Last week, NPR, or National Public Radio, was in the news when Twitter, under the leadership of Elon Musk, tagged its account as "state-affiliated media."

Twitter's definition of "state-affiliated media" is "outlets where the state exercises control over editorial content through financial resources, direct or indirect political pressures, and/or control over production and distribution."

John Lansing, NPR's president and CEO, issued the following  statement protesting the tag:

We were disturbed to see last night that Twitter has labeled NPR as "state-affiliated media," a description that, per Twitter's own guidelines, does not apply to NPR.

NPR and our Member stations are supported by millions of listeners who depend on us for the independent, fact-based journalism we provide.

NPR stands for freedom of speech and holding the powerful accountable.

NPR carried an article where it claimed the following:

NPR operates independently of the U.S. government. And while federal money is important to the overall public media system, NPR gets less than 1% of its annual budget, on average, from federal sources.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre initially claimed she would refrain from commenting on the change but defended NPR:

There's no doubt of the independence of NPR's journalists.

NPR journalists work digitally to hold public officials accountable and inform the American people.

This is quite an endorsement.

Strictly speaking, "state affiliated media" means media that are controlled by the government that is in power.  In third-world nations, the government in power is relentlessly glorified.  The state-affiliated media won't ever be critical of the government in power; they function like a P.R. adjunct.  The state not only funds the organization, but has full editorial control; usually, a government official has the final approval of every story that is published.

Now, that clearly isn't the case with NPR. 

During the Trump presidency, NPR joined the mainstream media to amplify every baseless hoax peddled against President Trump without an iota of skepticism.  They claimed that Trump is racist and sexist, and they also claimed that Trump's election unleashed a torrent of homophobic and transphobic attitudes.

Trump-supporters were not spared, either.

They also carried the deadly insurrection narrative to cover the protests of January 6, 2021 without any questions.

If NPR were independent, it would have hired journalists who are either pro-Trump or known to be objective to get a balanced view.  But that didn't happen.

The Democrats seldom receive any criticism on NPR; if there is any, it is delivered in measured words with copious context.  As a reader, you would really have to be focused to catch that criticism.

But the attacks are blatant and in the headline while covering Trump: "Trump escalates racist rhetoric and plays on white grievance at recent rallies."

Obvious scandals where Democrats are involved are dismissed.

NPR attempted to dismiss The Hunter Biden laptop story on the eve of the 2020 presidential election and even quoted government officials branding it as Russian propaganda.  NPR issued corrections when the election was over, but the damage done was irreversible.

One could say that NPR is Democrat-affiliated media...like most of the mainstream media.  Most members of the mainstream media say or write exactly what the narrative of the moment demands.  They often have identical opinions on the same issues and even use the same phraseology to describe any given event.

The late, great Rush Limbaugh often made a montage of situations when the buzzwords for any news item were identical.

This doesn't happen by coincidence.  Some adept wordsmith in the Democrat party coins these phrases and supplies them to its P.R. wing, and the stenographers masquerading as writers gladly type without question.

If one looks at the content that NPR publishes, there is no doubt that it caters to the Democrat voter base.  To put it plainly, this is a proud and unremorseful Democrat propaganda outlet.

Its sanctimoniousness prevents it from having self-awareness.  The people at NPR have somehow convinced themselves that whatever they stand for is the only right and moral position to have; those who disagree will probably be slammed as far-right conspiracy theorists.

The question remains why conservative Americans should pay for a news service that is dedicated to demeaning and destroying them.

Perhaps it is time for NPR to prove its independence by severing all ties with the state and rejecting all government funding, directly and indirectly, through government funding of its affiliates.  Most of the taxpayer funding of NPR is first given to local stations across the United States.  These stations then purchase NPR's programs, and the government (state, local, and federal) funding ends up at NPR after being laundered by the affiliates.

The Daily Signal's Jarrett Stepman revealed that NPR also receives government funding for specific programs in addition to "less than 1% funding" from the government annually.  In 2022, the government-funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting gave a $600,000 grant to "Code Switch," which is NPR's self-described "signature podcast on race and identity."

This podcast had episodes on how women in hip-hop push back against the "male gaze" and "fantasy worlds that still had racism, classism, and other ills of reality."

There are myriad other instances of the government funding specific far-left programs by NPR.

Since parting with money isn't easy, particularly for the kind of perpetually virtue-signaling liberals who work at NPR, perhaps Republicans can step in and help NPR in the quest for independence.

Perhaps the GOP-led House passes a few laws that prevent any funding of NPR, its affiliates, and specific programs.