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Anyone familiar with NPRs coverage of the various accusations that the 2020 Presidential election was somehow fraudulent will understand that the network takes a low opinion of such theories; the words "debunked" and "baseless" figure a lot in their stories.

And since Donald Trump is claiming that Democrats are planning to try and use fraud to win this upcoming election, NPR is keeping those terms alive:

When former President Donald Trump told millions of Americans during Tuesday's presidential debate that "our elections are bad, and a lot of these illegal immigrants coming in, they're trying to get them to vote," he was not just repeating a baseless claim intended to undermine the results of the upcoming 2024 election.

But apparently, baseless or not, if the checks clear, you too can promote a baseless theory as an NPR sponsor...

If it helps keep the lights on, I suppose.

To be fair, it's entirely possible that NPR isn't aware of the exact content of the ads. It's likely that some organization or another simply purchased sponsorship space, and when some automated system determined that there was nothing gory, sexually explicit or whatever about the image, it was allowed to go ahead. And I don't think that media outlets have the equivalent of a know your customer law, so they may not have to do much vetting of groups that pay to sponsor articles. That may not be a good idea in all cases, however...