Rep. Michael Cloud (R-TX) questioned NPR CEO Katherine Maher at today's House DOGE Committee hearing.
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NewsTranscript
00:00NPR fancies itself as a nonpartisan news outlet, public information outlet, even says that
00:10we should consider all things.
00:11All things are considered, yet their history of political bias has shown that there are
00:15a number of things they have not considered.
00:18They asked us not to consider that the Hunter Biden laptop was real.
00:21They dismissed what was always the most probable theory of the COVID lab leak from Wuhan.
00:28They interviewed Russia collusion hoaxer Adam Schiff 25 times, who claimed to have a vault
00:33of information in his office leading to the impeachment of President Trump, which of course
00:38we now know was all fraudulent.
00:42I'd like to submit for the record an article by Uri Berlinger.
00:45I've been at NPR for 25 years.
00:48Here's how we lost America's trust.
00:51Without objection.
00:52So NPR, unfortunately, has lost much of the audience that they used to have, and now they
00:58have a very partisan audience because of this.
01:01Who do they bring in to fix it?
01:02They bring in Ms. Mayher, who has a history and commentary of promoting Marxist ideology,
01:10including critical theory, said we should not use the terms boy or girl, has called
01:15our president a deranged racist sociopath, and said that our reverence for the truth
01:20has become a distraction that is preventing us from finding consensus and getting important
01:25things done.
01:26And one could look at that and think that maybe in your view, promoting groupthink is
01:31more important than finding the truth.
01:33I thought we liked diversity of ideas, especially, and that as an online encyclopedia that you
01:40used to manage, activism was more important than accuracy.
01:44Now I had an uncle who used to say that you should never let the truth get in the way
01:48of a good story.
01:50And while that was humorous when we were talking about weekend fishing expeditions, when we're
01:54talking about news and information and encyclopedias and things that are of national importance,
02:00I find that very troubling.
02:02Now you are here managing NPR, which is in part federally funded.
02:06Can we expect that you will bring the same lack of reverence for truth to your management
02:10of NPR?
02:13Thank you, Congressman.
02:14First of all, I do want to say that NPR acknowledges that we were mistaken in failing to cover
02:18the Hunter Biden laptop story more aggressively and sooner.
02:21Our current editorial leadership in Wuhan, we recognize that we were reporting at the
02:26time, but we acknowledge that the new CIA evidence is worthy of coverage and have covered
02:30it.
02:31What have you done to clean up the bias before you mentioned I wasn't there for that?
02:37What are you doing to clean up and make sure that we have?
02:39Absolutely.
02:40Thank you, Congressman.
02:41As I mentioned, I came in in May, Mr. Berliner published his story two weeks into my tenure
02:46regarding stories that had happened prior.
02:48I wish that I had had the opportunity to speak with Mr. Berliner.
02:51I would have loved to have had him engage and come back to us with some suggestions
02:54as to what we could do editorially in order to address what he perceived as bias.
02:59Now, you've had a long history, including the thing that I mentioned about lack of reverence
03:04for truth and how reverence for truth, you've even talked about the First Amendment kind
03:09of getting in the way of what you wanted to get done.
03:13And then you're wanting us to believe that NPR is now taking this non-biased approach.
03:17I mean, where was the come to Jesus moment for you, I guess, that has turned you around
03:22and that we can trust the American taxpayer dollars with your leadership of NPR?
03:27I so appreciate the opportunity to perhaps clarify some things.
03:30My talk about truth was really referencing the way that people use truth to refer to
03:35belief as opposed to facts.
03:37And my encouragement was that we focus on facts.
03:40With regards to the First Amendment.
03:42That's not what your comment said.
03:43Your comment said that truth was getting in the way of getting things done and that you
03:47were prioritizing what you wanted to get done over truth.
03:51And that's really unfortunate.
03:53I want to go to a different context because you're allowed to have your political opinion.
03:57Any news organization should be going after the truth.
04:01That's what we want and expect out of news organizations.
04:04But certainly a media platform can have whatever opinion it wants in a free society.
04:09The question before us today as a committee is whether or not the taxpayer should be forced
04:13to pay for this kind of thing.
04:16Mr. Gonzalez, I wanted to get your take on this about why the corporate public broadcasting
04:25is it still relevant today?
04:26I mean, we're in a different context than we were in the 60s where maybe not every home
04:29had a television.
04:30Now many of them have multiple televisions and certainly we most have a screen in their
04:36pocket most times during the day.
04:39I have three here on my desk.
04:41And so it seems like we're in a different context.
04:43Where could we possibly get the news today or information?
04:46Could you speak to the importance or lack thereof of the corporation of public broadcasting
04:51in the context of where we are today in society?
04:54Yeah, right.
04:55When it came on after the passage of the 67th Public Broadcasting Act in the early 70s,
05:02there were only three networks.
05:03We had Croghite, Reisner, and the other guy.
05:06And PBS added by a third the number of networks that we had.
05:10That's not the case today.
05:12And as far as education, which has been diminished, and by the way, I believe that Sesame Street
05:16was sold to HBO 10 years ago.
05:19But as far as the educational value, we have an unending stream of educational content
05:27online.
05:28I could reel off a number of websites that people can access, YouTube channels, where
05:35kids of all income levels can access educational content.
05:40So basically, as I said in my testimony, it goes back to the basic unfairness that conservatives
05:48for 50 years have been saying, but you're completely biased.
05:53And they have the audacity to say, oh no, we're not.
05:56And you have to just pay us.
05:58And it's just, that is the basic.
06:01The gentleman's time has expired.
06:04Thank you, Mr. Gonzalez.
06:05I ask unanimous consent to enter into the record an article published today by Uri Berliner
06:14about NPR basically saying that the bias has not changed.