Although I am a latte-drinking, VW clean diesel driving liberal, I feel my mind is open on whether NPR is biased or not. The only things I listen to on NPR are Car Talk and Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me.
However, both of your cites refer to independent television and radio stations turning over some lists to Democratic causes. I just don’t see this as evidence of NPR doing something wrong, no more than a local TV affiliate refusing to hire minorities as evidence of ABC/CBS/NBC being racist organizations.
Not listening to NPR news programs, I went to their web page to see if there was some kind of detectable bias. Any news stories bashing Karl Rove? No, not this afternoon. Any stories talking about the evils of lowering taxes? No. Any stories about Clarence Thomas’ wife?
Bingo!! Uh, hold on, that one is an opinion piece written by an editor of the National Review Online.
Well, nothing obvious popping to mind, my initial thought is that NPR stations get labeled as ultra-left radio because they often carry other programming – like the stuff on the Pacifica Radio Network stuff like Democracy Now – that is obviously slanted towards one view. I don’t think that really answers the question of whether genuine NPR programming is biased, however.
The difference is, the accusations against Fox are objectively true. They ARE biased, to the point of blatant lies. They are just a propaganda source for the Right, the Republican version of Pravda. They aren’t considered a serious news source anywhere outside of the US as far as I know, thanks to their insistence they have the right to lie (got them kicked out of Britain IIRC).
True; and America IS Lalaland. A place where pretty much the entire rest of the planet is regarded as far left, where uncritically repeating right wing lies is regarded as “moderate”, and where repeating them somewhat less often is called “ultra-liberal bias”.
Like it or not, America is an extremist nation; at least as much as, say, Iran.
Remind me - your username doesn’t refer to your status in a university athletic program, right? And you aren’t beaming down to alien worlds either, correct?
True, but this is often because it’s truly not newsworthy. Take the ACORN/O’Keefe story, for example - there never was any evidence for any wrongdoing, just an accusation. The only reason it was in the news was because conservative news outlets found it profitable to make it into a news story.
As I recall, NPR’s Planet Money podcast had an show on this very issue, and spent an equal time interviewing two economists, one who thought the stimulus helped, and one who thought it didn’t.
Anyway… Does anyone have examples of NPR showing these types of bias? I honestly haven’t noticed any. I listen to real liberal media (liberal talk shows) as well as NPR, and NPR seems very conservative by comparison. For example, not long ago they ran a story of how the repeal of Bush tax cuts may hurt many small business owners, just as liberal media were all saying it will only hurt a few percent of small business owners.
I’ve listened to NPR on and off again for awhile. They seem to have some baseline assumptions in their coverage. These are all subtle and seem to be innate biases rather than someone sitting down and saying “Now how can we smear those righties today?” Mostly I find they have a bias towards so called liberal viewpoints but are reasonable about it and don’t treat those who disagree as if they’re moronic demons.
Overall I’d say NPR does have a bias. However it’s not what most people think of when they hear ‘bias’. It isn’t about how they cover an issue, but rather if they do or not. They’re the type of place that will give hours of coverage on something that’s mostly inconsequential. For example, I can hear stories about wind, biomass, solar, etc. power sources. And I’ll get both sides of it, they’ll cover the downsides of these various sources as well as the upside. They do a very good job of being fairly neutral and unbiased on their coverage. However, the story I’ll never hear on NPR is that renewable sources like these only account for 2.5% of all power generation in the US. So yeah, NPR is fair in how it covered the issue. But the fact that it bothered to cover the issue at all while ignoring the elephant in the room does show a bias.
Every media outlet, every producer, every editor, every reporter has a bias. Often, this bias shows in subtle ways. Unlike the blatant political slant of the “news commentary” shows like Rush Limbaugh, they usually manifest in what news doesn’t get covered, or (as someone mentioned upthread) the unstated assumptions that go along with the story.
People have a natural tendency to want their news from sources which share their biases, their assumptions, their worldview. To us, those sources seem unbiased. I believe the problem lies with individuals who get all of their news from one source, or from interconnected sources that share an ideology. It is incumbent upon us all to seek out disparate sources so that we can have our assumptions challenged on a regular basis. I learn a heck of a lot more from the sources I disagree with than those who parrot my beliefs – although I try to fact-check when I can.
Is NPR ultra-liberal? I don’t think so, because I have a problem with trying to fit everyone neatly on a single scale that goes smoothly from “liberal” on one end to “conservative” on the other, especially when they try to shoehorn the political parties on that scale, defining everything on the Democratic platform as liberal and everything on the Republican platform as conservative. Like most people, I hold some views that my Democrat friends think are far-right. I also hold some views that my Republican friends think are far-left. As an example, I believe that the first amendment means creationism doesn’t belong in our schools (Eek! I’m a bleeding-heart liberal) and that the second amendment guarantees my right to own firearms (Eek! I’m a right-wing nutjob).
On the other hand, I think your average citizen in Iran would consider NPR ultra-liberal. But then your average citizen in France would consider it pretty darned conservative.
That lefties think it slants right and righties think it slants left is enough for me to be satisfied that it’s as non-partisan as it’s possible to be these days.
I think it’s literally impossible for humans to be perfectly unbiased, but to the extent that any human institution can show objectivity, NPR deserves credit because it really strives to do so.
Fox News could be more aptly titled Fox Opinion, because they are constantly blending in opinion with fact, and they don’t even try to be objective even as they pretend that they are.