I heard somebody tell me "Oh you listen to NPR? Its so liberal its sickening. "
I mean, I know that many reporters are considered liberal but most editors are considered conservative.
If I listen to Fox News or alot of AM Talk Radio, I hear the conservative nature shinning through. However, I must be blind when it comes to NPR.
Can someone explain to me how NPR is liberal?
You want to hear liberal, listen to Pacifica Radio. NPR news reportage is genuinely balanced. It has no bias to left or right. Their opinion commentary does give voice to liberal views, among others. Maybe it’s the opinion segments that get the accusation. As though there’s something wrong with that. They also have moderate and conservative opinions aired. On the whole, NPR is the most moderate of all media these days.
ABC Radio here plays various NPR segments. From what I’ve heard I’d certainly label NPR as liberal. Of course, that could well be the basis on which ABC chooses the segments it replays.
NPR tries pretty hard to provide a balance: they have plenty of conservative commentaries.
Your frien thinks NPR is liberal because she doesn’t listen and decide for herself; she just takes O’Reilly’s word for it.
I do like NPR, I do (usually) listen to NPR, and I am arguably more liberal than not on many (NOT all) issues, however, I occasionally turn off NPR because they have WAY too many sympathetic stories about illegal aliens than I can possibly stomach.
If it can be said to have a genaral political orientation, I would say that NPR is liberal. Not that there’s USUALLY anything wrong with that.
Conservative AM talk radio tends to be straight opinion shows (e.g. Rush Limbaugh), so spotting “bias” is rather like noticing that Commercials are trying to sell you something.
Bias in ostensibly objective programming often consists not so much of what they say, but how they say it – the relative time devoted to different viewpoints, the tone in which stories are reported – and what they don’t say – the stories that aren’t covered, the facts that are omitted.
It’s hard to peg it down; it’s often quite subtle. A 16 year old murderer scheduled for execution is called a “child;” a 16 year old wanting an abortion is a “young woman.” The fact that military enlistment rates are down is discussed, with no reference to the fact that reenlistment rates for soldiers who have been deployed are up. The best way for the govenment to approach problem X is discussed, with no thought given to the idea that the addressing problem X is none of the government’s business. that sort of thing.
In contra lissener, I do listen to NPR regularly, and do find it biased (though less than, say, FOX)
All due respect, but you’re making these examples up. An NPR reporter would not “address that problem X is none of the government’s business,” but NPR regularly airs commentary by people who would say exactly such things.
If you’re a conservative, any media that is not actively, explicitly endorsing conservative OPINION is viewed as liberal. Any media that presents information without mixing in opinions is labeled liberal.
Yes, I was. I was attempting to give the OP of the types of things people object to without spending an hour googling up specific incidents.
I’ll just let this bit of broadminded genius stand by itself.
Never once have I heard Neil Connan turning down a guest’s mic because of what he is saying. And I’ve never heard Steve Inskeep or Renee Montagne make huge asumptions based on cherry picked facts and present their opinions as gospel.
However, if you listen to Bill O’Reilly for one day, you will hear all that and more.
I actually heard him say something like this ( I am paraphrasing, but its pretty close)
If France had stood up to Sadam and said, “Look , either let the inspectors in or we are going with the US,” he woulda backed down in a heartbeat. But since Jacque Chirac didn’t do that, we had to go to war. The whole Iraq problem can be blamed on him. And now God’s punishing him and his country for not doing their duty. Those rioters are doing God’s work and it is all Jacque Chirac’s fault. End of Story
This wasn’t some editorial, he was preaching this as actual fact.
I’ve never heard something like this on NPR.
The problem with making shit up in a discussion like this, furt, is that it has to do only with your own biases and opinions, and has absolutely nothing to do with the discussion at hand.
NPR is liberal if you lie about it.
Report Faults Ex-CPB Chair Tomlinson on Ethics
Telling a lie does not make you liberal. Lots of people lie. They may have bad reporting ( and to what degree, I’m not sure) but that doesn’t make them liberal
Of course it was an editorial. O’Reilly is a commentator in print, on TV and on the radio. He does not pretend to be a straight news reporter, and comparing his show to a news program isn’t warranted.
Not that I’m a fan of his exactly, but really, it is an apples and oranges comparison.
NPR offers in-depth commentary and thoughtful analyses, at least as much so as one is going to find in the current media environment. They will try to look at an issue from more than one angle, and they take the time to explain the facts.
In the current political environment, this makes them look liberal. It’s the sort of nuanced analysis decried as “wishy-washy” by many modern conservatives; the world is black and white to them, and it’s the liberals who dig around in the shades of gray. Of course, not all conservatives are like this, and the ones at this board are not almost by definition, but one only has to look at the Bush vs. Kerry election to see that the modern Republican party is not inclined toward the sort of nuance that requires a ten-minute news story to explain, and the Democrats are. (In fact, many people believe this is what’s killing us.)
NPR has been my primary news source for the last 20 years, and I’m politically conservative (in an atheistic libertairian sort of way), so maybe my opinion counts for something here. Ten years ago or more, I noticed that their coverage had a leftward bias - not in the opinion pieces, but simply in how they chose to cover the news stories. Reporters would discuss how people slipped through the cracks in the social safety net, but never even hint about how some people think that maybe it’s not the government’s responsibility in the first place to provide a comfortable living for everyone.
However, about ten or more years ago, the notion of “liberal bias” got a lot more attention nationally, and I my impression of NPR’s bias pretty much stopped. I think that they’ve been paying a lot more attention to being balanced for the last ten years or more, and are now very even-handed.
In the interests of not getting into huge wrangles over who said what or who misquoted whom, let’s reserve the quote tags for those occasions on which actual posters or sources are being accurately quoted.
Thank you.
[ /Moderator Mode ]
I suppose that NPR does not usually debate whether or not the government should assist its people. (Unless you listen to Justice Talking. They debate all kinds of things like this. Justice Talking is also on NPR 
) Sometimes, the stories just assume thats what needs to be done. But I know that whenever they have a democratic you insert the title they usually try to have a republican you insert the title I know that when they had John Kerry on NPR they tried to get Bush on as well.
I think there is entirely too much emphasis put on this type of crap. “Your news source is Liberal, so it can’t be trusted!” “Yeah? Well yours is Conservative! It can’t be trusted!!” Facts don’t lean left, right, up, or down—only spin can do that. It’s best to seperate the facts from the opinion (and for fuck’s sake, stop accusing people of bias for op-ed pieces!!!) then verify and corroberate the facts to the best of your ability. Professional opinions should be respected, especially ones that are way out of your league of understanding.
That being said, I have to admit that Fox news seems guiltier of this “bias” than others, but it is important to point out why. The network’s highest rated programs (and if fo whatever reason not highest rated, they are certainly the most talked about) are the pundit shows like Bill O’Rielly and Hannity & Colmes. This stuff simply is not news, and it is an outright lie for those people specifically to carry the “Fain & Balanced” banner around at all times. The accusations of bias come more as a result of these imbeciles than anything else. All of that mess clears up when you realize that this is op-ed stuff, not the “objective journalism” it all claims to be. It would be the same as someone accusing Bill Mahr or Michael Moore of “liberal bias.” The only answer someone on the left could say is, “No shit.” Sadly and often enough, both “sides” generally fail to realize this, and put all too much faith in their activists opinions.
Still, I have found that in most of the actual on-the-ground reporting for any news organization, the only real bias is towards hype, fear-mongering, and sensationalism. I just watch CNN generally because I find their TV personalities much more agreeable.
I think you are misunderstanding him. I believe he is saying that in order to say that NPR is liberal, you have to be lying.
And I guess we have to take your word that you know that the OP’s friend “doesn’t listen and decide for herself; she just takes O’Reilly’s word for it.”