National Public Radio came under fire for including a disclaimer before its annual July 4 reading of the Declaration of Independence by noting the historical document contains “flaws and deeply ingrained hypocrisies.” That did not fly with some Twitter users, who got “Defund NPR” among the top trending topics through Monday morning. Those mocking the hashtag pushed it even further up the charts.
“245 years ago today, leaders representing 13 British colonies signed a document to declare independence,” NPR tweeted on Sunday. “It says ‘that all men are created equal’ — but women, enslaved people, Indigenous people and many others were not held as equal at the time.
“The document also includes a racist slur against Indigenous Americans,” the thread continued. “Author David Treuer, who is Ojibwe, says there is a lot of diversity of opinion and thought among Native Americans — a community of more than 5 million people — about the document’s words.”
“In this thread of the Declaration of Independence, you can see a document with flaws and deeply ingrained hypocrisies,” continued NPR, which has nearly 9 million followers on Twitter. “It also laid the foundation for this country’s collective aspirations — the hopes for what America could be.”
The same statement was said aloud ahead of the staff’s reading of the 1776 document, which announced our nation’s independence from Britain.
Listen to the reading below.
Florida congressional candidate Lavern Spicer was among the critics of NPR’s 2021 approach.
“Today is a great day for America to declare its independence from NPR which is currently attacking our Constitution,” she posted to the social media website. “Why should we pay for them to express hatred against us?”
Another conservative congressional candidate, Buzz Patterson from California, joined her. It’s almost like they had some sort of political motivation to bash the news organization.
“Why in the hell are American taxpayers funding this nonsense?” Patterson wrote.
Dan Gainor, who works at right-wing blog NewsBusters, called the writer of the NPR tweets a “piece of filth.”
See those tweets below.
There were more where those came from.
Of course, there was also quite a bit of this:
Happy 4th, everybody.