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Politics & Government

David Dayen v Carrie Sheffield - Left/Right Views on NPR and PBS Cuts

Dayen says Trump looks 'Weak' for NPR/PBS Cut vs. Sheffield: 'Trump Rightly Defunded PBS-NPR History of Anti-Conservative Pro-Left Content'

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L. A. "Tony" Kovach, Neighbor
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Base image credits are as shown. Text and collage credits are to this writer for MHProNews and this Patch.
Base image credits are as shown. Text and collage credits are to this writer for MHProNews and this Patch.

According to David Dayen, executive editor for the left-leaning The American Prospect (TAP) and co-host of the "Organized Money" podcast has taken yet another shot at President Trump and Republicans. To frame this report and remarks, Dayen has previously shared useful insights on Warren Buffett led Berkshire Hathaway (BRK), Clayton Homes, and their anti-competitive "moat" methods. So, it isn't that Dayen is a journalist from the left that never gets things right (pardon the pun). Dayen's insights on that topic linked below were often useful.

https://www.manufacturedhomepr...

That said, Dayen seems to be in the 'never Trump' and solidly "progressive" journalistic camp. Some specific quotes by Dayen this week emailed to MHProNews on 5.2.2025 are as shown in Part I below. As a teaser, Dayen said:

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As of last month, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which funds NPR and PBS...
...the CPB, which gives NPR and PBS an annual contribution of about $1 billion. (Maybe 1 percent of the total budget for NPR and PBS comes from federal sources.)

Covering the same topic - NPR and PBS - from the political right is Carrie Sheffield. Shefield is described as: "a senior policy analyst at Independent Women’s Voice is the author of "Motorhome Prophecies: A Journey of Healing and Forgiveness,” according to the Daily Signal. Her thoughts will be presented in Part II.

Part I According to David Dayen via an email for TAP

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While you slept, Donald Trump was mad. So he fired off a late-night executive order that purports to block federal funding to National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service.

This is a sign of weakness.

NPR and PBS are perpetually under threat of losing funding when Republicans are in power, but they never pull the trigger because a critical mass of lawmakers in the party don’t actually want to vote against Big Bird. This time was supposed to be different. The GOP was determined to use a mechanism to vote down currently funded initiatives that the president wants to ditch. A rescission package avoids the Senate filibuster; the president simply sends a list of requested rescinded spending and it gets an up-or-down vote.

As of last month, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which funds NPR and PBS, was going to be on that list. The $9.3 billion rescission package was notably small, considering that DOGE has illegally blocked something like $430 billion in appropriated spending. It really only included foreign aid and the CPB, which gives NPR and PBS an annual contribution of about $1 billion. (Maybe 1 percent of the total budget for NPR and PBS comes from federal sources.) That’s because a rescission package cannot be amended; Trump tried a larger one in 2018 and the vote failed. With only one shot at making a list with sufficient political support, it got pared down to the bare essentials. And NPR/PBS funding was one of those essentials.

Trump was supposed to send over the rescission bill this week. Then it got delayed, and now the timeline is the end of this month. ...

Jumping ahead.

The only durable way to defund public media is to defund CPB. And Trump was on the road to doing that with a simple majority vote in Congress. Then he apparently pulled the plug and went it alone. Reading between the lines, we can presume that there aren’t enough votes for rescinding CPB funding...

Dayen then asserts that Trump and DOGE are both "unpopular" that that this is the reason for what he calls pulling to plug on Congressional legislative action.

However, as even left-leaning CNN keeps having to admit, Trump voters - the clear majority in both the popular and electoral votes in 2024 - are still overwhelmingly happy with their votes.

Van Jones was a former President Obama (D) administration official. These clips from CNN in recent days reveal that black voters that supported Trump are also happy with their decision.

Two of those black voters were women.

There is an evidence based argument to be made the left-leaning Dayen, as insightful as he may be on certain topics at times goes out of his way to try to make Trump and the MAGA movement look bad. But consider the reverse of his point. Why does the CPB, NPR, or PBS even need public funding if 99 percent of their money doesn't come from the federal government?

More in Part III.


Part II From the Daily Signal

Commentary
Trump Rightly Defunded PBS and NPR’s Long History of Anti-Conservative, Pro-Leftist Content

Carrie Sheffield | May 02, 2025

It was a day that couldn’t come soon enough. Thursday night, President Donald Trump signed an executive order ending taxpayer subsidies for National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service—media outlets receiving tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer funds each year to spread biased propaganda falsely labeled as “news.”

I made the case for defunding in The Daily Signal in January, two days after Trump’s second inauguration—a celebration that included a speech by Elon Musk expressing his love for America and its people with his hand raised in the air in victory in what PBS falsely labeled “a fascist salute.”
PBS and NPR have a long pattern of biased, anti-American, anti-conservative, and pro-woke slants in their stories.

For example, in 2021, NPR declared the Declaration of Independence to be a document with “flaws and deeply ingrained hypocrisies.” In 2022, NPR scrapped its decades-long Independence Day tradition of reading the Declaration of Independence on air to instead discuss “equality.” NPR also slapped an “editor’s note” warning that the Declaration of Independence is “a document that contains offensive language.”

The radio giant also once reported on the “cousin of diet culture” known as “healthism, which is the idea that we have to be healthy”—claiming healthy living was a negative.

In a project completely unworthy of taxpayer funding, NPR once assigned three reporters to investigate how the thumbs-up emoji is racist. Similarly, NPR suggested doorway sizes are based on “latent fatphobia” and speculated about “the racial origins of fat phobia.”

And flying in the face of mounds of evidence, NPR laughably claimed there is “limited scientific evidence of physical advantage” between male and female athletes. NPR management also reportedly pressured its editors to nix the term “biological sex” in stories on transgender issues.
NPR ran an article, complete with cartoon illustration, on “What ‘queer ducks’ can teach teenagers about sexuality in the animal kingdom.”

NPR disparagingly referred to pro-life Americans at the March for Life with the slanted description of “anti-abortion rights activists.”Meanwhile, PBS devoted a panel to what it “mean[s] to be woke” and “white privilege.” Then-PBS White House Correspondent Yamiche Alcindor biasedly described a 2020 patriotic speech by Trump at Mount Rushmore as a love letter to “white resentment” that promoted the “myth of America.”

In 2023, PBS’ “Washington Week” roundtable covered up then-President Joe Biden’s cognitive decline, with Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic claiming Biden was actually “quite acute.”

PBS also produced a documentary advocating for reparations for black people.

NPR and PBS practically maintain zero tolerance policies for non-leftist viewpoints.

For example, in 2020, NPR refused to cover the Hunter Biden laptop scandal in the runup to the presidential election, falsely claiming the assertions that the laptop was Biden’s “don’t amount to much” and the managing editor patronizing its audience with claims that they “don’t want to waste the listeners’ and readers’ time on stories that are just pure distractions.” This despite the fact that polling showed if the contents of the laptop were more widely known by the American people, the story could have led to a different outcome in the 2020 election.

When Uri Berliner, a 25-year veteran NPR reporter and editor spoke out about how the network lost America’s trust by favoring liberal slants, NPR suspended him.

Berliner found that registered Democrats outnumbered Republicans 87 to zero in the NPR newsroom.

NPR gave much coverage to the Trump Russian collusion hoax, with Berliner characterizing “[Democratic Rep. Adam] Schiff talking points” as “the drumbeat of NPR news reports.”

If that’s not bad enough, NPR CEO Katherine Maher claimed Trump was “a racist,” posted a photo on X of herself wearing a “Biden for President” campaign hat, serves on the board of a George Soros-funded activist group, and shockingly described “reverence for the truth” as a “distraction.”

In 2023, a study found that congressional Republicans saw 85% negative coverage while congressional Democrats saw 54% positive coverage on PBS’ flagship news program.

According to a 2024 study, PBS news staff used 162 variations of the term “far-right” but only six variations of “far-left.”

Media bias rating agency AllBias—which surveyed nearly 24,000 NPR listeners—found NPR’s bias aligns with “liberal, progressive, or left-wing thought and/or policy agendas.”

NPR repeatedly dismissed the theory that COVID-19 originated in a lab—a conclusion now deemed likely by the FBI, CIA, and Department of Energy.

A 2024 Media Research Center study found that PBS’ coverage of the Republican National Convention was 72% negative while coverage of the Democratic National Convention was 88% positive.

While the Left will howl about these funding cuts, it is important to note that cutting public funding is not the same thing as restricting the First Amendment. Trump is not stopping these outlets from producing content, which is even more heavily subsidized through private donations, including from individuals and foundations.

What Trump is doing is removing taxpayer subsidies for this type of terrible speech, and it’s a welcome change.


We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.

Part III - Additional insights plus other topics

1) There are many possible takeaways from the above. It isn't that those on the left are always wrong, just as there are times when voices on the right strain to defend something that may not merit a defense. Facts, evidence, and applied common sense should drive the discussion. Sift what is true from either side of the political spectrum, and toss away what is tested and shown to be false, misleading, or part of an agenda driven narrative.

Dayen asserted that Trump is unpopular. There is evidence that says otherwise.

2) Even leftist supporting billionaire Warren Buffett admitted yesterday that the federal spending is "unsustainable."

3) It is easy to spend other people's money, which is what politicians, perhaps particularly those on the left, often like to do. It is harder to make the tough choices on where to cut spending, but President Trump and DOGE appears to be threading the needle on items that are usually linked to waste, fraud, abuse, or programs that don't merit support in the first place.

The curious part of this CPB/PBS/NPR discussion is this. Dayen himself said what Trump is cutting is only about 1% of 'public broadcasting's' total budget. Others have to adjust budgets based on circumstances, CPB/NPR/PBS should too.

Your writer for this Patch previously pointed out something quite similar to a point made by Sheffield.

NPR=87 Registered Democrats in Editorial Positions and No Republicans

NPR and PBS are demonstrably biased. Let those who want to support those platforms do so with their own money, they don't need or merit taxpayer support.

Other topics follow, including a look at two more leftists who go out of their way to push a narrative that also fails to hold water when carefully examined.

https://patch.com/florida/lake...

Thanks for checking into this installment of the "Reality Check" series for this Patch. As noted, other topics follow.

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L. A. “Tony” Kovach is a publisher who has earned multiple awards in history. He and his family live in a manufactured home on private property in Winter Haven, FL. He is the co-founder of Manufactured Home Living News.com (MHLivingNews.com) and Manufactured Home Pro News.com (MHProNews.com), trade publications serving segments of the manufactured home industry. Having worked in several segments of the manufactured home industry for over 3 decades, Kovach is a widely acknowledged and often praised expert on manufactured housing. ###

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