Latest news with #liberalbias
Fox News
20-07-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
NPR whistleblower says embrace of 'fringe progressivism' led to defunding
The NPR whistleblower that exposed the news outlet for liberal bias last year says its embrace of "fringe progressivism" was the reason for its defunding that became official this week. "It's a self-inflicted wound, a product of how NPR embraced a fringe progressivism that cost it any legitimate claim to stand as an impartial provider of news, much less one deserving of government support," Uri Berliner wrote in a Thursday op-ed entitled "Happy Independence Day, NPR." Berliner resigned from NPR last April after he was suspended for not getting approval to do work for other outlets following an essay he wrote in The Free Press. The bombshell piece lambasted his former employer's coverage of contentious topics like Russiagate, Hunter Biden's laptop, and the COVID lab leak theory. He said that his decision to leave was due in part to "absence of viewpoint diversity" at the outlet. Republicans in the Senate and House narrowly passed the rescissions package this week that yanked over $1 billion in federal broadcast funding for the fiscal year. "I witnessed that change firsthand in my 25 years at the network—and I tried to do something about it," he said. "I was a senior business editor at NPR when, a little more than a year ago, I published my account in The Free Press of how the network had lost touch with the country, and, like the legacy media everywhere, forfeited the trust of the public." He said that the outlet eventually "became a boutique product for a well-heeled audience clustered around coastal cities and college towns" and "shed moderate and conservative listeners." "Once fairly evenly divided between liberals, moderates, and conservatives, NPR's news audience shifted sharply to the left," Berliner wrote. The former NPR editor, who is now a contributing editor at The Free Press, said that NPR eroded the trust of its readers through slanted coverage of the COVID "lab leak" theory, as well as not covering the Hunter Biden laptop scandal. The outlet instead became part of what Berliner called the "Great Awokening," publishing headlines like "Which Skin Color Emoji Should You Use? The Answer Can Be More Complex than You Think," "Bringing Diversity to Maine's Nearly All-White Lobster Fleet," and "These Drag Artists Know How to Turn Climate Activism into a Joyful Blowout." "We were told to avoid the term biological sex, warned not to say illegal immigrant (a hurtful label)," Berliner wrote. He said his hope for NPR is it will return to its founding principles. "Now NPR will be like any other media organization, free to be as partisan as it chooses, stripped of its unique claim to taxpayer support, still protected by the First Amendment, but subject to the same financial and competitive pressures as everyone else," Berliner wrote. Fox News Digital reached out to NPR for comment, but did not immediately receive a response.
Fox News
16-07-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
PBS president declares she 'can't make any sense' of accusations of left-wing bias
PBS CEO and president Paula Kerger claimed Wednesday that she doesn't see any evidence behind the accusations that her outlet is partial to liberal viewpoints. Kerger's comments come as the U.S. Senate is set to vote on President Donald Trump's rescission bill, a piece of legislation that would cut just over $1 billion in federal funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), the government-backed funding arm for NPR and PBS. Trump and Republicans have made the case for the cuts, saying they are scraping back funding for "woke" programs that do little more than gird the government's spending addiction. "When I look at the range of our programmings on public broadcasting, I can't make any sense of an argument that we are somehow biased in any way," Kerger told CNN anchor Boris Sanchez. Sanchez cited the Trump administration stating that PBS publishes "radical woke propaganda disguised as news," and asked Kerger to respond. "I don't think that Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood is a biased program," she replied, providing an example of PBS children's programming. It teaches children basic skills around letters and numbers." GOP lawmakers have pointed to examples of PBS children's programming showing evidence of left-wing bias. Rep. Mary Miller, D-Ill., called out PBS program Sesame Street for promoting Pride Month this June in an X post, as the show has done in the past. She shared the post, and commented, "PBS is shamelessly grooming our children while collecting taxpayer dollars. This is evil and should infuriate every parent in America. DEFUND!!" "Federal funds aren't for grooming. Through Sesame Street characters or otherwise. Defund PBS," Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, posted to his personal X account last month in reply to a video of a 2020 episode of "The Not-Too-Late Show" with Sesame Street character Elmo featuring Johnathan Van Ness of Netflix's "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy." "The news programming that we do represents about 10% of our broadcast schedule, and that includes the [PBS] 'NewsHour,' of which I'm very proud of the excellence of the journalism of that series," Kerger continued. She claimed that she often asks people for examples of liberal bias in PBS programming, but they have trouble presenting her with any. "People often struggle to come up with examples of what really they're talking about," she said, adding, "So, we're always interested, obviously, in making sure that we're serving a multiplicity of viewpoints." PBS has been heavily criticized for political bias and for advancing leftist ideologies like gender ideology, such as a PBS movie called "Real Boy," which, according to PBS, follows a transgender-identifying teen as he "navigates adolescence, sobriety, and physical and emotional ramifications of his changing gender identity." A "PBS Newshour" segment on promoted transgender treatments for children such as puberty blockers while shrugging off Republican criticisms. "PBS NewsHour" anchor Judy Woodruff apologized in August for her "mistake" in reporting that President Trump urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to delay a hostage deal between Israel and Hamas until after the 2024 presidential election to benefit him politically. During an interview with journalist Katie Couric in May, Kerger denied seeing any bias to one side in her network's programming. "You know, I get as many calls from people on the more progressive side as on the conservative side that have issues every night with every night's broadcast. You know, I see this or I see that," she said. Kerger also suggested that viewers who complain are the ones seeing red when they see a narrative they don't like. "We're in a difficult time right now in our country around news coverage where people forget that news is news, and it is not about hearing information that is reaffirming what you think you know," she told Couric.
New York Times
10-07-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Why Hiring Professors With Conservative Views Could Backfire on Conservatives
Is hiring more conservative professors and admitting more conservative students a solution to liberal bias in American higher education? Many people think so. The Trump administration, in threatening to cut Harvard's federal funding, demanded that the university foster greater 'viewpoint diversity,' including by recruiting faculty members and students who would restore ideological balance to campus. Other political actors have embraced the idea, too. At least eight states have passed or introduced laws to require viewpoint diversity at public educational institutions. Certainly, there is not enough engagement with conservative ideas on college campuses. Schools can and should do more to ensure that students encounter a greater range of political perspectives in syllabuses and among speakers invited to give talks. But a policy of hiring professors and admitting students because they have conservative views would actually endanger the open-minded intellectual environment that proponents of viewpoint diversity say they want. By creating incentives for professors and students to have and maintain certain political positions, such a policy would discourage curiosity and reward narrowness of thought. I am a philosophy professor whose views are, for the most part, politically progressive. When I teach the social contract — the theory that underpins many of our ideas about government and its justification — I assign the work of the philosopher Robert Nozick, one of the most prominent and effective defenders of libertarianism. I do so because I want my liberal students to be challenged and my libertarian students to think carefully about the arguments that support their position. Mr. Nozick's own story helps show why hiring professors and admitting students for viewpoint diversity would be misguided. When he arrived at Princeton as a graduate student around 1960, he was a socialist. At Princeton he encountered the writings of the political economist Friedrich Hayek, a Nobel Prize-winning libertarian. In trying to argue against Hayek, Mr. Nozick found himself developing the ideas that would form the basis of his influential 1974 book, 'Anarchy, State, and Utopia,' which made a forceful case for a minimal state. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Free Malaysia Today
29-05-2025
- General
- Free Malaysia Today
Harvard to hold graduation in shadow of Trump's ‘retribution'
Harvard is accused of tolerating antisemitism and liberal bias by the US government. (AFP pic) CAMBRIDGE : Harvard is due to hold its annual graduation ceremony today as a federal judge considers the legality of punitive measures taken against the university by President Donald Trump that threaten to overshadow festivities. Today's commencement comes as Trump piles unprecedented pressure on Harvard, seeking to ban it from having foreign students, shredding its contracts with the federal government, slashing its multi-billion dollar grants, and challenging its tax-free status. Harvard is challenging all of the measures in court. The Ivy League institution has continually drawn Trump's ire while publicly rejecting his administration's repeated demands to give up control of recruitment, curricula and research choices. The government claims Harvard tolerates antisemitism and liberal bias. 'Harvard is treating our country with great disrespect, and all they're doing is getting in deeper and deeper,' Trump said today. Harvard president Alan Garber, who told National Public Radio yesterday that 'sometimes they don't like what we represent', may speak to address the ceremony. Garber has acknowledged that Harvard does have issues with antisemitism, and has struggled to ensure that a variety of viewpoints can be safely heard on campus. 'What is perplexing is the measures that they have taken to address these (issues) don't even hit the same people that they believe are causing the problems,' Garber told NPR. Basketball star and human rights campaigner Kareem Abdul-Jabbar addressed the class of 2025 for Class Day today. AdChoices ADVERTISING 'When a tyrannical administration tried to bully and threaten Harvard to give up their academic freedom and destroy free speech, Dr Alan Garber rejected the illegal and immoral pressures the way Rosa Parks defied the entire weight of systemic racism in 1955,' he said to applause. Civil rights icon Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama sparking a boycott that ultimately led to the desegregation of services, spurring on the civil rights movement in what is widely seen as a watershed moment. Madeleine Riskin-Kutz, 22, a Franco-American classics and linguistics student at Harvard said some students were planning individual acts of protest against the Trump policies. 'The atmosphere (is) that just continuing on joyfully with the processions and the fanfare is in itself an act of resistance,' she said. Legal fightback Garber has led the fight-back in US academia after Trump targeted several prestigious universities including Columbia which made sweeping concessions to the administration in an effort to restore US$400 million of withdrawn federal grants. A federal judge in Boston will tomorrow hear arguments over Trump's effort to exclude Harvard from the main system for sponsoring and hosting foreign students. Judge Allison Burroughs quickly paused the policy which would have ended Harvard's ability to bring students from abroad who currently make up 27% of its student body. Retired immigration judge Patricia Sheppard protested outside Harvard Yard yesterday, sporting a black judicial robe and brandishing a sign reading 'for the rule of law'. 'We have to look at why some of these actions have been filed, and it does not seem to me seemly that a president would engage in certain actions as retribution,' she told AFP. Ahead of the ceremony, members of the Harvard band sporting distinctive crimson blazers and brandishing their instruments filed through the narrow streets of Cambridge, Massachusetts that is home to America's oldest university ahead of the graduation ceremony. A huge stage had been erected and hundreds of chairs laid out in a grassy precinct that was closed off to the public for the occasion. Students braved sunny conditions to wear black academic gowns, touring through Cambridge with photo-taking family members, AFP correspondents saw.
