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Even The “Liberal” NPR…

May 21st, 2009 9 Comments

Has reporters like Adam Davidson that push a pro-business point of view in business reporting.

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9 Responses to “Even The “Liberal” NPR…”

  1. Duros62 says:
    May 21, 2009 at 6:14 pm

    When Marketplace routinely has David Frum and Amity Shales as commentators, I know it is not a liberal platform.

  2. Eric Sipple says:
    May 21, 2009 at 11:40 pm

    I’ve been listening to Planet Money since it started and this interview pretty much set the entire listener base on fire. It went nuclear.

    Though this is proving to be the slowest moving meme in history. Every week it pops up a little further out in the liberal blogosphere. I’d have figured it would have come and gone, or just gone without ever getting anywhere by this point.

  3. News Reference says:
    May 22, 2009 at 12:10 am

    NPR’s persistent right wing bias, illustrated by jerks like Adam Davidson, is the reasons I stopped listening to NPR.

    With the right wing American Enterprise Institute being NPR’s ‘go to team’ for economics, these days I spell “NPR”: “AEI”.

  4. Eric Sipple says:
    May 22, 2009 at 10:34 am

    Give NPR a little leeway here. Having a few bad reporters is not the same as being Fox News. They don’t have a persistent right wing bias, and in fact they have some of the only good news shows out there, like Fresh Air, This American Life and – yes, even despite an unfortunate bias via Adam Davidson – Planet Money.

    We need to hold them to standards, but “Persistent right wing bias” is a bit of hyperbole. They’re better than most, but maybe not good enough.

  5. Duros62 says:
    May 22, 2009 at 2:34 pm

    BTW, I loves me some Elizabeth Warren. She kicked ass in Maxed Out.

  6. News Reference says:
    May 22, 2009 at 2:40 pm

    “hyperbole”?

    Right wing FOX toadies Mara Liasson and Juan Williams aren’t outliers.

    The analysis by “Devilstower” on NPR’s persistent use of right wing American Enterprise Institute hacks wasn’t hyperbole, it was very well researched:

    “Based on the information from NPR’s web page, 70 of the 86 people currently listed as scholars at AEI have had air time on NPR over the last eight years. If you omit the people who were either members of the Bush administration, or elected officials you still have 63 AEI pundits got attention from NPR. Not only that, but 16 of them made over a dozen appearances. In total, they got their say on public radio over 600 times over that period. That’s over 600 times that your tax dollars, and the contributions to your local station, helped AEI press the neocon message.”

    Hyperbole might be “lambert” calling N.P.R.: “Nice Polite Republicans” in response to one of Nina Totenberg’s oblique pieces.

    But while some of NPR’s bias might be dismissed as subjective, when you add up 600 right wing puff pieces by a right wing think tank whose entire purpose is to push right wing fictions, well, that’s a remarkably persistent pattern of right wing bias.

    Even if you can get past the right wing think tank(s) dominating NPR’s air time and right wing FOX toadies like Mara Liasson and Juan Williams warping NPR’s coverage, there are still hosts like Cokie Roberts and Adam Davidson pushing right wing talking points.

    It’s a sad day in journalism when the bawdy Randi Rhodes regularly crams more facts and truths in a ten minute rant than NPR puts does in any hour segment.

  7. Duros62 says:
    May 22, 2009 at 2:47 pm

    Yeah, I call foul every time I hear the words American Enterprise Institute.

    But I still listen.

  8. Grumpymann says:
    May 22, 2009 at 5:12 pm

    Lately NPR has become more of an aggregater, putting out other producers stuff.

    Thus the crappy “Business” shows.

  9. Eric Sipple says:
    May 22, 2009 at 9:36 pm

    News, it’s very hard to discuss anything with someone who goes double-barrel dick on every single point they want to make. We actually agree on more things than we don’t, yet I politely call you on one thing I think you’re wrong on and I get a 5 paragraph screed.

    Whatever, I’ll let you do your thing. If you’re ever interested in an actual discussion, let me know and we can try again.