Chip Roy: It Took 19 Hours for NPR to Post Anything About Texas Floods on Their Social Media

TRANSCRIPT:

ROY: "A lot of folks here talking about and extolling the virtues of NPR, PBS, public broadcasting and so forth, and talking about how, you know, cutting their funding is somehow going to endanger communities and rural communities. Well, 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 social media. What was NPR and TPR doing in the interim? What were they doing in the morning, at 4:00, 5:00, 6:00, 7:00 in the morning? When private radio stations that I listen to and that I talk to were breaking in and presenting the information and the news, they were playing a program, a D.C.-based program lobbying Congress for billions of dollars to continue their funding. When the flood hit at 4:00 in the morning, instead of providing local news, they were airing the morning edition of the Washington Desk. Well, that's fine, they already had it pre-taped. I get that. But they didn’t break in like the local stations did and so forth. The seven private stations posted over 70 alerts on their social pages throughout the day, starting at 7:24 in the morning. My point being, 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."