Media

NPR Gives Up On Declaration Of Independence Reading

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Sarah Wilder Social Issues Reporter
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National Public Radio (NPR) ended a more than three-decade-long tradition of reading the Declaration of Independence on Monday, July 4.

NPR had read the Declaration of Independence live on air for Independence Day since 1988. However, on Monday, the publication hosted historians Annette Gordon-Reed and Jill Lepore to discuss “what equality means and has meant in this document.”
“That founding document has never been the whole story. So on this July Fourth, we hear some of the ways Americans have used the declaration since 1776,” host Steve Inskeep said.

Reed’s book, “Thomas Jefferson & Sally Hemings,” discusses the children Jefferson fathered with Hemings, who was his slave. Lepore is the author of “These Truths,” which investigates the “beauty and tragedy” of America’s history. (RELATED: NPR Claims An AR-15 Is Capable Of Beheading People, Here’s What Experts Had To Say)

The radio program, which is taxpayer-funded, read the document in 2021, while discussing it in the context of racial issues.

“After last summer’s protests and our national reckoning on race, the words in the document land differently,” NPR said.

The federal government budgeted $30 million for funding of public broadcasting in 2021, according to The New York Times.

“NPR is an independent nonprofit membership organization of separately licensed and operated public radio stations across the United States,” the Corporation for Public Broadcasting says.