NPR question

[Orsorum]

How is NPR left-leaning?

 

[thunderroller]

true. Sometimes I don't like the mix of the panel members they have but then they do highlight lots of important topics and news that go unnoticed on mainstream tv and online news sites.

So while driving i always tune on the fm to npr. but hey, their fund drive is starting next week & its going to drive me nuts. So will be listening to a few nice CDs that I have.

 

[Orsorum]

Originally posted by: thunderroller
true. Sometimes I don't like the mix of the panel members they have but then they do highlight lots of important topics and news that go unnoticed on mainstream tv and online news sites.

So while driving i always tune on the fm to npr. but hey, their fund drive is starting next week & its going to drive me nuts. So will be listening to a few nice CDs that I have.

lol Yeah, I hate their fund drives.

 

[Todd33]

That NPR harbors a liberal bias is an article of faith among many conservatives. Spanning from the early ?70s, when President Richard Nixon demanded that ?all funds for public broadcasting be cut? (9/23/71), through House Speaker Newt Gingrich?s similar threats in the mid-?90s, the notion that NPR leans left still endures.

Despite the commonness of such claims, little evidence has ever been presented for a left bias at NPR, and FAIR?s latest study gives it no support. Looking at partisan sources?including government officials, party officials, campaign workers and consultants?Republicans outnumbered Democrats by more than 3 to 2 (61 percent to 38 percent). A majority of Republican sources when the GOP controls the White House and Congress may not be surprising, but Republicans held a similar though slightly smaller edge (57 percent to 42 percent) in 1993, when Clinton was president and Democrats controlled both houses of Congress. And a lively race for the Democratic presidential nomination was beginning to heat up at the time of the 2003 study.

Republicans not only had a substantial partisan edge, individual Republicans were NPR?s most popular sources overall, taking the top seven spots in frequency of appearance. George Bush led all sources for the month with 36 appearances, followed by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld (8) and Sen. Pat Roberts (6). Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Secretary of State Colin Powell, White House press secretary Ari Fleischer and Iraq proconsul Paul Bremer all tied with five appearances each.

http://www.fair.org/extra/0405/npr-study.html

I guess the truth looks left when you are used to spin and lies.

 

[1EZduzit]

Originally posted by: Perknose

Originally posted by: heartsurgeon
NPR= National Proletariat Radio

almost (but not quite) as leftist as the BBC

NPR is not moderate or middle of the road, it is far left leaning.

I hear you have access to a lot of sharp intstruments. Your brain in not one of them.

And yet, finally, we agree. NPR is about as leftist as the BBC. :roll:

:laugh:

 

[T2T III]

I listen to NPR off and on. I think it's a great station when we're not in a Presidential election year. I'll resume listening to the station again in 2005.

In my area - Wash, DC, we have WTOP radio. I tried to listen to that station a few weeks back, but had to gag at how "Left" it was. And, to take the cake, they periodically have updates throughout the day from CBS - of all networks.

 

[PatboyX]

Originally posted by: piasabird
I think this is a stupid POLL. The thing is there are a lot of programs on NPR that are not news related. They have a large following at NPR for a wide variety of programs that are intertainment based like music programs and those Comedy/Music programs on Saturday/Sunday. However, I pretty much ignore the news they have. As news goes they have a slightly liberal slant, but it is usually pretty thorough. The problem is network news is not very Truth centered and Truth Centered. It seems most networks selectively pick news segments to support whatever agenda they have. I do not beleive anything I see on Network News unless it is discussed on both Liberal and Conservative sources. Network news and liberal sitcom shows most often just bore me and make me sick.

The main Basis that the government is suppose to allow a License for networks is based on their activities to relay the news and they are not meeting this commitment in my mind.

i dont want to be rude but i have no idea what you mean. you lost me at "the problem is network..."
im not sure how the tv networks fit in.

and kirk: thank you for pointing that out to me. i was wondering what these guys had to do with NPR.

 

[arsbanned]

If anything NPR has become more attuned to Conservatism, right wing accusations aside.

 

[phonemonkey]

I'd like to hear some examples of how NPR is left leaning. Since the conservatives here make it sound like it's so pervasive, can you list a program (or even a specific date/time of a show?) that doesn't at least try to be non-partisan?

I like to listen to NPR on my way home from work, and even when dealing with politics, they try to give both sides equal time (even when a member of the GOP was going off the topic to attack Kerry, they tried to talk out his points).

Until someone can give me an example of how NPR is so biased, I'm just gonna give a to those who say it's biased with nothing to back it up.

 

[T2T III]

Originally posted by: phonemonkey
I'd like to hear some examples of how NPR is left leaning. Since the conservatives here make it sound like it's so pervasive, can you list a program (or even a specific date/time of a show?) that doesn't at least try to be non-partisan?

I like to listen to NPR on my way home from work, and even when dealing with politics, they try to give both sides equal time (even when a member of the GOP was going off the topic to attack Kerry, they tried to talk out his points).

Until someone can give me an example of how NPR is so biased, I'm just gonna give a to those who say it's biased with nothing to back it up.

NPR Admits To Liberal Bias

 

[phonemonkey]

Thx for the response. It was an interesting article. I read up further on the site, and I have to admit that I'll take what the author said with a grain of salt.

Do you have an article from a site that isn't self admittedly conservative (about us link) or that isn't written by an author that writes books from the conservative perspective about the liberal media?

 

[CaptnKirk]

NPR Admits To Liberal Bias

That's BOGUS - A Conservative operatve group - The Heritage Foundation
operating under their 'Townhall.com' blog making a statement that NPR actually has never made.

Let's talk about Bias and Manipulating the perception of fact.

They attack CSB and Dan Rather for doing exactly what they have been
doing for years, only they are immune from their transgresions ?

 

[PatboyX]

Originally posted by: arsbanned
If anything NPR has become more attuned to Conservatism, right wing accusations aside.

i have to agree.
i feel like they are very calm and thoughtful about everything they do. i think they are very inclusive and that might be seen as liberal to a lot of folks.
listening to NPR i always find myself being told about such very specific and even esoteric subjects (not the sorts of vague "kerry in vietnam," "iraq war" glazed over stories) but always very narrow and intellectual study of one particular aspect of an issue at a time.

about what some other folks have said about rush. i have never listened to him for more than a few minutes.
but i see no reason why it is not plausible that rush COULD BE a part of NPR. he is just one guy (assumidly doing a standard 3 or 4 hour radio shift)

does he have guests? i find that most of the NPR broadcasting i listen to is interviews with people.
something that was said on diane rehm (thank you for spelling it correctly for me) about them trying to give time to all opinions when people call up.
i was listening not too long ago when a caller started telling a guest that they were a lair, they flew around in their private jet (it was robert kennedy on evironmental issues) and that sort of thing. they did sort of laugh off the private jet bit becuase he doesnt own one but diane kept him to the core of the question which was basically "prove what youve said"

 

[Aves]

I know this is an ancient thread but it's pointless to start another.

The other day at work I was listening to Weekend Edition, quietly, and a guy who was walking past asked me to turn off my "democrat radio". I couldn't help but laugh.

I basically responded to him with something similar to what Todd33 posted above about perspective.



What I find interesting is that NPR's Ombudsman's Reports typically show complaints like this:

Criticisms of NPR as too Conservative 2606
Criticisms of NPR as too Liberal 731

 

[MonkeyK]

Well, if listeners say it's too conservative, maybe it just means that the listener base is more liberal than conservative.

 

[Tom]

I agree with Heartsurgeon about C-Span and Brian Lamb.

But I don't agree with him about NPR at all. In fact I don't think anyone who listened to NPR on a regular basis would see much difference between NPR, C-Span, and the NEWSHOUR on PBS, in terms of liberal vs conservative.

I do think NPR has a bit of a coastal bias, too much emphasis on NY(including Israeli news), Washington, etc; but I think this is probably market driven because this is where their largest audience is. That is the one thing I would change, a great deal more coverage of news around the whole country.

But that's kind of true of all the east coast media, private and public, cable and broadcast.

Now it's true that some shows on NPR have guests or commentators that express viewpoints, but by and large I hear equal numbers of liberals and conservatives on those kind of shows on NPR.

 

[Pliablemoose]

I :heart: NPR, it's the best thing on radio.

I don't always agree with them, and they do spin stories a bit IMHO, but all in all, they're awesome.

 

[TheSavage]

NPR unbiased? I don't think so. Like many stations, they buy their "newsbytes" commercially. That is why on weekends, you hear the same story over and over on the news. Incidentally, these news bytes are frequently sold by P.R. firms, whose revenue is generated by advertisers. Finishing this train of thought, then, would this not infer a certain bias in reporting?

A further source of information on the practice..."Trento, Susan B. The Power House: Robert Keith Gray and the Selling of Access and Influence in Washington. New York: St.Martin's Press, 1992. 430 pages.
After the Gulf War, the media gradually began to realize that at some point in the frenzy of pack journalism, TV talking heads, and op-ed pundits that preceded the war, they had been manipulated. Behind the scenes Kuwait was shaping opinions by greasing the palms of certain Washington public relations firms. One person with both hands out was Robert Keith Gray, the master PR mercenary of the 1980s. Before he started Gray and Company in 1981 he was with Hill and Knowlton; by 1986 he was back after selling out his company to them. But throughout his thirty years in Washington, Robert Gray's style has been consistent -- he parties and charms his way into the power elite, and then sells access to his Rolodex for fees sometimes running into the millions. By doing favors for the CIA and hiring self-styled, free-lance spooks like Neil Livingstone, Gray was even able to extend his influence into Washington's Dark Side.

It doesn't matter who signs the checks. Besides Kuwait, Gray has represented China since 1989, Haiti under Duvalier, supporters of Rev. Moon, the Church of Scientology, BCCI, the late British publisher Robert Maxwell, the Teamsters under Jackie Presser, and the Catholic Bishops Conference in their campaign against abortion. If a book like this had been written in 1980, the mess we're in today would have been predictable.
ISBN 0-312-08319-X "