NPR radio is the most unbiased media

[jobyts]

I think NPR radio is the most unbiased media. What do you think? You don't need to reply if you think Fox is unbiased :)

 

[russ_watters]

This is politics...moving.

 

[Ygggdrasil]

The only unbiased news sources are the ones that agree with my viewpoint

 

[tyroman]

The only unbiased news sources are the ones that agree with my viewpoint

Exactly!
"Don't confuse me with the facts... my mind is made up."

 

[Astronuc]

I listen to NPR, particularly Morning Edition and All Things Considered, but also BBC News and Monitor Radio, which are broadcast on the regional public radio station. They present their material quietly as opposed to the yucksters, chatterboxes, and blah-blah-ristos on commercial radio.

The regional station has a lot of great interviews with authors, academics, politicians from both sides of the spectrum.

And I agree with Chi Meson's assessment, although I don't think PRI is that leftish. Alternative Radio certainly is though.

 

[kyleb]

The only unbiased news sources are the ones that agree with my viewpoint.

Rather, the least biased news sources are the ones who put the most effort into presenting relevant facts regardless of what viewpoints they might support.

 

[Chi Meson]

And I agree with Chi Meson's assessment,...

I deleted my post. I agree with Russ that this is politics, and I'm staying out of this arena. See you in GD.

 

[Astronuc]

Assessing media bias is politics?

or do people make it political by claiming political-bias in the media - particularly when there isn't?

Compared to other media, NPR's news program Morning Edition and All Things Considered does a pretty good job of presenting both sides. I was listening to E. J. Dionne and David Brooks discussing current events, e.g., the revelation of the 'secret' Iranian nuclear program and the G20 summit in Pittsburgh.

 

[kyleb]

Compared to other media, NPR's news program Morning Edition and All Things Considered does a pretty good job of presenting both sides.

I wish they'd do a better job of dispelling the illusion that issues only have two sides.

...the revelation of the 'secret' Iranian nuclear program and the G20 summit in Pittsburgh.

If you mean "revelation" in a practical sense rather than an ethereal one, I hope you might share it in the thread we currently have dedicated to the subject.

 

[mheslep]

I used to listen despite the bias, liked some of the on air talent, but finally the smugness in the bias went off the charts, the commercial sponsor announcements expanded without bound and I went down the road.

I've found that the number of people that believe NPR has no government funding whatsoever is not zero. Just in case: about http://www.npr.org/about/privatesupport.html" comes from government sources.

 

[mheslep]

Some examples:

1. Acorn's recent YouTube flirtation with enabling child prostitution and illegal immigration is http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2009/09/acorn_versus_conservatives_bat.html" here to concerns about being poor:

ACORN has drawn renewed conservative scrutiny following a right-of-center film maker's undercover sting stunt in which he and a beautiful female conservative dressed as a pimp and prostitute, respectively, walked into ACORN offices in Baltimore, Washington and New York and received advice from workers there on a number of ways to advance illegal schemes.
...
It's also important to keep in mind that ACORN's workers are coming from the same low-income neighborhoods the organization serves, with all that entails -- poor schools, high crime and the sorts of social problems that have been documented for decades.

So the flaws conservatives are pointing out about ACORN are not so much problems associated with that organization per se but more about the problems of being poor and minority in urban America...

2. Story count bias. From NPR's own http://www.npr.org/ombudsman/2009/09/too_much_kennedy_1.html?ft=1&f=17370252" on 53 Sen Kennedy stories in five days. The late Senator was a major US politician, but 53?

There was no doubt that Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts had died if anyone listened to NPR in the days after his death late on Aug. 25 from brain cancer. Between Aug. 26 and 30, NPR ran 53 stories.

3. Iraq on the spot 'pollster':
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99639661
NPR reporter Garcia-Navarro, Bagdad bureau chief on Iraq, 18:30 in clip

...Any Iraqi that you speak to on the street will tell you, and I ask them this question, was the war worth it for you? Did this invasion, do you feel, give you a better life? And across the board, I didn't find one Iraqi who said to me, actually, I'm glad this happened. Most Iraqis have paid the price of, you know, if you want to call it their freedom, in blood, the blood of their relatives.

Sure, http://www.globalpolicy.org/images/pdfs/0308opinion.pdf" . They all want Saddam, Uday, and Qusay back from the grave.
4. NPR's Nina Totenburg on Gen Boykin's controversial comments on Islam:
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2003/12/28/hate_speech_of_the_left/

The liberal Nina Totenberg, on the other hand, suffered no ill effects for saying, during the flap over General Jerry Boykin's views of Islam and the war on terrorism, "I hope he's not long for this world." When the startled host asked if she were "putting a hit out on this guy," Totenberg backtracked and said she only wanted to see him expire "in his job."

 

[kyleb]

Acorn's recent YouTube flirtation with enabling child prostitution and illegal immigration is http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2009/09/acorn_versus_conservatives_bat.html" here to concerns about being poor...

Rather, Acorn was represented as being willing to enable child production and illegal immigration by some conservatives who duped some Acorn workings into offering advice which whose conservatives represented as such, which is reflective of "poor schools, high crime and the sorts of social problems that have been documented for decades" as NPR stated.

I'm curious though, have you seen unedited video to substantiate the claims made by the narrator, or are you just taking him at his word?

 

[mheslep]

Rather, Acorn was represented as being willing to enable child production and illegal immigration by some conservatives who duped some Acorn workings into offering advice which whose conservatives represented as such, ...

At least one of the reporters in the video (the popularized web video) was not a conservative at least by claim, maybe neither them, nor do I care. I am not referring to any third party 'representations' of the video, but only the statements I see on the video itself by the employees and for which they were immediately fired.

 

[kyleb]

The video starts out with the narrator claiming the employ was being asked a question, and then playing back her answer. Lacking an unedited video of the incident, I can't rightly say if the voice on the narrator properly represented the question the employ was asked. Again, have you seen unedited video to substantiate the claims made by the narrator, or are you just taking him at his word? At this point I can't take what you presented any more seriously than one of the Daily Show's obviously spliced interviews.

 

[mheslep]

Back over to Acorn thread so as not to derail
https://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=2366566&postcount=124

 

[kyleb]

Fair enough, I reposted my question there.

 

[WhoWee]

NPR is typically fair, but it can depend upon the topic. My guess is the audience leans left of center.

I think Astronucs assessment that they present information "quietly" is very important. "Quiet" doesn't sell and will never enjoy high ratings or popularity.

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

I have listened to NPR on occasion and have certainly noticed a bit of liberal bias in tone and phrasing but on the whole I would say it is fairly well balanced.

Note that I am liberal and am likely to not notice liberal bias as much. I do however give a similar rating of balance to straight news from Fox. Maybe I just tend to filter most bias.

 

[Phrak]

Rather, the least biased news sources are the ones who put the most effort into presenting relevant facts regardless of what viewpoints they might support.

Pftt. Pay attention. Picking and choosing what is relevant, and what presenting ones ideology in the best light is not unbiased.

 

[kyleb]

If you were paying attention you'd have noticed that I didn't make claims "unbiased".

 

[byronm]

Its funny how we measure fair / balanced news as leaning left or right of center.. has it come to a day an age where news is politics? You can't just report the car crash but now you have to add commentary that the car crash was the result of liberal or conservative laws/views/ideas so on so forth? I don't see NPR diving into the politics of things much however they are liberal in the sense that they cover the entire aspect of a topic but they're very much conservative in how they approach things - in the true non political sense of the words.

with that said, i love npr..

heck, it was only a few years ago people tried destroying PBS because they considered it the mouthpeace of the liberal movement.. (some conservative groups still are trying..)

 

[mheslep]

...I don't see NPR diving into the politics of things much

You can't be serious.

 

[jobyts]

Can anyone suggest a radio channel or other news media that is the most unbiased? (as a whole channel; I'm not looking at specific programs/columnists within a channel.)

Or the only way to get neutral information is to keep listening to left-central and right-central channels, and make up your mind?

 

[turbo]

NPR is probably as good as good as radio news gets, though there are huge problems. They play the liberal vs conservative dichotomy a bit too glibly, IMO. Very rarely is any subject in the realm of politics so simple that it can be reduced to such a simple dichotomy, much less be explained inside and out by Brooks and Shields in a couple of back-and-forth minutes.

Wm F Buckley Jr. was one of my favorite columnists. When I disagreed with him, I at least had a clear picture of his motivations because he could explain his reasoning clearly. Not a lot of that happening in the press or broadcast media these days.

People like Buckley are often relegated to the trash-bin of "libertarianism" these days because the GOP has embraced jingoism, top-down ideology, and faith-based initiative instead of reason and conservatism. The Democratic party is hardly any better because (in part) they try emulating the GOP by "speaking in one voice" on important issues, and acting as if monolithic legislation can address complex issues. The two-party system is failing the US very badly, and when the media frames debates on important issues in terms that serves the major parties' arguments, we all lose.

 

[mheslep]

...People like Buckley are often relegated to the trash-bin of "libertarianism" these days ...

Buckley, though he shared many libertarian ideas, never described himself as a libertarian. For instance, he never went along with libertarians on drug legalization or abortion. I am unaware of anyone who describes him as a libertarian now.

 

[turbo]

Buckley, though he shared many libertarian ideas, never described himself as a libertarian. For instance, he never went along with libertarians on drug legalization or abortion. I am unaware of anyone who describes him as a libertarian now.

Buckley declared the war on drugs as a failure many years ago and proposed not just decriminalization, but legalization of the sale of drugs, except to minors. If you are going to ascribe views to him, you might take the time to read what he wrote on the subject.

A conservative should evaluate the practicality of a legal constriction, as for instance in those states whose statute books continue to outlaw sodomy, which interdiction is unenforceable, making the law nothing more than print-on-paper. I came to the conclusion that the so-called war against drugs was not working, that it would not work absent a change in the structure of the civil rights to which we are accustomed and to which we cling as a valuable part of our patrimony. And that therefore if that war against drugs is not working, we should look into what effects the war has, a canvass of the casualties consequent on its failure to work. That consideration encouraged me to weigh utilitarian principles: the Benthamite calculus of pain and pleasure introduced by the illegalization of drugs.

This is perhaps the moment to note that the pharmaceutical cost of cocaine and heroin is approximately 2 per cent of the street price of those drugs. Since a cocaine addict can spend as much as $1,000 per week to sustain his habit, he would need to come up with that $1,000. The approximate fencing cost of stolen goods is 80 per cent, so that to come up with $1,000 can require stealing $5,000 worth of jewels, cars, whatever. We can see that at free-market rates, $20 per week would provide the addict with the cocaine which, in this wartime drug situation, requires of him $1,000.

I HAVE spared you, even as I spared myself, an arithmetical consummation of my inquiry, but the data here cited instruct us that the cost of the drug war is many times more painful, in all its manifestations, than would be the licensing of drugs combined with intensive education of non-users and intensive education designed to warn those who experiment with drugs. We have seen a substantial reduction in the use of tobacco over the last thirty years, and this is not because tobacco became illegal but because a sentient community began, in substantial numbers, to apprehend the high cost of tobacco to human health, even as, we can assume, a growing number of Americans desist from practicing unsafe sex and using polluted needles in this age of AIDS. If 80 million Americans can experiment with drugs and resist addiction using information publicly available, we can reasonably hope that approximately the same number would resist the temptation to purchase such drugs even if they were available at a federal drugstore at the mere cost of production.

And added to the above is the point of civil justice. Those who suffer from the abuse of drugs have themselves to blame for it. This does not mean that society is absolved from active concern for their plight. It does mean that their plight is subordinate to the plight of those citizens who do not experiment with drugs but whose life, liberty, and property are substantially affected by the illegalization of the drugs sought after by the minority.

I have not spoken of the cost to our society of the astonishing legal weapons available now to policemen and prosecutors; of the penalty of forfeiture of one's home and property for violation of laws which, though designed to advance the war against drugs, could legally be used -- I am told by learned counsel -- as penalties for the neglect of one's pets. I leave it at this, that it is outrageous to live in a society whose laws tolerate sending young people to life in prison because they grew, or distributed, a dozen ounces of marijuana. I would hope that the good offices of your vital profession would mobilize at least to protest such excesses of wartime zeal, the legal equivalent of a My Lai massacre. And perhaps proceed to recommend the legalization of the sale of most drugs, except to minors.

http://www.nationalreview.com/12feb96/drug.html

And why should he have ever described himself as a libertarian? He was a conservative, and he and his kind were increasingly abandoned by the GOP, as they dumbed-down the party and pandered to the religious right. To the dismay of my father, I was a pretty strong supporter of the GOP until Reaganism reared its ugly head. I am still quite conservative, though I have no party left to support. I have to vote a-la-carte and often hold my nose to do so. Neo-cons want to lump Buckley with libertarians because they don't want to be compared unfavorably with real conservatives who hold well-thought-out opinions motivated by reason, practicality, and common-sense.

If you think clowns like Rove, Beck, and Limbaugh are actually conservatives with the intellectual talents to support their views, I have some ocean-front property in Arizona that you'd love. Real conservatism in the 2-party system and the media mouthpieces of those parties is dead.

 

[mheslep]

Buckley declared the war on drugs as a failure many years ago

Yes many years ago in 1996 when he reached 71 years of age. I missed his rethink on this, despite reading hundreds of his columns, many of his books and viewing many Firing Line episodes. I also note in the NRO article:

Under the circumstances, I said [in the 1965 NYC mayoral campaign], it can reasonably be held that drug-taking is a contagious disease and, accordingly, subject to the conventional restrictions employed to shield the innocent from Typhoid Mary. Some sport was made of my position by libertarians [...]

which was the line of thinking I was familiar with in regards to him.

 

[turbo]

You might also want to read his writings from the 1960's on. Buckley often toyed with Libertarian ideas, but he always managed to pose them in alternative ways and turn them over and over, evaluating them in terms of their relative cost/benefit, harm/good, etc. Back when pot was the new "devil" of the so-called conservatives (1960's) Buckley decried the draconian punishments meted out to offenders and claimed that we knew so little about the effects of the drug that criminalization of it was irresponsible, considering the cost of criminalization to individuals and to our society.

Say what you will, THAT was a conservative viewpoint, and such candor and rational discussion will never appear in the major media in this day and age, when moral absolutism has captured the right wing. The myth of the "liberal media" was a self-fulfilling prophecy, but only comparatively, in the sense that the right wing of US politics abandoned conservatism and fled to the lunatic fringe. The media wasn't and isn't liberal, but it's difficult to present the news objectively without enraging the mindless. (Who believe that Iraq attacked us on 9/11, that Iraq had WMDs, that we had to have war in the ME because the Arabs "hate our freedoms", that Obama is not a US citizen, that providing affordable health-insurance to all is "socialism"... And on and on it goes.)

 

[seycyrus]

I listen to NPR every morning and in the afternoon. the bias is quite evident in the guests they choose to have on their show.

In addition, you can quite clearly hear the change in tone in the commentary when opposing views are presented, or even mentioned. The newscasters tendency to "coincidentally" offer quips of insight at opportune times is quite suspect as well.

Can any listener actually claim that there is any doubt as to which side of the fence NPR stands on in regards to the health care debate?

Of course NPR isn't filled with Rush Limbaugh. It is more subtle.

The only non-biased show on NPR is "Car Talk". The one comedy quiz show on the weekends is ridiculous. When Bush was in office, every show was filled with little jabs at him or Cheney. Nowadays, well, I can't think of a single time they made fun of Obama directly.

 

[mheslep]

I listen to NPR every morning and in the afternoon. the bias is quite evident in the guests they choose to have on their show...

As I indicated above, one can look directly at the regular NPR staff for bias.

 

[byronm]

You can't be serious.

I am serious.. Short of hiring robots to read just straight news NPR has a very conservative approach to politics and not conservative in the political sense. Thus that conservative approach leads to a very well balanced news cast that is neither political liberal or politicaly conservative but all of the above.

I'd love evidence to the contrary :)

Most people who don't like NPR have a problem with intellectuals and its odd that in many ways the party line is often divided in such fashion (such a meaningless and superficial way to divide beliefs)

 

[seycyrus]

...
I'd love evidence to the contrary :)
...

You listen this morning? How was the little "sketch" between the two correspondents talking about alternative cop-ops unbiased? Is their *any* uncertainty about what their feeling on the matter is?

It's like they were reading from a script! Why didn't they thank their writers?

You can catch the piece throughout the day.

 

[byronm]

You listen this morning? How was the little "sketch" between the two correspondents talking about alternative cop-ops unbiased? Is their *any* uncertainty about what their feeling on the matter is?

It's like they were reading from a script! Why didn't they thank their writers?

You can catch the piece throughout the day.

When i say "conservative and not in the political" sense i mean

cautious and on low side: cautiously moderate

I haven't heard the piece you speak of but isn't co-ops both a progressive belief and a conservative beleif? i mean, really, getting back to local supplies, buy local, grow local and sell local processes buth progressive in stemming huge corporate control but also conservative in putting more money into local working families and local communities? why do we have to look into things as if to split them apart on ideologies rather than look into things in how they unify our ideologies?

 

[seycyrus]

When i say "conservative and not in the political" sense i mean

cautious and on low side: cautiously moderate

I thought this topic was about bias. certainly I agree that NPR does not have anyone shouting on the airwaves. They promote their bias through the use of the steady, even toned day-by-day drip...drip...drip...drip...

I haven't heard the piece you speak of but isn't co-ops both a progressive belief and a conservative beleif?

Honestly, I don't know. The only thing i was able to get out of that piece was the fact that both of the correspondents thought it was a ridiculous idea. The lady cued the other guy, he missed his cue, and then she had to re-cue him. It was like watching a play.

Certainly didn't see anyone giving the other side of the argument.

 

[mheslep]

...I'd love evidence to the contrary :)...

Posted already
https://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=2365453&postcount=11