.”
• In 2022, the Rockefeller Foundation donated $500,000 to NPR “toward the costs of building reporting capacity for covering energy, environmental and climate change news in order to improve public knowledge and understanding, provide public accountability and help communities take action to protect the planet.” In turn, NPR published stories on “the new Climate Reality Check” for Hollywood blockbusters and “unexpected links between climate change, student debt and lower lifetime earnings.”
• In 2022, the Catena Foundation, which has a stated objective of giving to “left-of-center nonprofits in western states,” donated $600,000 to NPR for the purpose of “NPR and TX public radio immigration coverage.” NPR subsequently published a podcast accusing “U.S. immigration policy” of intentionally “tak[ing] advantage of” a desert in Texas to “raise the death toll for migrants” and attacking Republicans for “unprecedented anti-immigration rhetoric.”
• In 2022, the MacArthur Foundation, which works to promote DEI and end “philanthropy’s complicity in anti-blackness,” donated $500,000 “in support of NPR’s Race and Identity beat and Podcasts: Code Switch and Throughline.” NPR in turn published Code Switch podcasts on how “systemic racism” impacts U.S. tax policy and on “inherit[ing] whiteness.”
• In 2023, the Jacob & Valeria Langeloth Foundation, which seeks to “change the inherent nature and role of the current justice system,” donated $100,000 to NPR to “report on criminal justice and reform efforts at state and federal levels” as “social and racial justice issues will continue to thread NPR’s coverage throughout to inform the public about the realities of the nation's criminal justice system.” In the months following, NPR published stories on the “role state politics play” in “racist mass shootings” in states such as Florida.
• In November 2023, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which claims “the racial reckoning of 2020” made clear that “health should be a right not a privilege” and that “structural racism” is “one of the biggest barriers to health in America,” donated $2.75 million to NPR with the stated purpose of “bridg[ing] the gap between personal, public and community health—especially the social determinants of health—and address[ing] the fundamental inequities of health and healthcare in America.” Months later, NPR published a piece on racism in medicine in which an interviewee said the Supreme Court’s affirmative action decision would “have a long-term impact on Black health” and aired a podcast criticizing “race-based diagnoses” because “biological race is not a real thing.”
• In June 2023, the Melville Charitable Trust donated $250,000 to NPR “in support of national coverage of issues related to poverty and homelessness,” the “root cause[s]” of which include “Racist housing, zoning, and land use policies.” Shortly after, NPR published an interview with former Housing Secretary Marcia Fudge on how she’s “confronting a ‘racist’ system.”

“These and other examples show that NPR has strayed far from its ethos of ‘independent journalism in the public interest’ by allowing its liberal donors to buy desired ‘news’ coverage,” Sen. Cruz wrote to Ms. Maher. “If the American taxpayer is going to finance a public broadcaster, then they deserve nothing less than fair and unbiased reporting.”

Sen. Cruz concluded the letter by asking NPR to turn over documents and information regarding both its public and private funding sources no later than July 26, 2024.

To read the full letter to NPR, CLICK HERE.

To read Sen. Cruz’s memo outlining NPR’s private donations and corresponding news coverage, CLICK HERE.

Background

In December 2023, Sen. Cruz opened an investigation into the legality of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s (CPB) mandate that radio and television stations must engage in affirmative action to qualify for grant funding. The letter revealed how CPB board members recently voted to modify existing affirmative action mandates for publicly funded media outlets like NPR as a workaround to state anti-DEI legislation. Last summer, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that affirmative action, which considers traits like race as a plus-factor in college admissions or employment, violates the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.

In April, Sen. Cruz sent a letter questioning CPB about taxpayer-funded NPR’s reporting, which has become increasingly liberal and partisan in recent years. NPR receives taxpayer funding through CPB. CPB falls under the jurisdiction of the Senate Commerce Committee.

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