Monday, March 14, 2011

My 2¢ On NPR’s Supposed “Liberal Bias” | Chai Life

National Public RadioI listen to NPR. A lot. Specifically, I tune in to Milwaukee’s WUWM and occasionally WPR; The #1 and #2 presets in my car. In an average week, my ears get to enjoy at least some of the following programs: Morning Edition, All Things Considered, Fresh Air, On The Media, Radio Lab, Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me!, and plenty of other fantastic news and non-news public radio programs.

Lately there has been a renewed push by the Regressives of this country to strip the Corporation for Public Broadcasting of all of it’s federal funding. This would effectively shut its doors for good and close down dozens or even hundreds of local NPR and PBS affiliates. Their reasoning for the proposed defunding is because NPR has a “liberal bias”. This could not be further from the truth. Part of the reason that I so enjoy listening to the various programs from NPR is because of how hard they strive to be unbiased and balanced. I can’t think of a single story I’ve ever heard them do that I felt leaned to one side or the other or wasn’t immediately followed up with the opposing view. If I want media with a “liberal bias”, I’ll point my browser to the Huffington Post or set my TV to MSNBC. Likewise, if I want to hear conservative lies I’ll switch over to Fox News. If, however, I want straight news delivered professionally in an intelligent manner that doesn’t insult the listener, I tune my radio to NPR. My only assumption is that what the right-wing sees in NPR as a “liberal bias” is, in actuality, a bias towards intelligence and if there’s one thing that frightens the right-wing, it’s an intelligent voter.

The Regressive's war on intelligence.

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