- It’s starting to become clear how Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene plans to use the DOGE subcommittee.
- She’s asking the CEOs of PBS and NPR to testify in a hearing in March.
- Greene says she wants the organizations to justify why they receive public funds.
The House DOGE subcommittee has found its first targets: NPR and PBS.
In letters sent to both media organizations on Monday, Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the chairwoman of the House Oversight Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency, requested that their CEOs testify in a hearing on March 3 or 24.
In the letters, the Georgia congresswoman accused both NPR and PBS of producing “systemically biased” content, pointing to NPR’s handling of the Hunter Biden laptop story and PBS’s reporting on a gesture that Elon Musk made at an Inauguration Day event.
“As an organization that receives federal funds through its member stations, PBS should provide reporting that serves the entire public, not just a narrow slice of like-minded individuals and ideological interest groups,” Greene wrote.
In a statement on Monday, NPR said that the organization would “welcome the opportunity to discuss the critical role of public media in delivering impartial, fact-based news and reporting to the American public.”
A spokesperson for PBS also said they “appreciate the opportunity to present to the committee how now, more than ever, the service PBS provides matters for our nation.”
NPR says it receives less than 1% of its annual budget from the federal government on average. PBS, meanwhile, says it gets 15% of its revenue from the government.
Separately, the chair of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, launched an investigation into NPR and PBS over sponsorships.
The DOGE subcommittee, while intended to pursue similar goals to Musk’s DOGE team in the executive branch, is a separate entity — and it’s likely to be a forum for televised clashes between Democrats and Republicans over the federal government.
Later on Monday, Rep. Melanie Stansbury of New Mexico — Greene’s Democratic counterpart on the subcommittee — sharply criticized the letter in a statement to BI.
“While funding for public media has long been a target of GOP leaders, we have never seen such blatant attacks on the media and institutions as we’ve seen the last two weeks, including this effort to intimidate and undermine public media as with this DOGE hearing called by our colleagues,” Stansbury said.
