NPR Abandons Traditional 4th of July Reading of Declaration of Independence

National Public Radio (NPR) abandoned its traditional reading of the Declaration of Independence on the Fourth of July in favor of a discussion of what equality means in today’s United States.

Last July, NPR announced: “An NPR Tradition, Here’s The Reading Of The Declaration Of Independence.” The accompanying article included several criticisms of the declaration. But the staff of the nation’s public radio network still joined together to read the founding document.

This year, as Fox News notes, NPR scrapped the reading of the declaration for an 11-minute panel discussion hosted by left-wing anchor Steve Inskeep.

National Public Radio (NPR) announced it was breaking its long-standing 4th of July tradition of reading the Declaration of Independence to instead discuss “what equality means.”

For the past 33 years on NPR’s “Morning Edition,” NPR staff have celebrated America’s birthday by reading the founding document. However, co-host Leila Fadel announced on Twitter that this year they were scrapping that tradition to analyze what Thomas Jefferson meant by “all men are created equal.”

After Inskeep interviewed this author in 2016, the backlash among the network’s liberal audience was so severe that the NPR ombudsman recommended that it no longer air live interviews of conservatives, lest it be unable to counter them in real time.

This year, some on the left, including at least one local branch of the Democratic Party, encouraged protests against the Fourth of July in the wake of the Supreme Court’s recent decision to overturn the Roe v. Wade (1973) decision on abortion.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.