I disagree. There are facts, and there is commentary. When a commentator cites supposed facts, s/he is exercising a reportorial function, and has the usual duty to get the facts right - not the least because people are going to assume that the talking head wouldn’t be on TV spouting these ‘facts’ if they weren’t true.
Once the commentator shifts gears to opine about the erstwhile facts, that’s commentary. In that function, the vidiot is welcome to say anything s/he likes, AFAIAC.
But the idea that commentators should be exempted from responsibility when it comes to statements of fact because they’re “not reporters” is repugnant. When they report facts, they are functioning as reporters. If they can’t deal with it, then FOX should yank them off the air. That it doesn’t even consider doing so says everything one needs to know about FOX.
Editorial view in today’s Columbus Dispatch, noting heavy-handed tattempts to shift NPR’s position on the political axis (including judging program guests on whether they were pro or anti-Bush and DeLay}:
*Most fair-minded viewers and listeners would agree that PBS and NPR tend to feature liberal commentary and to report more on issues that liberals consider important — poverty, race and the environment, for example — than those important to conservatives, such as national security, traditional values and property rights.
Trying to maintain public broadcasting’s mandate to be apolitical and unbiased is exactly what the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, formed in 1967 to distribute public funding for noncommercial broadcasting, should do. But Tomlinson’s heavy-handed approach seemed to many a politically motivated crusade…What shouldn’t be forgotten in the debate is the importance of professionally managed public broadcasting with the highest standards for quality, accuracy and intelligence.
Even with their leftward lean, PBS and NPR give Americans something increasingly rare: thoughtful, complex, in-depth reporting and commentary on serious issues, as well as intellectually rich cultural programming.*
I remember reading this editorial last year written by a NY *Times * editor and found it refreshingly forthright. He said that his paper is indeed left-leaning on certain issues in spite of the attempts of both reporters and editors to either present the issue neutrally or represent both sides of the story. He reasoned that a majority of students going into journalism are more liberal-minded, and even more so in a cosmopolitan city. As much as they try to remain unbiased, the news team would tend to pick topics, pursue angles, and write stories with there own world-view.
I applaud this editor for recognizing this trait in his paper; not because he revealed a flaw in the media, but because the fact that he is aware of the disposition of his colleagues and is actively looking to balance it.
I love NPR and find it largely balanced, but some shows are more left-leaning than others. I think this is only natural given the environment similar to what the *Times * experiences, but the better shows tend to actively adjust themselves.
When people tell me they think NPR is biased I question them further to find out exactly what they are listening to.
Very often it’s the local public radio station that carries other programming in addition to NPR. This includes Pacifica and local programming, and these most definitely do not hold to NPR’s standards.
Case in point is WAMC in upstate NY. It’s part of Northeast Public Radio, and they carry NPR-proper some of the day. But you also hear local stuff with people like Alan Chartock, who definitely gets poor grades for bias.
NPR itself is the best news outlet around for thoughtful coverage. As was stated by others, they are the only one that seems to go beyond the sound bite.
What they don’t have is ultraconservative commentaries. Or ultraradical commentaries, FWTW. The raw-meat right and the brown-rice left, with their polemics, question-begging and quiet hysteria, are both pretty much absent from NPR.
I agree about your observations, but disagree regarding your attribution of cause. The NPR jounralists tend to portray the people they cover somewhat sympathetically. Since sympathy is typically associated with liberalism “those bleeding-heart liberals” it tends to make them seem slightly liberal. The NPR folks essentially let the person express themselves, and cover the impact their situation has. It’s sad that sympathy and attention to detail has become so divorced from “conservative” radio as to make it a hallmark of “liberal” radio. Would Limbagh and O’Reiley prefer NPR to spout vitriolic jingoist propaganda, spiced up with absrud lies as much as they do, rather than do their jobs and persue journalism? As Drake Tungsten pointed out, there’s just slightly more liberal journalists than the other way 'round, they try to give stories a human intrest. The instances Drake Tunsten points out about “child” versus “young woman” are caused by the ambiguity of life, and the cases the journalists are looking in to. If there was a clear divide between right and wrong, irresonsible kids and promising young adults it would be so uninteresting, that there wouldn’t be any journalists covering it.
I think they’re fair and balanced. That balance isn’t midway between the left and the right. Afterall, the right which has a voice in this country is so far to the right, that a “middle ground” would be conservative. There’s people on the left how as equally far out, but they get less attention. Just because an argument involves two widely divergent opnions, that doesn’t mean that the truth is exactly midway between them. One side could simply be wrong. They could both be wrong. Objectivity isn’t the easy road, it’s the high road.
I think the proper response to such people is to say something like, “Really? One thing I like about NPR is that they always require that folks offer hard evidence for opinions they offer, and I’ve grown to value that requirement. What specific examples of NPR’s liberal bias can you offer me?”
Because frankly, I think that’s a crock; and I don’t recall ever hearing any solid examples of a liberal bias at NPR.
The last time we did this, I believe that there was a disconnect: certain evidence was uncritically accepted that proved a conservative bias at Fox News. Similar evidence levelled at NPR was dissected in minute detail and ultimately did not, according to the collective wisdom here, show a bias at NPR.
Last time, I related my own personal story of being interviewed for an NPR news segment and have the on-air version of my remarks edited to present a different picture than the one a person listening to the full interview would have gained; the change was favorable to the left side of the house.
I said last time, and will acknowledge again, that NPR is the least biased of all major news sources. More than any other source, they strive to get it as neutral as possible. But through story selection and choice of words, their reporters’ internal feelings and views do surface. When you honestly believe that abortion is a natural right for a woman to have, then a story that casts having the choice to have abortion available as a middle-of-the-road, moderate view, and the opposiing view as automatically a reactionary, hard-right conservative view. When you honestly believe that abortion should be available as a choice to minors, you tend to think of your opinion as middle of the road. You refer to the females in question as ‘girls’ or ‘teens’ and not ‘minors’, because that casts the issue favorably for you. Not as a conscious effort to deceive, I’m certain… but simply as a reflection of how you’re thinking about the issue.
So - NPR is an excellent and highly reputable news source. But they do have a bias, and that bias is to the left. It’s the least biased of any major news source, but it’s not UNbiased.
Good point, Mach Tuck – NPR itself is only one, although the biggest, “public” media content provider. But your local public radio/public TV station is likely to incorporate content from other sources. As far as I can tell, the actual news reporting is rather good, and the cultural content is high quality.
This is where you are wrong. Most of the people who watch him actually take what he says to be straight news reporting. That’s the danger of it.
Plus, even most hardcore spin-meister commentary and op-ed peices usually do their best to get the facts they choose to report correct. O’Rielly seems to have forgotten even that.
I disagree. In the context of FoxNews, O’Reily is presented as its zenith, and all the “reporters” take their cues from people like him and Hannity on air. You can’t watch much FoxNews without one of the conservative commentators interjecting themselves into the news, whether as commentary, pimping their upcoming programs (and at the same time getting a word in about the current news subject) or being promoted by the news people. Their commentary encloses the news, rather than the other way around as on most news programs. When they do provide “both sides” commentary, it is usually brief and thus devoted to simplistic emotionalism: a venue that’s perfect for the way the conservative commentators work and not suited for the nuance of a more journalistic treatment. They emphasize this even more by pairing straight out conservative pundits against journalists, who are supposed to represent “liberals” but who basically still stick to the “analysis” mode of journalism, which is no match or comparison for a pundit. The pundits that ultimately sit at the top of FoxNews are all solid, even wacky (Hannity/O’Reily) conservatives that spend all their time advocating for their points of view. Look at CNN and you get people like Larry King, who devotes more time to psychics than expounding any coherent political views. Even on MSNBC, Tucker Carlson, a solid conservative himself, spends more time doing something that leans towards analysis and asking interesting questions than just out and out promoting the marching party vanguard.
NPR’s coverage is worlds removed from that. In terms of commentary, they have actual intelligent conservatives talking at length. Listening to NPR, I actually have respect for conservative opinions, because they are presented thoughtfully. They rarely face off two people directly in a shouting match format. And they generally devote far far more time to explaining a situation before slipping into commentary and warring voices.
In virtually every instance in which I’ve been quoted or sourced in the press, I’ve been unhappy with how ultimately my input came out in the story: it felt like a distortion (in some cases, they even ASKED to get the facts wrong: wanted to change “neurological disorder” to “head pain” because they thought readers would understand the latter and not the former).
One good example I can remember: when the AWB expired, some liberal nut-job (as opposed to a conservative nut job ) was invited onto the Diane Rehm show, wailing and moaning that now that the AWB has expired, children (OH! Will somebody please think of the children!) will be able to buy fully-automatic Uzis at Wal-Mart, and that the NRA would be handing them out on every streetcorner.
Okay, so I’m exaggerating a bit for emphasis, but her guest (wish I could remember his name) was waayyy off-base with his “facts.”
FYI: fully-automatic firearms are heavily regulated at Federal and State level in the United States, and have been since 1933 (or '34, I forget), and are banned outright in several states (other than military and law enforcement, of course).
I called in a correction about half-way through the show, and I doubt that I was the only one, but Mrs. Rehm declined to offer any on-air correction to her “guest” from the undoubtedly myriads of phone calls and e-mails from honest listeners.
I still listen to NPR though, and if you listened, the liberal slant is subtle; they’ll lead off a story about conservatives with a mild opener from a very slightly liberal POV, offer a (usually coherent and complete) conservative rebuttal, and then close with a stronger liberal POV.
I’ll grant that NPR’s bias is mild at its worst, and it is NOT all-pervasive. But it is there. All-in-all, though, I do find NPR reasonably balanced. Prolly why it’s about the only station I listen to here in St. Louis (other than the Classical station).
And FWIW, I’m generally somewhat conservative, and I listen to neither Rush or O’Reilly.
It is a little tough to tell at what aspect on National Public Radio the accusations of liberal bias are directed. NPR appears to have at least three different, maybe four different, operations going on. They have a news program which reaches me as weekday morning and evening news and a weekend news program. They have an entertainment operation, things like Mountain Stage, Thistle and Shamrock, Piano Jazz and Car Talk. They have entertainment programing that has some political content, notably Prairie Home Companion and Wait, wait, don’t tell me. They have chat shows that are unabashedly political although they do deal with other topics such as Fresh Air, This American Life, On Point and apparently this Diane Rehm who I never heard of before.
As far as I can tell the news programing, even when they trot out poor old Dan Shores to reminisce on the Nixon enemies list, is throughly professional. In the news programs I see a concerted to present the views of both sides of a controversial story to the extent of bringing in talking heads from (for the love of all that is good and decent) the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation and let them rattle away to the extent that a six minute piece allows.
The entertainment programs are just that. I have yet to hear Fiona Richie or Click and Clack deliver a polemic on the political issues of the moment. The stuff that has a political content is pretty mild – Garrison Keiller’s comments about Republicans, Democrats and national policy is certainly within the tradition of Will Rogers and is some what witty and amusing. It is surely no more partisan than the stuff Jay Leno throws out.
That leaves us with the chat shows. As some one else noted the tendency is to let guest run and for the topics to be matters that are of concern to liberal / progressive folks, but with things like Bill O’Riley’s appearance on Fresh Air in mind, it hardly seems fair to claim that the NPR chat shows suppress conservative and Republican voices. I’m sure that some people are offended by some of what is said but the offense appears to be more a matter of giving people a chance to talk at length than do the commercial out lets. If people don’t like the chat shows then let them get their view expressed on them. I have seen nothing that indicates that NPR chat shows exclude controversy. If the objection is that positions they oppose are presented then its just whining and hand wringing over the idea that any opinion other than theirs is broadcast and some public expence.
I get the idea that the big dogs don’t much care about radio but they are desperately concerned with public television, as demonstrated by the recently defugalty at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting .
This is probably where the truth lies. When I was in college I didn’t mind that my sculpture professor played NPR during class; there was no noticeable political slant to the the shows. A year later, and several miles away (30?) the NPR aired where I worked was infuriatingly liberal. Oh my god, I was surprised that 75% of the “pieces” aired during November 2000 weren’t tagged with “paid for by Al Gore and the democratic party.” Partisan whiny cry-baby belly-aching for a solid month over the stalled election; there was maybe 1 conservative speaker for every 10 liberals. Perhaps the difference was the local station, rather than NPR itself, especially considering that most of the on-air temper tantrums were local folks venting.
To be fair, I believe I read only a few posts in that thread before deciding that it was more trying to prove something about Fox than something about NPR, and didn’t participate. It might be worth my tracking it down and reading it.
Well, I think we may need to define our terms, then. First, by “left”, do we mean left of the US political center? Left of other radio news sources? Left of other news media?
Second, by “biased,” do we mean, “containing a level of bias beyond that which is inevitable in news created by humans”? Or do we mean, “containing any bias whatsoever, even that bias that is inevitable in news created by humans”? If we mean the latter, then sure, NPR is biased; but given how we’ve defined the terms, that’s an uninteresting conclusion. I’d rather go for the former definition, so that we’ve got something to argue about :).
One of your examples is that a news story on the availability of abortions to females under the age of 18 refers to them as “girls” or “teens” instead of as “minors.” Personally, none of these word choices you suggest speak to me of bias, not by themselves: they may have a style guide that mandates a particular choice, or a particular reporter may speak with a certain style that isn’t caused by political beliefs.
In order to show bias in word choice, I think, you’d need to show that they consistently choose one set of words in one type of story and another set in another type of story. For example, if their stories on underage smoking usually refer to “minors,” whereas their stories on underage sex usually refer to “girls [or boys]” or “teens,” then you’ve got strong evidence of bias.
Yeah, I realize this is a very high burden of proof. Intentionally so: I think that otherwise, it’s really easy to cherrypick examples to prove that anyone is biased. There are other ways to show bias that are much easier (a newspaper like the NYT that has tons of headlines about how much trouble Bush is in, but didn’t have tons of headlines about how powerfully he was soaring during his strong moments, is showing bias, and I’ll freely concede it).
But that’s precisely the point: the bias isn’t typically deliberate. Few on NPR are trying to intentionally slant a story one way or another, but reporters are human, and something of them will come through.
Which is one of the reasons NPR is more than just “tolerable” to me; I recognize the (typically occasional and slight) bias as a natural human tendency, and (usually) not an organized editorial effort.
And once that tendency is recognized by me as a listener, it’s easy to filter out the (only ocasionally, and very slightly) loaded adjectives and adverbs, and focus on the critical nouns and verbs.
Because the bias is NOT typicaly deliberate, it is extremely difficult to point to instances and say, “Here; here they are biased.” The one instance I cited (and I recognize that my anecdote can only be called a “cite” under the most charitable of circumstances) only stood out so because it dealt with gun control, the AWB, and was glaringly, factually, wrong. It stuck to my mind because it is the (rare) exception, rather than the rule, with NPR and Diane Rehm.
I guess if the point of noticing bias is that we can filter it out, that makes sense. At the same time, for us to do that, we need to be at least as aware of our own bias: it can be very easy to listen to a fairly objective report and, because of our own bias, see the report as biased (and ourselves as objective).
FAIR, for example, once criticized NPR viciously for its focus on corporate and governmental sources for news stories, using this focus as proof that NPR was biased in a pro-business, pro-government manner. I believe that FAIR’s own bias was blinding them to the basic fact that our society is overwhelmingly run by government and corporate powers, and that NPR goes to the newsmakers for information very often. This was a case of FAIR’s unexamined bias leading them to see bias in other folks, and I think it’s something that we, being only human, need to be aware of.
Yeah, NPR is gonna be biased, if we use an “everyone’s biased” definition. But then, by that same definition, all of us are biased, too. So how do we determine what specific bias we’re seeing?
That’s why I’d rather use a more restrictive definition of bias.
I’d have to agree with the consensus of this thread. NPR is biased insofar as any and every expression of a human agency unavoidably has SOME sort of personal context, or bias. A definition of bias which, as pointed out above, renders this discussion pointless.
But as much as it is possible for a media organ to try diligently to police itself to keep any such bias to its absolute minimum, NPR is pretty successful.
I think a lot of conservatives think that the only way to avoid bias is to self-censor; to actively subtract any “liberal” viewpoint from the presentation of a story. And so when the hear what might sound like a liberal viewpoint on NPR, they cry bias. But what a lot of them fail to notice that is that, as often as possible, NPR makes it a practice to provide opportunities for expressions of a conservative viewpoint to be heard as well.
NPR is not about stating conclusions. If you listen to it enough you’ll realize that they’re much more interested in exploring the process by which such conclusions might be reached. They present both sides of as many issues as they can, because its the interplay of various positions that makes the story interesting. A foregone conclusion, dictated by a political imperitave, is static and boring. A conversation of non-parallel viewpoints is dynamic and interesting.
And anyone who can say that NPR is “so liberal its sickening” is either not listening to NPR, and just quoting the Voices («cough»ǒяөϊ⌠⌠λ«cough») in her head, or she is VERY easily sickened. (Was this in the morning? Maybe she’s pregnant!)
I used to hear about NPR having a liberal bias from a coworker of mine. He would always trot this out whenever someone commented on FOX news. The one example he gave me was actually from the local PBS TV affiliate. It was a gubernatorial election year.
Right after the election, the Republicans’ County Chairman was asserting that, even though the local races worked out to be essentially a draw, it was really a victory for the Republicans, because
Was that bias? He did cut the man off, and directly challanged an assertion. On the other hand, the chairman was being as deceptive as he possibly could without lying outright. I would consider it part of the reporter’s job to call an official on something like that. I would hope that I would think that even if I were sympathetic to the chairman.
) was invited onto the Diane Rehm show, wailing and moaning that now that the AWB has expired, children (OH! Will somebody please think of the children!) will be able to buy fully-automatic Uzis at Wal-Mart, and that the NRA would be handing them out on every streetcorner.