Democrats ridiculed a Republican-led effort to make the case for defunding American public media at a congressional hearing Wednesday about alleged bias at PBS and NPR.
The hearing by the House of Representative’s Delivering on Government Efficiency (DOGE) subcommittee, titled “Anti-American Airwaves: Holding the Heads of NPR and PBS Accountable,” started at 10 a.m. ET Wednesday. The hearing featured testimony from and questioning of PBS CEO Paula Kerger and NPR CEO Katherine Maher.
During the hearing, subcommittee member Robert Garcia (D-California) opined that “instead of a serious hearing, we’re here to attack NPR and PBS.”
Garcia then launched into a facetious attack on PBS’s Kerger. Garcia asked Kerger about “Sesame Street” puppet duo Bert and Ernie. “These two guys actually live together. They’re friends. They’re supportive of each other,” he said. “Now that might be triggering to our chairwoman” — referring to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia), chair of the DOGE subcommittee — “and some on those on this committee.” Garcia asked Kerger sarcastically, “Are Bert and Ernie part of an extreme homosexual agenda?” To which Kerger responded, “No.”
Conjuring up Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s efforts in the 1940s and ’50s to root out suspected Communists in the U.S. government, Garcia also asked Kerger, “The American people want to know: Is Elmo now, or has he ever been, a member of the Communist Party of the United States? A yes or no.”
Kerger, chuckling, responded, “No.” Garcia followed up with, “Are you sure, Ms. Kerger? Because he’s obviously red.” Said Kerger, “Well, he is a puppet, but no.”
Garcia continued, “I’m obviously using some humor here, but the fact that we’re here today talking about defunding public television is actually not funny. At a time where we can’t agree on basic facts, and while the free press is under attack, we need public media like PBS and NPR more than ever.”
Greene, in her opening remarks Wednesday, labeled PBS and NPR as “radical, left-wing echo chambers for a narrow audience of mostly wealthy, white, urban liberals and progressives, who generally look down on and judge rural America.” She also accusing the public broadcasters of “grooming and sexualizing” children.
“For far too long, federal taxpayers have been asked to fund biased news. This needs to end, and it needs to end now,” Taylor-Greene said.
At another point during the hearing, Rep. William Timmons (R-South Carolina) asked Kerger about “Drag Queen Story Hour,” a digital series in which drag queens read stories to children that had briefly appeared on the PBS website, and whether it was “inappropriate” or a “mistake.” Greene said about one of the drag queens featured in the series, “If I had walked in my living room or one of my children’s bedrooms and had seen this child predator and this monster targeting my children, I would become unglued, and that is now most parents feel all over this country.”
Responding to Timmons, Kerger said that the “Drag Queen Story Hour” never aired on PBS’s stations. She said the video was “mistakenly” added by New York station WNET to the PBS website and that it was “immediately pulled down.”
