The joke is getting old, but it is still worth repeating: George Orwell’s 1984 was not intended to be an instruction manual.
But somehow it is. Freedom is slavery, illegals are “law-abiding,” riots are “mostly peaceful,” censorship is truth-preserving, and the state should run the media.
When I read the liberal media (but I repeat myself), I fear getting whiplash from so much head shaking. The latest insanity that has my neck sore is the media’s claim that National Public Radio and the Public Broadcast System not only deserve public money, but that defunding them is a threat to the free press.
The First Amendment is dying because two government propaganda outlets are being cut off from public funds–which, we have been told for years, barely make a dent in their budgets anyway. Could you make it make sense? I can’t.
Without Pravda, how will you get the news? Or, we are told, weather reports? How will the hicks in the sticks hear about weather without NPR?
Rep. Roy: “When the floods were hitting the people that I represent, it took NPR through Texas Public Radio 19 hours to post anything about the flooding on its social media.
What was NPR and TPR doing in the interim? They were playing a program, a DC based program, lobbying… pic.twitter.com/IyZYPFq5SS
— Rep. Chip Roy Press Office (@RepChipRoy) July 17, 2025
What was NPR and TPR doing in the interim? They were playing a program, a DC based program, lobbying Congress for billions of dollars to continue their funding…Private stations in the communities, in which I live were there for the people of Texas, they were there presenting the information necessary, and the public stations were completely MIA.”
These state-funded outlets insist that they have no political bias, which is as credible as the claim that white supremacists who happen to watch the black-themed Empire show, attack actors at 2 in the morning, shouting that Chicago is MAGA country.
David, this was it. This is what did it. It’s not hard. It’s not historic. You and NPR made editorial choices. That’s it. 🫡 https://t.co/lBGb5dha7N pic.twitter.com/fuJqTHUtRI
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) July 18, 2025
Over the past few years, Pravda Media has called for censorship, spread multiple hoaxes about Donald Trump, racism, illegal immigration, and terrorist Catholics and parents. Pulitzer Prizes were handed out for covering and promoting a proven hoax, and we all were propagandized with the absurdity that Joe Biden was sharp as a tack.
That NPR is our one good source for weather forecasting is just another in a long line of BS arguments, of course. But I still can’t get past the absurd argument that GOVERNMENT FUNDING of media is the last line of defense for democracy.
“You can say anything as long as it’s not illegal” is like a soviet joke https://t.co/IG0skPneXH
— Adam Wren (@G0ADM) July 18, 2025
It tells you something deeply troubling about the state of the media. One of the key reasons why the First Amendment exists is the Founders’ understanding that nobody should depend on the government for information. We should be suspicious of the government, not encouraged to believe everything that we are told by it is gospel.
And, as with the Praetorian Guard in Rome, once you empower people who are the defenders of the regime and make them an independent force, they eventually become the rulers behind the scenes. The permanent bureaucracy is now the Deep State, and “independent” government-funded media has become a lobbyist for ideological positions that even elected officials disapprove of.
NPR wound up becoming the voice of the leftists in government–their propagandists–and has been trying to choose the next emperor just as the Praetorian Guard wound up choosing their figurehead.
Ironically, NPR will be just fine without government money. As the voice of the elite in America, the money will flood in from the wealthy and foundations.
But at least I won’t have to pay for it.
