23 ms·

No way. NPR is clearly aligned with the Democrats. You have to live in a bubble not to see it.

throwaway894345 6y ago
I agree. I'm a moderate liberal, but I'm aware enough to realize that NPR only frames debates in terms I agree with (and increasingly only in terms that people more progressive than myself agree with). Which strikes me as profoundly unjust considering they are government-funded. I guess I can't muster the short-sightedness required to celebrate the government's wildly disproportional endorsement of my own position. Of course, someone will make some dichotomous argument that it's the progressive position or literal Nazism.
- zarkov99 6y ago
  America would be in a much better place if more people had your sense. Or perhaps most Americans do and we are just being driven insane because the nutcases are the ones that get all the attention.
- cudgy 6y ago
  NPR is not government-funded ... it is funded mostly by donations from wealthy listeners and corporations “Only 4 percent of funding in fiscal year 2017 came from federal, state and local governments ...” https://www.newsweek.com/where-does-npr-get-its-funding-calls-defund-outlet-met-calls-donate-1529009 https://www.newsweek.com/where-does-npr-get-its-funding-call...
  - gnicholas 6y ago
    I'd still consider something to be government-funded if they receive millions of dollars in funding from the government (wikipedia shows $200M in revenue in 2016). [1] It is relevant that this is a small portion of their budget, but generally when someone thinks "this shouldn't be funded by taxpayer dollars" they don't stop caring just because the millions of dollars spent only cover a small portion of the entity's total budget. Typically these arguments are ideological/philosophical, not matters of degree. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPR
  - throwaway894345 6y ago
    Huh, fair enough. At that point we may as well pull that remaining 4 percent then. Clearly they’d prefer to go in a different direction anyway.
  - andrewmcwatters 6y ago
    NPR is government funded, and was established by Congress.
MartinCron 6y ago
A lot of people conflate "NPR" with "public radio" in general. So your local public radio station may air some things that are "clearly aligned with the Democrats" but as an actual news organization, NPR News is as good as any out there. They take fact checking seriously, they issue corrections when they get things wrong. They take time to put things into historical context and they don't bend over backwards to give "both sides" to debates that clearly don't have two reasonable sides. If it's so clear, find me a single example of NPR news being aligned with the Democrats in a way that is divergent from objective reality.
- gnicholas 6y ago
  I remember hearing a discussion of affirmative action on All Things Considered. All of the guests on the show were in favor of affirmative action (so much for all things considered), and when the 'mismatch hypothesis' (which postulates that affirmative action may actually harm some of its intended beneficiaries by putting them in institutions where they are less prepared for the academic rigor than their peers) came up, the idea was dismissed out of hand as being outdated and debunked. This plainly misrepresents the state of the research, which has pretty conclusively shown that the mismatch effect appears in elite law schools and in STEM graduate rates. When I heard this dismissal and noticed that no one pushed back, it made me realize that the guests and host were all ideologically aligned. I still listen to NPR, but I now know that they are much more biased than I previously thought. To downvoters: do you doubt that this happened or think it isn’t an apt example of NPR being aligned with Democratic Party positions?
  - MartinCron 6y ago
    I didn’t downvote, but I am wondering if this happened. A quick search of NPR transcripts makes me think the last time the mismatch hypothesis was discussed on All Things Considered was in 2012 and it was actually taken seriously (it was the focus of the piece). Perhaps you are thinking of a different public radio show, and inadvertently proving my point that people are unable to differentiate NPR news with other stuff they hear on the radio.
wffurr 6y ago
NPR News is dead center along with the BBC, Reuters, the AP, Christian Science Monitor, etc.: https://www.allsides.com/media-bias/media-bias-ratings https://www.allsides.com/media-bias/media-bias-ratings If you think NPR News has a liberal bias, that may be because reality has a liberal bias. Plenty of Republican politicians go on NPR for interviews. NPR opinion and talk radio pieces are slightly left of center.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- andrewmcwatters 6y ago
  > because reality has a liberal bias. I think I've read this multiple times in this submission, and I think you're the one saying it over and over again. Do you not realize you're quoting Stephen Colbert from a news satire show? Have you just been regurgitating this for years and no one had the decency to point it out to you?
  - wffurr 6y ago
    Pretty sure I have posted this exactly once. Not sure where you get off. Satire has a way of making uncomfortable truths easier to hear by cloaking them with humor.

I agree. I'm a moderate liberal, but I'm aware enough to realize that NPR only frames debates in terms I agree with (and increasingly only in terms that people more progressive than myself agree with). Which strikes me as profoundly unjust considering they are government-funded. I guess I can't muster the short-sightedness required to celebrate the government's wildly disproportional endorsement of my own position. Of course, someone will make some dichotomous argument that it's the progressive position or literal Nazism.

zarkov99 6y ago
America would be in a much better place if more people had your sense. Or perhaps most Americans do and we are just being driven insane because the nutcases are the ones that get all the attention.
cudgy 6y ago
NPR is not government-funded ... it is funded mostly by donations from wealthy listeners and corporations “Only 4 percent of funding in fiscal year 2017 came from federal, state and local governments ...” https://www.newsweek.com/where-does-npr-get-its-funding-calls-defund-outlet-met-calls-donate-1529009 https://www.newsweek.com/where-does-npr-get-its-funding-call...
- gnicholas 6y ago
  I'd still consider something to be government-funded if they receive millions of dollars in funding from the government (wikipedia shows $200M in revenue in 2016). [1] It is relevant that this is a small portion of their budget, but generally when someone thinks "this shouldn't be funded by taxpayer dollars" they don't stop caring just because the millions of dollars spent only cover a small portion of the entity's total budget. Typically these arguments are ideological/philosophical, not matters of degree. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPR
- throwaway894345 6y ago
  Huh, fair enough. At that point we may as well pull that remaining 4 percent then. Clearly they’d prefer to go in a different direction anyway.
- andrewmcwatters 6y ago
  NPR is government funded, and was established by Congress.

MartinCron 6y ago

A lot of people conflate "NPR" with "public radio" in general. So your local public radio station may air some things that are "clearly aligned with the Democrats" but as an actual news organization, NPR News is as good as any out there. They take fact checking seriously, they issue corrections when they get things wrong. They take time to put things into historical context and they don't bend over backwards to give "both sides" to debates that clearly don't have two reasonable sides. If it's so clear, find me a single example of NPR news being aligned with the Democrats in a way that is divergent from objective reality.

gnicholas 6y ago
I remember hearing a discussion of affirmative action on All Things Considered. All of the guests on the show were in favor of affirmative action (so much for all things considered), and when the 'mismatch hypothesis' (which postulates that affirmative action may actually harm some of its intended beneficiaries by putting them in institutions where they are less prepared for the academic rigor than their peers) came up, the idea was dismissed out of hand as being outdated and debunked. This plainly misrepresents the state of the research, which has pretty conclusively shown that the mismatch effect appears in elite law schools and in STEM graduate rates. When I heard this dismissal and noticed that no one pushed back, it made me realize that the guests and host were all ideologically aligned. I still listen to NPR, but I now know that they are much more biased than I previously thought. To downvoters: do you doubt that this happened or think it isn’t an apt example of NPR being aligned with Democratic Party positions?
- MartinCron 6y ago
  I didn’t downvote, but I am wondering if this happened. A quick search of NPR transcripts makes me think the last time the mismatch hypothesis was discussed on All Things Considered was in 2012 and it was actually taken seriously (it was the focus of the piece). Perhaps you are thinking of a different public radio show, and inadvertently proving my point that people are unable to differentiate NPR news with other stuff they hear on the radio.

wffurr 6y ago

NPR News is dead center along with the BBC, Reuters, the AP, Christian Science Monitor, etc.: https://www.allsides.com/media-bias/media-bias-ratings https://www.allsides.com/media-bias/media-bias-ratings If you think NPR News has a liberal bias, that may be because reality has a liberal bias. Plenty of Republican politicians go on NPR for interviews. NPR opinion and talk radio pieces are slightly left of center.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
andrewmcwatters 6y ago
> because reality has a liberal bias. I think I've read this multiple times in this submission, and I think you're the one saying it over and over again. Do you not realize you're quoting Stephen Colbert from a news satire show? Have you just been regurgitating this for years and no one had the decency to point it out to you?
- wffurr 6y ago
  Pretty sure I have posted this exactly once. Not sure where you get off. Satire has a way of making uncomfortable truths easier to hear by cloaking them with humor.