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comment by mk
mk  ·  4650 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Jay Rosen: NPR Tries to Get its Pressthink Right
    Basically, NPR is Talk Radio for Volvo owners now - commercials for everything but goldline and transparently stacked "panels" who aren't quite ready to start shouting at each other.

You kid, right? I mean, that's the stereotype, but...

I admit, if you are going to get a bias on NPR, it is going to have a liberal slant more often than not. However, I can't think of one major news organization that has a more even-keel analysis of events. I mean, seriously, what better option do I have? Cable is complete shit, and I don't have TV.





cliffelam  ·  4650 days ago  ·  link  ·  
The reason people use stereotypes is because they are so often accurate. When I lived in England I was unable, for a long time, to map reporting to political positions because their "labor," "liberal," and "conservative" don't map to how we think about that in the US. Double-ditto, weirdly, for when we lived in Oz. Plus their hot-button issues either don't exist in the US (ex: Aboriginal rights) or ours don't exist there (ex: "free" healthcare). But sometimes freeing yourself from the details helps you see that there is a thread running through the news you see from Newspaper A versus Newspaper B.

So it's not "if you are going to get a bias" it is how big is the bias. Looks pretty big to me. But then the pro-business side of the WSJ looks pretty big to me too, as does the conservative slant on Fox. I can't recall, actually, a media organization that didn't look pretty slanted to me.

-XC

mk  ·  4650 days ago  ·  link  ·  
Well, I'll give you that NPR has a liberal slant, but IMO it pales in comparison the the conservative slant of Fox. Actually, I wouldn't even call what happens on Fox a slant (or what happens on MSNBC to the other extreme).

But, I don't have a Volvo, and I voted for a GOP governor last election, I don't support affirmative action, and NPR is the best mainstream news source I've found. It's far from perfect, but even if you step back and compare, it does a better job than most.

Still, I do wish we had a US media discourse that allowed for more pluralism and nuance. IMO the team politics and ideologies that dominate make fools of us all.

cliffelam  ·  4650 days ago  ·  link  ·  
Well, on Fox I try to distinguish between the opinion pieces and the news side and the blurry bits inbetween. But as I only see it when I'm in a public place, or during an election period, I'm not actually an expert on what those guys are doing.

NPR, like all news organizations, makes gigantic mistakes on topics I know well, and that means they do the same on topics where I have little/no knowledge.

As for perception of bias, well, we all think we're centrists. :-)