As a long time listener of NPR I’ve always had the impression that they lean to the left. But I listened to a report this morning on a Republican-run advert from tennessee that had some major backlash and they did nice job of allowing the Rebulican representative explain what happened and why the NRC could do nothing about it. They seem to represent journalism as it should be.
I also believe that NPR leans towards the left. If nothing other than their loaded questions. I rarely listen to talk radio, but I can spit nails after about 15 minutes of NPR. Well, ok, any talk radio for that matter. It’s not so much their topics, or their guests, it’s just how leading and biased the questions are, and the small pauses, and the sanctimonious tone. Guests and topics are ok. Rather just put in a CD.
NPR’s news programs are more balanced than their talk shows, but their still fairly left of center. However, NPR’s news programs are also far, far better at informing listeners than most anything else on cable and radio.
Strangely timely coincidence. You might want to see **Hentor’s ** pit thread on NPR.
Dear NPR ombudsman
I do think they are fair and balanced, at least compared to other news.
Jim
Yeah, at first I thought it was my first pitting (even if I wasn’t mentioned directly.) Then I saw the time stamp and saw that his post was first.
FTR Hentor, I didn’t post this as a counterpoint to your pit thread - I hadn’t seen it.
This is what makes me run screaming from NPR. That pretentious tone that tries to sound everyman and accessible but ends up sounding self-conscious. There must be a special communications class for NPR-speak.
It’s just compared to the extreme right-wing talk shows/hate radio out there that they look like lefties. But if you want to hear what lefties really sound like listen to Pacifica Radio or maybe Air America. Generally NPR does what the rest of the mainstream media does - get one guy from a right wing think tank, pit him against somebody from a left wing think tank, and try to be an impartial referee as they go at it.
On the other hand since NPR has more academic and international thinkers on, it’s true you’re going to hear some analysis from far to the left of the usual American discourse. But that’s not because NPR’s left - it’s because the U.S. is on the whole to the right of much of the world and of the ivory tower. Also, NPR’s listenership comprises the people who aren’t listening to Limbaugh and his ilk, so NPR’s callers tend to be more left wing than the U.S. public. But it actively tries to balance that and actively solicits conservative call-ins on its talk shows. Personally, as a moderate liberal, I do not hear my views echoed by NPR’s hosts or editorials, much. I may hear it in some of their guests - but there are as many guests who I find to be strongly conservative.
There are some topics on which NPR can be pretty unbalanced, at least in the short term. Perhaps if I listened to them longer, I would hear a counter-balance. For example, prior to Isreal giving the Gaza to the Palestinians, I would joke about NPR standing for National Palestinian Radio (I’m going to get abused for that, I know). I listened to a 15-minute human interest story about the poor, pregnant Palestinian women bemoaning the fate of her teenage son as he faced the murdering, bloodthirsty Isreali army.
The more glaring example is gun control. I remember Nina Totenburg’s “National Redneck Association” remoark when she was reporting the NRA natioanl convention. Just a month ago, they put an expert from Australia on the air live. The reported asked a good question about crime stats in Australia. He danced around the answer and she skipped right over it, giving him a free pass. He went on to rant about the evil, violent, gun-crazed Americans. And she let him.
Otherwise, I’m usually impressed with the work NPR news does in trying to report both (or more) sides of an issue.
That’s pretty standard for NPR. They ask good questions, but don’t call bullshit if the interviewee dodges the question or gives a heavily spun answer. I think it’s better, personally. It’s hard to pick apart different viewpoints in an unbiased way, and I’d rather hear some nut ranting than to have them try to manage the interview too much. (Besides, with some people, just letting them talk hurts their cause more than anything else could.)
So basically you think they are good and fair except when they disagree with you. I think this is a pretty common experience. 
I wholly agree. I get very annoyed watching CNN’s Carolyn Costello or Soledad O’Brien walk all over the interviewee, especially if they disagreed with what the interviewer said. Better to hand the rope over and let the subject hang his- or herself. Most of NPR’s audience can spot it.
I will confess to that on the issue of gun control. But, with the Palestinians, I really don’t care one way or the other. The NPR coverage on this was so off-center that I found myself waiting to hear the other side of the story. It’s possible they told it from the Palestinian point of view on Monday, Wednesay, Friday and from the Isreali on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and I was only listening on Fridays. But their was consistently a Palestinian pity story on Friday afternoons.
Good point, because that’s exactly what this guy did.
I couldn’t agree with you more. Most of the time, I think it’s the reporters job to report, and to leave it up to the listener to make what of it he or she will. NPR usually does an excellent job of this. I consider myself to be a centrist (doesn’t everybody?), and listening to Rick Santorum’s interview yesterday on NPR just made me cringe.
I do cut NPR a lot of slack, though, because of the consistently high quality of its writing, which seems to be sorely lacking from most national newscasts.
“Do you find that shocking? Do you find that shocking?”
I am not on the line* in terms of the right-left thing and this makes me very sensitive to spin in both directions. I have never found NPR to ever present any viewpoint whatsoever and I used to listen to a lot of NPR. Sure, their listeners tend to be lefties, and thereby to appeal to their listeners a lot of the subjects are of interest to the left as well as guests, but I’d say NPR itself and the anchors/hosts are about as unbiased as you’ll hear on the radio. I really can’t say where most of you are coming from claiming otherwise, can somebody cite an example?
- For anybody who cares, I am:
Against: Most Taxes, Gun control, state-controlled schools, state-controlled healthcare, Social security, state-controlled roads, certain age laws, centralized government, military involvement that is not for the purpose of defense, direct retaliation or expansion.
Pro: Abortion, euthanasia, certain welfare systems, state-controlled libraries, state-controlled museums, state-controlled parks, non-traditional marriage (gay, polygamy, etc.), privacy, right to anonymity
I appear left to the right and right to the left, but scary and/or retarded to both 
Tell me more about this Santorum interview. I’m just curious, since I like NPR and I loathe Santorum.
You can listen to it here. It’s sort of amusing how he foolishly tries to use the combative TV-shout-show style to lure the interviewer away from the issues and into a personal debate (which is what my quote refers to). The NPR guy brushes him off effortlessly and Santorum comes off looking like an idiot who doesn’t know which audience he’s supposed to be addressing. Like I said, kind of amusing.
Less amusing, of course, is the realization that this invidious pustule somehow managed to get himself elected, but the good people of Pennsylvania are about to rectify that situation.
[QUOTE=D_Odds]
I get very annoyed watching CNN’s Carolyn Costello or Soledad O’Brien walk all over the interviewee/QUOTE]Carol Costello (no -yn) could walk all over me anytime. As long as she took the high heels off first.