If you thought NPR was just a taxpayer-funded organization that provides inane commentary to Upper West Side liberals, you’re wrong — at least according to the organization’s ombudsman.
In a post on NPR’s website entitled “Political Bias Complaints Dominate Ombudsman Inbox,” ombudsman Elizabeth Jensen runs through a number of complaints from listeners about alleged bias in the radio station’s programming.
Jensen claims that complaints about bias “are roughly balanced between those who feel NPR favors liberals and those who say NPR is biased toward conservatives (with slightly more complaints about liberal bias).” I actually agree with the notion that NPR gets complaints about conservative bias considering the vast majority of its audience is leftist tankie Maoists who scream every time a program segment doesn’t call for mass executions of the financial class.
Nevertheless, the notion that NPR isn’t liberal enough should strike normal, sane people as preposterous. After all, you might remember the controversy surrounding a previous president of NPR, Vivian Schiller, who was forced to resign after the organization’s fundraising executive Ronald Schiller (no relation) was caught on tape calling the Tea Party movement a bunch of “gun toting” racists. He also admitted that NPR could operate “in the long run” without government funding.
(Schiller has since found a home as chair of the executive committee of Vocativ, a liberal news site)
Prior to Schiller’s ouster, NPR’s head of news Ellen Weiss resigned under pressure after the botched termination of commentator Juan Williams, who said he was fired “because I appear on Fox”. Williams had said on The O’Reilly Factor that he became nervous around people wearing Muslim garb on airplanes.
(Weiss went on to work for the liberal Center for Public Integrity before landing at Scripps Howard)
Despite a noted history of bias against conservatives, NPR’s listeners listed their complaints to Jensen:
“It is clear that NPR’s nationally syndicated shows, and in particular, Morning Edition, continue to push a conservative viewpoint and no longer provide any counter-balance of progressive views. The deck is stacked with conservative voices which remain unchallenged by your ‘reporters’. What happened to NPR??????”
Another Massachusetts listener wrote:
“My wife and I have been listening to the news on NPR religiously for over three decades. We travel a lot and try our best not to miss our morning and evening news ritual. But lately we have been turning it off and picking up our cell phones to get the news. We have seen a real shift to covering and giving the Republicans lots of air time. It is very hard to listen to them. We feel there has been a real shift in your political coverage to the right. We suppose that you are afraid of losing your government funding. We have depended upon NPR to provide us with unbiased and thorough [news] coverage, and expect that you will return to that.”
In a section called “Imbalance in Commentary,” Jensen criticized the inclusion of a conservative commentator on the show Morning Edition:
“That said, as some unhappy listeners have pointed out, one journalist, Jonah Goldberg, of the conservative National Review, has popped up as a commentator more frequently than most (he has been on five times since Feb. 3). No liberal commentator has had such a recurring platform, and Goldberg is not always identified by his political views, leaving listeners to guess.”
I can’t imagine being troubled by the inclusion of someone as inoffensive as Goldberg on a radio show, but I imagine I’m not troubled by most things NPR listeners are troubled by.
Jensen ends her piece by asking Morning Edition to “add more voices across the political spectrum.” Personally, I’m in favor of no voices entirely on NPR — I suspect total dead air will provide just as much of a public service.
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