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