From the Columbia Journalism Review on March 15 – At the root of the hubbub over the conservative activist sting on a pair of NPR fundraisers and NPR CEO Vivian Schiller’s subsequent resignation is a debate that is as old as public broadcasting itself: should the government fund media in the US? The most vocal opponents of public funding often cite what they see as a left-leaning political bias at NPR as an argument that it does not deserve taxpayer help.
In a recent column by The New York Times’s David Carr, NPR’s political slant is treated as a foregone conclusion. It’s “true to a point” that NPR is guilty of “squishy liberal ideology,” Carr wrote. “In terms of assignments and sensibility, NPR has always been more blue than red, but it’s not as if it has an overt political agenda.” Read more
And David Carr would know this about NPR because …?
I find it interesting that a reporter from the New York Times, which is often criticized for its liberal bend, feels compelled to point out another medium’s alleged political ideology by suggesting that everyone knows that NPR sports a liberal political agenda.
He knows this because he can easily recognize liberal story lines? He knows this because they often report the same stories in the same fashion he does? I mean, what makes him an authority on the so-called liberal media?
It’s not like NPR is Mother Jones which strikes me as a rather solid litmus test for left-leaning reporting.
I believe that repeated studies over the years has shown that more people with liberal views enter the media professions than those with conservative views. Maybe this “squishy liberal ideology” he speaks of is a product of the general demographic makeup of American journalists and isn’t some foregone conclusion based on who funds and listens to NPR programming. Or, more importantly, who stands behind the scenes masterminding the “blueness” of coverage.
NPR’s reputation for coverage has rarely been questioned, or politically challenged. If Carr can cite it as liberal, then I’m afraid there is no hope that any other medium will shift back to the center.