I take it as a given that NPR’s feature reporting and programs like On the Media are pervaded with liberal bias. NPR will cover every cop shooting if any fringe element in a community claims racial bias by the cops, however preposterously. It will never cover the racial reality of crime on the streets and the positive effect of proactive policing on law-abiding, inner-city residents. It will cover claims of government heartlessness towards the “homeless,” and never cover the costs of government programs for the homeless that the homeless refuse to use or the effect of uncontrolled vagrancy on neighborhood vitality. Rising child poverty? Love the story. All-important role of single-parenthood in child poverty? Sorry, not interested. Alleged gender pay gap, civil rights urgency and benefits of gay marriage, need for more self-esteem programs for girls? Frequent NPR topics. Society-wide discrimination in favor of women and girls, the role of marriage in affirming the obligations of biological parents to their children? Non-existent topics.
I also am indifferent to the possible loss of federal funding for NPR, now that NPR has decimated its classical music programming starting well over a decade ago. And I am happy to see NPR CEO Vivian Schiller go after watching her haughty, entitled refusal to speak about the Juan Williams firing at the National Press Club on Monday (not that the sycophantish National Press Club host pressed her to address the topic after her initial condescending refusal to go into it).
But I fail to see the relevance of an NPR employee’s off-air criticism of the Tea Party to the question of NPR’s federal funding or its liberal bias. Conservatives can easily prove liberal bias by analyzing the content of the programming. And it is in that arena alone that liberal bias matters. Does anyone really think that no NPR employee finds the Tea Party racist, or, equally importantly, that no NPR employee should find the Tea Party racist? The public is not entitled to a particular political belief system among the recipients of tax payer dollars, just to the scrupulously fair airing of all views. CSPAN’s hosts for Washington Journal are impeccably even-handed in their questioning of liberal and conservative guests. Despite the regular, predictable, and paranoid ranting of conservative callers accusing CSPAN of stiffing conservative entities and individuals, CSPAN is absolutely balanced in its coverage of political viewpoints. But it could well be that some of its hosts believe that the Tea Party is racist, or that Obama is a socialist. Who cares? In believing so, they would merely reflect positions that are present in the public.
Conservatives should make their case against NPR based on objective evidence of programming decisions. If they can’t do so, what one employee says in a semi-private conversation is of no import. The only question relevant to public support of a media or any other institution is what the recipients of those funds do in performing their public duties. What they believe is irrelevant. It should be possible to act objectively and fairly regardless of one’s political position—at least we should act as if that were possible. But to exploit this recent ambush suggests otherwise.
“It should be possible to act objectively and fairly regardless of one’s political position—at least we should act as if that were possible.”
Why?
The premise is doubtful and, especially if it is untrue, the should clause is not sensible. If you believe otherwise, that is a case you should make.
It wasn’t Ron Schiller’s opinions about the Tea Party alone that embarrassed NPR, but their willingness to meet with people representing the Muslim Brotherhood, and then trash the Tea Party and America in general to them. See their groveling over the Japanese internment issues. The juxtaposition of all these images is just too much to bullsh*t away, as they’ve done with their decidedly leftist slant.
And if you don’t think this was what should have destroyed them, so what? Dubya’s actions over Katrina weren’t nearly as horrid as many made them out, and it was hardly his worst moment, but it was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Would this video have had any impact if NPR had been as evenhanded in its coverage as you wished? Obviously not, so the bad coverage in its way did contribute to its PR demise*.
*I say “PR” because I still doubt the GOP will have the yarbles to completely cut them off, as they should.
The O’Keefe maneuver was brilliant, effective and legitimate.
Those two NPR executives thought they were on official NPR business; they were not expressing their “private” opinions.
Is it a pity Al Capone was jailed for income tax evasion and not for any of his multiple murders?
Decimate \Dec”i*mate\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Decimated; p. pr. & vb. n. Decimating.] [L. decimatus, p. p. of decimare to decimate (in senses 1 & 2), fr. decimus tenth. See Decimal.]
1. To take the tenth part of; to tithe. –Johnson. [1913 Webster]
2. To select by lot and punish with death every tenth man of; as, to decimate a regiment as a punishment for mutiny.
–Macaulay. [1913 Webster]
3. To destroy a considerable part of; as, to decimate an army in battle; to decimate a people by disease. [1913 Webster]
Respectfully, F.r.
I hear this trope over and over again about how NPR is filled to the brim with liberal bias. NPR has a lot of programming, most of it not even related to politics. Please, if you are going to make this argument give specific instances or point to studies on the topic. Something empirical and with data to back it up.
Heather gave a good list of specifics in her first paragraph. Can you offer some evidence to challenge what our lying ears have been telling us for decades now?
Heather, I think you miss the point. Conservatives have been making the point for ages that the media, including PBS/NPR, for years. They have been backing this up with empirical evidence. Indeed, there is a 2005 Quarterly Journal of Economics article that does an effective analysis of 24 news outlets/shows and shows that all but six have a liberal bias. Four are moderate and two (Fox and Washington Times) are conservative.
Content analysis alone has never satisfied the broader public. It is only when such analysis is backed with evidence of not bias but personal animus that the argument becomes effective at changing behavior like public funding of the biased outlets.
If an examination of the content of PBS/NPR had not already showed those networks to be biased, the Schiller comments would have had exactly zero impact. It is the combination of the personal animus and the evidence based on content analysis that is putting CPR funding at risk.
I am not sure what you are asking conservatives to do here: refuse to use arguments that are effective with the general public simply because you do not find these arguments standing alone to be convincing? If that is your point, it is silly. If it is not, I missed your point.
Heather did not support her claim in her first paragraph. She lists some specifics as proof, but they are unfortunately far from that. If she had performed an analysis of the number of times NPR reported on such stories compared to other news outlets or on stories reported only by NPR or ignored by NPR relative to other news outlets, then we’d be getting somewhere. Now, people are just saying liberal bias or no liberal bias without any evidence to support their claims.
@Polinchinello: Here is a specific! Heather wrote:
“Rising child poverty? Love the story. All-important role of single-parenthood in child poverty? Sorry, not interested.”
And here’s an NPR report, from the National Review even, about single parenthood that goes out of its way to make the point that “the steady growth of childbearing by single women and the general collapse of marriage, especially among the poor, lie at the heart of the mushrooming welfare state.”
I found that by googling ” “single parenthood” poverty npr” and clicking the top link. Not difficult.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125848718
Yeah, wow, Sean, you found a borrowed editorial. That hardly undoes the decades of listening most of us have done to Linda Wertheimer, Terry Gross and Co.
If you guys want to argue that water’s dry, have fun, but don’t expect us to take you very seriously.
An NPR program (Planet Money) on urban poverty, including attention to single-parenthood:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/10/19/130678389/the-tuesday-podcast
Incidentally, it was produced during Vivian Schiller’s tenure.
All I’m saying is, you might not want to say “not interested,” when they were clearly interested enough to run it, and likely pay for it as well. I didn’t say NPR was totally fair; I know from listening to them that they are not. But to suggest that other viewpoints aren’t aired? You must be listening at very selective five-minute intervals. I hear voices from the right on NPR all the time.
It was worse in the 80’s, but the constant chorus of “liberal bias” and the threats from Gingrich to shut them down in the mid-90’s changed their editorial policies. So please, inveigh against the actual NPR, not your straw man version of it.
There’s two things NPR is for sure, left-wing and boring as hell. It’s the sort of “enlightened WASP” milquetoast thing no person with a pulse and without a membership card in some lefty club ought to listen to or enjoy. Not sure why anyone even argues with that, even the non-political stuff has that dreadful liberal, upper middle-class quaintness to it.
Anyway, the NPR guy got nailed because he tried to get money from an organization they knew was associated with the Muslim Brotherhood, took their anti-semitism nonchalantly and generally gave the impression that he prefers these dudes over most regular Americans. If he had done all that in the privacy of his living room or outside of his capacity as NPR executive it wouldn’t have mattered and O’Keefe wouldn’t have gotten the footage.
If private, lefty opinion got media people fired, the New York Times would have been without any staff for 70 odd years.
I wouldn’t call NPR boring…well, it is to me, but they do have a strong listenership in a number of cities, and that’s great. So let them do their thing without federal funding.
All I’m saying is, you might not want to say “not interested,” when they were clearly interested enough to run it, and likely pay for it as well.
Sean,
I’d be surprised if they actually paid for that editorial, and if they did, I guarantee it was a very low amount. The purpose of that editorial (which had already run on NRO) was to act as a defensive eyewash. “Look, a conservative editorial we copy-pasted from NRO. That balances out the millions of dollars of airtime we devoted to SWPL causes and politics.”
HottBBQ wrote:
“I hear this trope over and over again about how NPR is filled to the brim with liberal bias. NPR has a lot of programming, most of it not even related to politics. Please, if you are going to make this argument give specific instances or point to studies on the topic. Something empirical and with data to back it up.”
Here’s my evidence: turn on NPR for five minutes in the morning. Yes, they do other things. I love the BBC’s cultural coverage and classical music; doesn’t change the bias. Same with NPR.
Even putting aside issues like guns, crime, welfare, and the environment (which drip with left-wing bias), there’s a big Blues Clues paw print on every story about Islam, Israel, and the Middle East. You don’t exude pride in being called “National Palestinian Radio” if political neutrality is your god.
I think that Rush Limbaugh is correct in calling the bulk of the news media the “drive-by” media. I’m well aware that NPR is chick full of liberals, and to a degree this does color their editorial policies. But even with that, they are one of the better domestic news services, being willing to go more in-depth in their coverage. Any thinking person should easily be able to filter the information and separate the bias from the actual news.
“the role of marriage in affirming the obligations of biological parents to their children?”
http://www.npr.org/2010/12/06/131853955/young-families-delay-marriage-not-parenthood
http://www.npr.org/2010/12/06/131675435/unmarried-with-kids-a-shift-in-the-working-class
NPR has done more to explain the mortgage meltdown than ay other mainstream media source by far. “The Giant Pool of Money” and subsequent coverage in Planet Money provides a textbook explanation of how incentives, supply & demand explain the movement of trillions of dollars through the economy.
“Conservatives can easily prove liberal bias by analyzing the content of the programming.”
Yet no one has and all attempts to (see Kenneth Tomlinson) have failed. Can the author provide such proof?
NPR does indeed have a liberal bias but is not so rabid about it that it colors every aspect of their programming. The News Hour features contributors from both sides of the aisle who offer thoughtful viewpoints from each side. I find the bias here much less extreme than that of Fox News even though I consider myself a moderate. About a month ago, I listened to an Oxford debate that convinced me of the utility of racial profiling at airports. The common denominator of shows on this station is less their political bias and more their thoughtfulness.
“Can the author provide such proof?”
None which you would find acceptable.
Dear Ms. Mac Donald,
Thank you for the sound article on the NPR pseudoscandal; it’s the only thing I have read concerning this topic that is rational. I think the first paragraph was a bit superfluous; but the later paragraphs stand on their own as an ethical distinction between acceptable vs. irresponsible behavior in reporting this matter. Furthermore, these NPR people are not criminals and there is no need for the J. Edgar Hoover techniques employed here. Rather than describing the young man involved in “outing” these NPR execs as an “investigative reporter” (he is neither) as he and/or some of his admirers have, I would suggest he be viewed as a self-serving, sensation-seeking demagog who has provided nothing of any redemptive value. As such, he certainly deserves at least one interview on the Fox network.
Reading the comments people are confusing APR, NPR and PBS.
Reading the comments people are confusing APR, NPR and PBS.
Reading the comments people are confusing APR, NPR and PBS.
You write, “[NPR] will never cover the racial reality of crime on the streets.”
But they have. Just the other day I heard a report on WNYC giving the (politically incorrect) breakdown of murderers and murder victims by race. (Though admittedly, I was kind of surprised to hear them go there.)
I saw a reference to this article in today’s NYT, and wanted to tell you that you are the only one who seems to have grasped the real issue here.
One thing that makes challenging NPR’s bias difficult is that I think much of their news programming is qualitatively better than other competing commercial radio stations, whether overtly political or not. What passes for radio journalism on other stations is almost always no better than a radio voice reading wire service copy out loud. And I think when raising the issue of bias, defenders of NPR confuse their generally calm and thoughtful approach to journalism and the bias it contains and then compare it to the screaming lunatics on talk and sports stations.
As for the bias itself, it always seems to be subtle and insidious. When a topic with political content is reported or discussed, multiple in-studio guests who back Democratic or liberal interpretations of an issue are on hand; the non-liberal perspective is represented by a badly mic’d phone-in voice, often someone whose views are unusual or extreme enough to make the in-studio liberals sound more rational and less biased than they actually are.
And in many cases, I don’t think the actual reporters or producers are *trying* to be biased; I think they have spent their lives isolated in a world of comfortable, upper-middle-class clubbiness, going to better private schools and expensive private liberal colleges that they haven’t ever been exposed to anything more complex than a liberal arts faculty mixer.