So does Vivian Schiller's resignation/force out from NPR prove or disprove that NPR does have a bias

[Bryan_Ekers]

@Whack-a-Mole

If we made PBS follow suit Nova would become a reality show where scientists compete to get a date.

I’d watch that, but it’d have to be actual scientists, not those Beauty and the Geek nerds. I wanna see a chemist who knows how make explosives try to impress someone.

[foolsguinea]

@puddleglum

The behavior of Shiller does not prove anything. It is possible that he was able to hide his hatred of conservatives and that it did not affect his job. That is possible but it is more likely that he was allowed to rise so high in the hierachy of NPR because the culture of NPR is one that sees hatred of conservatives as unremarkable. Absent other evidence, there is no way to know what is actually true based on one incident.
I have only heard NPR a couple of times, but everytime I have found them very biased. It could be that I caught them on bad days. Given that their audience are latte sipping liberals it makes sense that they tilt their news to pander to their audience just like every other media company does.

:rolleyes:

Your cultural dislike of “liberals” comes through rather shiningly here. But I suppose that’s unremarkable in your job as well.

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@Bricker

In my opinion (as a conservative, mind you) NPR is the least biased of the major news organizations. They do have a bias, and it’s to the left, and this is not because the facts have a liberal bias. But If I were to quantify it, I’d say it’s about 0.5 left on a scale of 1-10, with Fox being 7.5 to the right and MSNBC being 6.5 to the left.

No love for CSPAN? Or is it because they don’t actually do any reporting?

[River_Hippie]

@Bricker

In my opinion (as a conservative, mind you) NPR is the least biased of the major news organizations. They do have a bias, and it’s to the left, and this is not because the facts have a liberal bias. But If I were to quantify it, I’d say it’s about 0.5 left on a scale of 1-10, with Fox being 7.5 to the right and MSNBC being 6.5 to the left.

As a daily listener of NPR, I think Bricker put it very well.

[furt]

@Whack-a-Mole

As mentioned you then get corporate only programming which is profit driven.

Profit, shmofit. BBC is non-profit, and has it’s share of brainless sitcoms, as do most all state-run networks; hell, a lot of them are re-airing American crap.

Today, my PBS station is airing
[ul]
[li]A documentary on 50’s doo-wop[/li][li]Suze Orman[/li][li]Charlie Rose[/li][li]Weight-loss shows[/li][li]Educational kids shows[/li][li]More Charlie Rose[/li][li]“Life coach Brendon Burchard”[/li][li]Cooking shows[/li][li]Something about a comedian with ADD[/li][li]More Suze Orman[/li][li]BBC News[/li][li]News Hour[/li][li]More 50’s doo-wop[/li][li]More freaking Suze Orman[/li][/ul]The only things on there that serve some kind of societal function and might not get aired otherwise are the kids shows. End PBS tomorrow and Jim Lehrer will move his show to BBC America within a week. The rest is typical cable crap.

NPR is better quality … but people will listen to it. I’d happily listen to commercials in Car Talk. My wife’s ardor for Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me would be undimmed by 60 seconds of Geico.

More fundamentally, as NPR often points out, government funding is not their primary source of income. If the government drops them, there’s every reason to believe that they could pick up the funding from the listeners, foundations and, yes, corporations that do most of the funding now. Corporate sponsors already pay something like 22% of NPR’s funding, which is more than they get from the government. Are you going to argue that upping that amount to 30% is going to lead to some dramatic change in editorial content?

This kind of thing has been done before.

[Whack-a-Mole]

@furt

More fundamentally, as NPR often points out, government funding is not their primary source of income. If the government drops them, there’s every reason to believe that they could pick up the funding from the listeners, foundations and, yes, corporations that do most of the funding now. Corporate sponsors already pay something like 22% of NPR’s funding, which is more than they get from the government. Are you going to argue that upping that amount to 30% is going to lead to some dramatic change in editorial content?

As I already noted it is not even across all PBS stations.

Rural stations need the federal money. Without it they will almost certainly fail.

The large metro stations could probably survive.

But can they generate enough, with the loss of many rural stations, to continue to fund Nova and Sesame Street and American Experience and so on?

Surely some of those will drop by the wayside. As programming collapses for PBS stations to air what will they do to fill the air time?

It’ll be a vicious circle. They must attract advertisers and advertisers pay based on viewership.

As I already noted CPB funding amounts to 0.021% of the taxes you pay. If you pay $100,000/year in taxes (which would make you rather wealthy) you are paying $21 for PBS.

That is $1.75 per month.

If you made $50,000/year you’d be paying $2.63/year or $0.22/month for PBS (radio and tv).

If you watch ONE hour long show all year you are getting a pretty great deal.

[Whack-a-Mole]

@Whack-a-Mole

If you watch ONE hour long show all year you are getting a pretty great deal.

Better said as an ok deal.

If you watch/listen to more than that the deal gets pretty nice.

Consider how much Sesame Street kids watch. Kids who’d be trashing your lawn gnomes if they were bored.

[Jamaika_a_jamaikaiake]

@Whack-a-Mole

This seems to fly in the face of NPR’s “liberal” bias. I recall when this happened and NPR’s Ombudsman (does any other media organization have one of those?) caught a world of shit from the left over this but didn’t budge.

I was actually going to post about this. (Thanks for the cite, and the link to NPR Check)

I’m an avid NPR listener, and I was upset that they persistently used the Bush Administration’s euphemism for torture. BUT! This one example doesn’t prove a conservative bias. Instead, what I suspect is that there is a slight bias toward the whatever the current government’s narrative happens to be. Does anyone else feel this way?

Also, I do think commercials would absolutely ruin NPR. In a commercial news outlet, the customers are the advertisers. In a listener-supported news outlet, the customers are the consumers. I know I sound like an NPR Pledge Drive, but they really do have properly aligned incentives.

[Whack-a-Mole]

@Jamaika_a_jamaikaiake

I’m an avid NPR listener, and I was upset that they persistently used the Bush Administration’s euphemism for torture. BUT! This one example doesn’t prove a conservative bias. Instead, what I suspect is that there is a slight bias toward the whatever the current government’s narrative happens to be. Does anyone else feel this way?

You are correct it does not prove a conservative bias (but then I was not saying they had one).

What it does show is they are not rolling over for the liberal view. In this case they resisted storm of bad publicity from the left and refused to change.

As far as the narrative goes I think government has figured out the key to controlling the media. You want access? You want scoops? Then you play ball and don’t piss us off.

Do one “gotcha” piece of journalism and you’ll be famous for a day but you’ll never get an interview with important people again or ever get another scoop.

So, media organizations play ball for the most part. It has fallen to bloggers (right and left) to sift through masses of info and read between the lines to hold the government accountable. The bloggers will make a career with a big bust…they have no “access” to lose to begin with.

The problem for us is sorting through the millions of bloggers and finding worthwhile stuff. Truly like looking for a diamond in a ten foot pile of shit.

[Hentor_the_Barbarian]

@Jamaika_a_jamaikaiake

I was actually going to post about this. (Thanks for the cite, and the link to NPR Check)

I’m an avid NPR listener, and I was upset that they persistently used the Bush Administration’s euphemism for torture. BUT! This one example doesn’t prove a conservative bias. Instead, what I suspect is that there is a slight bias toward the whatever the current government’s narrative happens to be. Does anyone else feel this way?

Well, I don’t have as many examples as I used to. I swore off of them after they were one of the news organizations to break a scoop about finding WMDs in Iraq (hint: they didn’t actually find any WMDs), and after they chose to describe John Kerry’s military background as controversial.

However, some people do take the time to track the rightwingedness of Nice Polite Republicans. http://nprcheck.blogspot.com/

[Gyrate]

@Shodan

I expect this is the source of much of the media bias we see in the US, and the reason why lefties can’t see it - the attitude that of course the left-wing point of view is right - everybody in my social and professional circles says so. Sure, those peons in flyover country don’t think so, but who worries about that?

I used to work for the statewide Nebraska Public Radio Network. Farmers loved our news (and music*) programming, and would call in to tell us so.

Try again.

*Apparently cows like jazz. Who knew?

[Shodan]

I assume you realize that this is not even in the same zip code as a credible standard of proof.

Regards,
Shodan

[Whack-a-Mole]

@Shodan

I assume you realize that this is not even in the same zip code as a credible standard of proof.

Funny coming from the guy who has not answered a request for proof of bias asked much earlier in this thread (post #27).

[Bryan_Ekers]

I listen to NPR from Vermont in my car, here in Montreal. The frequency (105.7) seems to be shared by a French-language kiddie station, so at times the discussion of Egyptian popular uprising gets interrupted with some version of Barney le Dinosaur.

[Gyrate]

@Shodan

I assume you realize that this is not even in the same zip code as a credible standard of proof.

It’s more evidence than you’ve offered.

[furt]

@Whack-a-Mole

Rural stations need the federal money. Without it they will almost certainly fail.

Quite possibly. Of course, NPR could also seek to get rural populations to support them more. Perhaps they could seek to create more programming relevant to rural dwellers of the kind Gyrate refers to. But, yeah, if people don’t support the stations, they go under. That’s life. Why should government money go to airing things nobody listens to?

As I already noted CPB funding amounts to 0.021% of the taxes you pay. If you pay $100,000/year in taxes (which would make you rather wealthy) you are paying $21 for PBS.

That is $1.75 per month.

If you made $50,000/year you’d be paying $2.63/year or $0.22/month for PBS (radio and tv).

If you watch ONE hour long show all year you are getting a pretty great deal.

I listen to way more than that. And I would probably donate $20-50 bucks a year if they weren’t taxing me. Of course, a hell of a lot of people don’t listen to NPR at all and would rather have the $2.63.

A lot of people (including me) get concerned when the government gives to faith-based charities, or corporate tax incentives, or pork programs tailored for specific constituencies. None of those, by themselves, imposes a huge tax burden on most individuals. And yet they get upset. It’s just not a matter of the price, it’s a matter of the principle.

[carnivorousplant]

@furt

Of course, NPR could also seek to get rural populations to support them more. Perhaps they could seek to create more programming relevant to rural dwellers

What do you think those @#$! fund raising weeks are for?
What do you think would be relevant, Sesame Street Hoedown?

[furt]

@carnivorousplant

What do you think those @#$! fund raising weeks are for?
What do you think would be relevant, Sesame Street Hoedown?

Fundraising. And they seem to be effective, AFAICT.
Dunno; presumably that’s what radio & TV programmers are for.

[jayjay]

@carnivorousplant

What do you think those @#$! fund raising weeks are for?
What do you think would be relevant, Sesame Street Hoedown?

Actually, I don’t think you’re far off a good idea there. Does the Grand Ole Opry still exist as a venue that has regular shows? Why not present an hour a week, “Saturday Night at the Opry”? Yeah, you’d probably alienate your yuppies, but I don’t necessarily even think that would happen. Hell, “A Prairie Home Companion” is like a quirky New Deal version of the Opry, for what that’s worth.

[carnivorousplant]

@jayjay

Hell, “A Prairie Home Companion” is like a quirky New Deal version of the Opry, for what that’s worth.

But I abhor them both.