In Defense of NPR

The latest hidden camera exposé by a conservative crusader finds a senior NPR fundraiser saying NPR would be better off without Federal funding while disparaging Republicans and the Tea Party movement.  Combined with NPR's firing of Juan Williams for honest but impolitic comments made on Fox News, the recent events have become the perfect fodder for the vocal chorus of NPR haters who want to see Congress cut off funding for NPR by eliminating funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

The argument is simple.  NPR is a biased, left-wing media outlet subsidized by taxpayer money it doesn't deserve.

The argument is also wrong.

Does NPR have a liberal bias?  Speaking as someone with a conservative bias, I think they do.  So do some people working at NPR, though they might prefer the term "sensibility" instead.  But so what?  Everyone has a bias toward issues they feel are important and the things they care about.  And organizations tend to grow by consolidating like-minded people.  But that doesn't mean they are wrong or what they value is unimportant.

Maybe I've generalized.  Maybe there are a few people who lack bias.  But I doubt it.  Here's a test.  Find a picture of your children when they were newborn.  I don't mean their first studio session.  Find something that measures their age in hours, not days or weeks.  Now look at it.  Cute kid, right?  Now take a look at your neighbor's kid at the same age.  Ouch!  What happened to that kid?  Was he dropped?

The reality is, babies are just plain ugly, unless they're your own.  We all have some bias.

I don't care that a reporter or a columnist or anyone for that matter has a particular bias.  What I care about is whether a person is honest about their bias and respects the views of others in how they cover a story.  What I care about is whether a person will consider ideas that challenge their own biases.  When a person or organization is intellectually honest, bias doesn't need to be a problem even as it continues to exist.

NPR gets it about as right as one can.  It is simply the best news organization on American radio (and one of the better destinations online).  No one else on radio puts the same level of effort and coverage into providing empirical journalism.  No one else in radio gives as much time to competing views.  When I'm driving home, NPR is the only outlet I can count on to give me detailed coverage of the political turmoil in the Middle East, the ongoing effects of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan or any other story of consequence.  Of course there is some bias, but I'm confident enough in my own ability to think that it doesn't scare me.

Click the image to see a larger version.

Federal funding for NPR isn't much, but it's money well spent. Indirectly, about 2% of its revenue comes winning competitive Federal grants. It's programming fees are paid by local public radio stations who do receive some Federal funding.  But that funding extends the reach of NPR into communities across the country where commercial options don't make sense.  It gives the public access to solid news and informed opinion—critical inputs for a democracy to produce sound decisions.

Critics say that people now have options that they didn't have before.  People no longer have to rely on the government to subsidize a news service.  The Internet houses sites for every possible voice.  Talk radio abounds.  Cable television is ripe with 24-hour news channels of every political persuasion.

The conclusion is wrong.  We are awash in a sea of opinion, but good news remains as elusive as ever.  In a copy cat world, no one has managed to copy NPR.

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In contrasting opinion pieces, Jonathan Chait at The New Republic gives a liberal perspective on why government funding for NPR benefits Republicans, while Philip Terzian presents a conservative view from The Weekly Standard on why NPR would do better without that funding.

The video that set off the firestorm is posted below.  It's eleven minutes long.  The mastermind, James O'Keefe, has since made a two-hour version available for review.  NPR reviewed the longer video and argues that some edits remove comments from their original context. The related radio segment from NPR is also posted below.