Comment by smithkl42
21 hours ago
> Public media has been one of the most trusted institutions in American life, providing educational opportunity, emergency alerts, civil discourse, and cultural connection to every corner of the country,” Harrison said.
If that was true, losing the CPB would be a travesty. But as a loyal NPR listener for decades, I've found their stuff lately to be unlistenable. It's Fox, but for the Left, and with a bit more of an intellectual spin. What makes it most annoying is their utter blindness to their own bias. The Fox hosts know that they're taking one side of a story. I've never gotten the impression that any of the NPR hosts are even that self-aware.
> It's Fox, but for the Left
There was a distinct shift to the right at NPR when Obama took office, and by the time he took his second term, NPR News' social media was posting clickbait trash instead of real headlines. "The liberal media" is an irrational boogeyman used to whip ownership in line. Everyone who complains about "bias in the media" is arguing in bad faith while they continue to turn a blind eye to the overwhelmingly dominant conservative slant of the 21st century American media.
smithkl42 says that NPR is leftward, and you say that it's rightward. Maybe we're all operating from different baselines.
All of NPR's 87 editorial board members are registered Democrats. That should give some indication of where they are on left versus right.
No. If that's what you took from my post, I've miscommunicated.
NPR has turned rightward. The entertainment shows are, without a doubt, liberal, on the American political spectrum. There are countless discussions and papers about the role empathy plays in successful entertainment.
The editorial content has turned rightward - and the leadership has turned rightward. This has been ongoing for at least two decades, probably longer, but I wasn't paying attention at that level when I was under 20.
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I am always confused by this narrative. People extolling the virtues of old media organization as if those people weren't toeing the government line and were cold robots with no bias.
It is the rise of media org like Fox news where these kinds of comments have started surfacing. Because for Fox news is more commentary than facts. And then the narrative trick from Fox and other conservative media outlets have constantly pushed an agenda - "others do it too".
It has led to comments like these and this is fine.
> It's Fox, but for the Left
But then when you start adding stuff like this:
> and with a bit more of an intellectual spin. What makes it most annoying is their utter blindness to their own bias. The Fox hosts know that they're taking one side of a story. I've never gotten the impression that any of the NPR hosts are even that self-aware.
It becomes clear you are regurgitating RW talking points and both side-ism. And because Fox is worse, the only saving argument is that Fox at least knows their bias. God help this country if this is level of intellectual spin people can give to reinforce their points.
And you are clearly regurgitating left-wing talking points etc.....
Yeah I've been bummed by how far NPR has swerved leftward, especially since 2016. Even ten years ago I liked tuning in because it was quality journalism that still made an honest effort to cover multiple sides of an issue, even if the topics they chose were primarily "liberal" topics. But yeah, now they seem just as tribal as Fox.
Not every side deserves to be covered for each story. This is the problem with major media today, they give equal opportunity to people that have no idea what they are talking about. It's like one side says 2+2=4, the other 2+2=5, and media gives them equal air time.
Can you point me to a good source that actually gives equal opportunity to multiple sides of a story? Because I rarely see that (regardless of which side), the whole reason why I subscribe to things like ground.news.
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lol, I stopped caring about them because they weren’t willing to say anything about Gaza and bent over backwards to excuse what Trump was doing. If center-right NPR is too liberal I shudder to think of your politics
> If that was true, losing the CPB would be a travesty.
America and many Americans have lost their way, and have always struggled to get perspective on a topic.
As out outsider looking in, let me be clear.
This IS a travesty, and will be a notable mark in the history books when people look back in 50 or 100 years and ask “how did it happen?”
If Fox keeps moving further and further right, even centric stuff starts sounding far left.
Can you cite specific examples of this "bias?"
As linked elsewhere in this thread, see Uri Berliner on the subject https://www.thefp.com/p/npr-editor-how-npr-lost-americas-tru...
How about using terms like "pregnant people"? Or the fact that on my local NPR station I can count down from 60 and something like 80% of the time, before I reach 0, they've talked about race or ethnicity at least once.
That's my complaint. Decades ago I enjoyed NPR when I drove to work. It was always left leaning, but at least the programs discussed topics I found interesting or cared about for one reason or another.
These days the only thing they talk about are racial and sexual minorities. I can't express how little this kind of factionalism interests me. I'm not arguing that kind of content shouldn't be produced, but I don't want to pay for it.
Here’s Fox reporting on NPR’s bias: https://www.foxnews.com/media/npr-head-asks-critics-show-me-...
As you can see, it’s mostly gotcha quotes and unfair glosses. For example:
> NPR also called America’s interstate highways racist. I did not know our highways were racist. I thought they were concrete, but not according to NPR.
Of course, it’s a historical fact that many minority neighborhoods were bulldozed to make room for interstate highway development, among them Cincinnati, OH and St. Louis, MO.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-freeways-flattened-black...
But of course this history that actually happened is interpreted as Reuters’ liberal bias. There’s no winning this.
Have you read Robert Caro's The Power Broker? It's a biography of Robert Moses.
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"Babies are not babies until they are born. They’re fetuses." from https://wamu.org/story/19/05/15/guidance-reminder-on-abortio...
I'm not against abortion. In fact, I actually see the legal necessity of it in an overpopulating world. But NPR's bias on the front does not align with my own bias or, I think, with most people.
Everyone has bias and that's perfectly human. The problem is when we don't own up to it. NPR tries to cover theirs with circuitous language and lies-by-omission, https://www.npr.org/sections/publiceditor/2019/05/29/7280694.... That double-talk served well in insulating them from criticism, but it ended up costing them the public trust.
> Babies are not babies until they are born. They’re fetuses.
This is a factual statement with accurate medical terminology.
We don’t call them meteorites until they hit the earth, either.
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Adam Carolla was interviewed by NPR and tried to Gotcha him by saying he said racist comments against Asians, but the comments were from an Asian comedian. NPR canned the interview and never aired it, despite telling him they would air it.
> Can you cite specific examples of this "bias?"
Read https://www.thefp.com/p/npr-editor-how-npr-lost-americas-tru... by NPR veteran that shows how NPR developed a left wing bias over time. Also at https://archive.is/H7QNM
https://washingtonstand.com/news/npr-has-zero-republicans-87...
NPR Has Zero Republicans, 87 Democrats on Editorial Staff
If you are going to reference Uri's interview, you should also reference the response from his former colleagues:
https://steveinskeep.substack.com/p/how-my-npr-colleague-fai...
Why would anyone care about A's criticism of competitor B?
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"NPR Has Zero Republicans, 87 Democrats on Editorial Staff"
How many "Republicans" applied?
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I don't agree -- NPR is about as center-right as it's possible to be. Just look at the efforts they've made to normalize Trump, it's way over the top.
And nonetheless it's an important voice to have since it will leave a void in the media landscape to be filled by opportunists.
Oh, I agree, don't get me wrong. I'm just kinda shocked people think it is leftist. It's like they have no idea what the term means (it's not "left of my personal beliefs").
So true, it is so telling that everyone complaining about it is a conservative...
I've seen leftist complaints about NPR - they take corporate sponsorships after all
The right in the US is so far right that centrism looks like communism to some people. NPR and PBS are far more influenced by their corporate donors than they are the political leanings of their audience.
What I said about NPR might apply to some of their listeners as well: "What makes it most annoying is their utter blindness to their own bias."
There is a surprising amount of influence in terms of what stations you listen to, not just due to the local programming but due to their choice of which national programming they air.
Considering that reporting factual information gets blamed as left wing bullshit... I don't think your post has merit.
See: COVID, vaccines, climate change. You have one side explicitly denying what we can do with the scientific method and decades of peer reviewed research, and then blaming anyone who contradicts them as biased sources.
Comparing to Fox News is even more ridiculous. You say that them knowing they're spouting bullshit is better than the people not spouting bullshit at all?
Cmon now. Take the group that is actually trying to engage in good faith rather than the one that is knowingly producing crap. Maybe this is why people voted for Trump: he told them what he is, and they liked the honesty.
This is one point that has irked me.
The real narrative problem is that relying on "science" as truth.
Science has been weaponized by all sides it is incredivly easy to manipulate research into a narrative. But the left's media empire is by far the most effective at doing this and with heavy left bias in academia it's a corrupt system.
Data has a priority say in everything we do but dropping context and information then calling everyone dumb for not "trusting the science" is propoganda. The response of the left is to simply call everyone who denies today's science as ignorant.
This is how you get climate deniers. Weaponize science and unsuprisingly you get countless people who stop believing ANY politically angled research.
Not sure how much you've spent in academia but modern science is nasty buissness. Incentive structures are completely warped.
i dont think they are blind to their own bias, i think they are championing their own values, but that's the problem.
Well, congratulations, now there won’t even be that, but Fox will persist.
Is Fox news government funded ?