General Question

cockswain's avatar

Does NPR have a political bias?

Asked by cockswain (15286points) October 22nd, 2010

NPR has held the distinction of being one of the least biased, most objective media outlets for many years, along with the BBC and PBS. Because of the firing of Juan Williams as a result of his statements on Fox News, NPR is now being accused by Fox News and members of the GOP as being a left-wing media outlet. As a point of comparison, several weeks ago a misconstrued message about NPR telling its employees they aren’t allowed to attend the Jon Stewart rally in DC led many people to claim NPR is a right-wing organization.

What do you think? If you think it has a left or right bias, please provide some evidence to support your decision.

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28 Answers

WestRiverrat's avatar

NPR has had a leftist bias for many years.

The correspondent that wished Jesse Helms’ grandkids would all get aids and die did not get fired. In fact she got promoted.

crazyivan's avatar

I’ve been hearing for a long time that NPR has a liberal bias and in a sense I think that’s true. Many of its hosts and reporters are definitely liberal, though I think most people who go into the news business are liberal so that is a fairly consistent bias in most media organizations.

The question, of course, is in how they report the news and in my experience most of their programs seek political balance in ways that other major news outlets don’t even dream of. I’m not familiar with the episode @WestRiverrat was talking about (I’d love a link to more info if you have it), but I consider NPR to be the least biased major media outlet left in the country.

kenmc's avatar

I think they do have a left leaning bias. But in comparison to Fox News or even CNN for that matter, their bias is minimal.

And in reference to the firing of Williams, they have a reputation to keep up. I’m willing to bet that if a Fox News caster would say that he felt comfortable with Muslims on a plane, he’d get fired too.

Nullo's avatar

They tend to lean a little farther Left than most media.

jaytkay's avatar

@WestRiverrat Do you have any examples more recent than fifteen years ago?

crazyivan's avatar

@kenmc Doesn’t he also work for Fox News? I could be mistaken, but I thought he kept his job with them.

cockswain's avatar

I should have said “Does NPR have a strong bias?” I have seen arguments they are conservative as well. Regardless, their bias is one of the slightest amongst most media outlets.

Who do others think is less biased?

WestRiverrat's avatar

@jaytkay look at how they have covered the Tea Party.

fundevogel's avatar

According to a 2004 study NPR uses more conservative sources than liberal. Republican consultants outnumber Democrats 3 to 2. If that’s left leaning I’m curious what the middle is.

cockswain's avatar

@WestRiverrat What about the Tea Party coverage do you think hasn’t been reasonable? The reporters aren’t adding their own opinions to the statements by Tea Party activists, and I’ve heard many interviews with Tea Party members that were not biased.

crazyivan's avatar

Any coverage of the Tea Party that doesn’t cite the billionaires that fund the “grass roots” movement is being quite disingenuous. I think all the major media have leaned way to the right when covering the Tea Party.

Ivan's avatar

NPR doesn’t attempt to be “fair and balanced” in the artificial way that CNN does. That is, they don’t have one person from the right talk, and then have one person from the left talk. They just tell you the facts and, on some programs, have interesting and intellectual discussions with people with varying opinions. As somewhat of a liberal myself, I like to think that NPR’s programming represents reality, and reality happens to be a little liberal. But objectively, sure, NPR leans a little to the left. Not as much as Fox leans to the right, however.

Nullo's avatar

Keep in mind that bias is more readily noticed by people of different political persuasions. At the same time, remember that it takes a special effort to present facts neutrally; if your journalists lean, then their product will, too.
Bias can also pertain to what they report on, and what they don’t.

LostInParadise's avatar

NPR definitely has a liberal bias, and I am thankful for it. I spend a lot of time listening to them. The bias is not so much apparent in the major news coverage as it is in the smaller stories they cover and in the interviews. I really like it when they occasionally interview someone on the right. The policy is to be very considerate and to give the person enough rope to hang himself.

CyanoticWasp's avatar

They may not always be liberal; that’s not 100%. Is 90% close enough? But they are dyed-in-the-wool statists, for sure. There is no problem in the world, in their eyes, that government should not be involved in.

CaptainHarley's avatar

Here’s Juan Williams’ story in his own words. News analyst Juan Williams’ firing from National Public Radio for comments he made about being nervous when flying alongside devout Muslims has sparked a public outcry that includes calls for investigations and a cut in public funding to the broadcaster.

Read what he says about this topic:

Yesterday NPR fired me for telling the truth. The truth is that I worry when I am getting on an airplane and see people dressed in garb that identifies them first and foremost as Muslims.

This is not a bigoted statement. It is a statement of my feelings, my fears after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 by radical Muslims. In a debate with Bill O’Reilly I revealed my fears to set up the case for not making rash judgments about people of any faith. I pointed out that the Atlanta Olympic bomber— as well as Timothy McVeigh and the people who protest against gay rights at military funerals—are Christians but we journalists don’t identify them by their religion.

And I made it clear that all Americans have to be careful not to let fears lead to the violation of anyone’s constitutional rights, be it to build a mosque, carry the Koran or drive a New York cab without the fear of having your throat slashed. Bill and I argued after I said he has to take care in the way he talks about the 9/11 attacks so as not to provoke bigotry.

This was an honest, sensitive debate hosted by O’Reilly. At the start of the debate Bill invited me, challenged me to tell him where he was wrong for stating the fact that “Muslims killed us there,” in the 9/11 attacks. He made that initial statement on the ABC program, “The View,” which caused some of the co-hosts to walk off the set. They did not return until O’Reilly apologized for not being clear that he did not mean the country was attacked by all Muslims but by extremist radical Muslims.

I took Bill’s challenge and began by saying that political correctness can cause people to become so paralyzed that they don’t deal with reality. And the fact is that it was a group of Muslims who attacked the U.S. I added that radicalism has continued to pose a threat to the United States and much of the world. That threat was expressed in court last week by the unsuccessful Times Square bomber who bragged that he was just one of the first engaged in a “Muslim War” against the United States.—There is no doubt that there’s a real war and people are trying to kill us.

Mary Katharine Ham, a conservative writer, joined the debate to say that it is important to make the distinction between moderate and extreme Islam for conservatives who support the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq on the premise that the U.S. can build up moderate elements in those countries and push out the extremists. I later added that we don’t want anyone attacked on American streets because “they heard rhetoric from Bill O’Reilly and they act crazy.” Bill agreed and said the man who slashed the cabby was a “nut” and so was the Florida pastor who wanted to burn the Koran.

My point in recounting this debate is to show this was in the best American tradition of a fair, full-throated and honest discourse about the issues of the day.—There was no bigotry, no crude provocation, no support for anti-Muslim sentiments of any kind.

Two days later, Ellen Weiss, my boss at NPR called to say I had crossed the line, essentially accusing me of bigotry. She took the admission of my visceral fear of people dressed in Muslim garb at the airport as evidence that I am a bigot. She said there are people who wear Muslim garb to work at NPR and they are offended by my comments. She never suggested that I had discriminated against anyone. Instead she continued to ask me what did I mean and I told her I said what I meant. Then she said she did not sense remorse from me. I said I made an honest statement. She informed me that I had violated NPR’s values for editorial commentary and she was terminating my contract as a news analyst.

I pointed out that I had not made my comments on NPR. She asked if I would have said the same thing on NPR. I said yes, because in keeping with my values I will tell people the truth about feelings and opinions.

I asked why she would fire me without speaking to me face to face and she said there was nothing I could say to change her mind, the decision had been confirmed above her, and there was no point to meeting in person. To say the least this is a chilling assault on free speech. The critical importance of honest journalism and a free flowing, respectful national conversation needs to be had in our country. But it is being buried as collateral damage in a war whose battles include political correctness and ideological orthodoxy.

I say an ideological battle because my comments on “The O’Reilly Factor” are being distorted by the self-righteous ideological, left-wing leadership at NPR. They are taking bits and pieces of what I said to go after me for daring to have a conversation with leading conservative thinkers. They loathe the fact that I appear on Fox News. They don’t notice that I am challenging Bill O’Reilly and trading ideas with Sean Hannity. In their hubris they think by talking with O’Reilly or Hannity I am lending them legitimacy. Believe me, Bill O’Reilly (and Sean, too) is a major force in American culture and politics whether or not I appear on his show.

Years ago NPR tried to stop me from going on “The Factor.” When I refused they insisted that I not identify myself as an NPR journalist. I asked them if they thought people did not know where I appeared on the air as a daily talk show host, national correspondent and news analyst. They refused to budge.

This self-reverential attitude was on display several years ago when NPR asked me to help them get an interview with President George W. Bush. I have longstanding relationships with some of the key players in his White House due to my years as a political writer at The Washington Post. When I got the interview some in management expressed anger that in the course of the interview I said to the president that Americans pray for him but don’t understand some of his actions. They said it was wrong to say Americans pray for him.

Later on the 50th anniversary of the Little Rock crisis President Bush offered to do an NPR interview with me about race relations in America. NPR management refused to take the interview on the grounds that the White House offered it to me and not their other correspondents and hosts. One NPR executive implied I was in the administration’s pocket, which is a joke, and there was no other reason to offer me the interview. Gee, I guess NPR news executives never read my bestselling history of the civil rights movement “Eyes on the Prize – America’s Civil Rights Years,” or my highly acclaimed biography “Thurgood Marshall –American Revolutionary.” I guess they never noticed that “ENOUGH,” my last book on the state of black leadership in America, found a place on the New York Times bestseller list.

This all led to NPR demanding that I either agree to let them control my appearances on Fox News and my writings or sign a new contract that removed me from their staff but allowed me to continue working as a news analyst with an office at NPR. The idea was that they would be insulated against anything I said or wrote outside of NPR because they could say that I was not a staff member. What happened is that they immediately began to cut my salary and diminish my on-air role. This week when I pointed out that they had forced me to sign a contract that gave them distance from my commentary outside of NPR I was cut off, ignored and fired.

And now they have used an honest statement of feeling as the basis for a charge of bigotry to create a basis for firing me. Well, now that I no longer work for NPR let me give you my opinion. This is an outrageous violation of journalistic standards and ethics by management that has no use for a diversity of opinion, ideas or a diversity of staff (I was the only black male on the air). This is evidence of one-party rule and one sided thinking at NPR that leads to enforced ideology, speech and writing. It leads to people, especially journalists, being sent to the gulag for raising the wrong questions and displaying independence of thought.

Daniel Schorr, my fellow NPR commentator who died earlier this year, used to talk about the initial shock of finding himself on President Nixon’s enemies list. I can only imagine Dan’s revulsion to realize that today NPR treats a journalist who has worked for them for ten years with less regard, less respect for the value of independence of thought and embrace of real debate across political lines, than Nixon ever displayed.

Juan Williams is now a full-time Fox News contributor.

laureth's avatar

From what I understand of the modern media, those with a “conservative” bent will report the things the right says, which often need to be heavily fact checked. On the other hand, I have not seen NPR caught in the kind of deliberate lies and misleading quotes and such that the Right-leaning media needs to bolster their POV. I would guess that the reporting of facts would, by default, make NPR somewhat liberal.

On the other hand, NPR has commentary and opinion from conservative sources like David Frum (one of Dubya’s old speech writers) and some pretty even-handed coverage of the tea party. Anyone who says NPR doesn’t go out of their way to let conservatives have their say, hasn’t listened very much. So I’m guessing they must be slightly conservative.

But… but… if you take something that the Left says looks Right to them, and something that the Right says looks Left to them, that thing is probably close to the middle.

CaptainHarley's avatar

Actually, what we need to do is ALL start thinking about what’s best for America, not just left or right.

There HAS to be some way of logically determining this!

cockswain's avatar

@CaptainHarley Thanks for the Juan Williams statement, it was interesting to read. IF what he says is true, NPR has been looking to get rid of him for some time.

@laureth Thanks for your post. I hadn’t seen newshound or mediamatters before.

lillycoyote's avatar

At least NPR was willing to look in the mirror on this one, on the Juan Williams firing.

From NPR’s own website:

NPR’s Firing of Juan Williams Was Poorly Handled

Mission and Mandate: The Ombudsman at NPR

sliceol's avatar

Gee, do you think? I hope the Juan Williams fiasco pulls alot of their financial support. Isn’t this the land of free speech? Shame on you, NPR.

CaptainHarley's avatar

NPR radio stations are independently owned and operated and, like the nation’s public TV stations, receive government funding through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which got about $420 million this year from Washington.

incendiary_dan's avatar

Mostly I’ve noticed the heavy bias towards corporations, particularly manifest in them ignoring issues related to the shifty corporations that fund them, like Monsatan Monsanto.

laureth's avatar

@sliceol – do you mean the Constitutional guarantee that Congress shall not make a law abridging the freedom of speech? How does that relate?

LostInParadise's avatar

Was Juan Williams’ main problem that of mediocrity?

Patamomma's avatar

From the programs I have heard NPR tries to speak the truth. That would probably inherently make them liberal according to the right wing nuts.

hiphiphopflipflapflop's avatar

What do these terms even mean anymore? The “middle” has been dragged further to the right almost continuously since the days of Nixon. Imagine if Obama wrangled network time and uttered this word for word.

MeinTeil's avatar

Wow, if one cannot detect NPR’s bias I don’t know what to say.

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