National Public Radio has had a rough go in the last few years with declining audiences, financial shortfalls, and the recent exposure of its political bias by longtime editor Uri Berliner. However, if you tuned into the comments of NPR CEO Katherine Maher this week at the Texas Tribune Festival, you would think that the only challenging decision for NPR is picking the design of the next pledge drive tote bag.
Despite comments that were repeatedly evasive and misleading, a room full of journalists seemed to just nod like William Safire’s “nattering nabobs.”
Mayer led with what many former employees like Berliner may have seen as a literal punchline: “I stand here to defend the integrity of the newsroom and to defend the integrity of the reporting and to say that every single day our folks get up, and they want to stand there and make sure that they are serving the American public in the best possible way from a nonpartisan perspective.”
NPR, however, has lost much of the public. Ironically, it is now more liberal and white than ever with relatively few minority, male, or conservative listeners.
NPR’s audience has been declining for years. Indeed, that trend has been most pronounced since 2017 — the period when Berliner said the company began to openly pursue a political narrative and agenda to counter Donald Trump. The company has reported falling advertising revenue and, like many outlets, has made deep staff cuts to deal with budget shortfalls.
As she has in the past, Maher portrayed Berliner as pushing a false political agenda in claiming any bias at NPR. She denounced his criticism as an “affront to the individual journalists who work incredibly hard to report the news and report the news well and report the news with integrity … in a nonpartisan way.”
The portrayal of NPR as unbiased and balanced is laughingly absurd. Indeed, many of us objected to Maher’s selection after years of declining audiences and increasing criticism. Maher had a long record of far-left public statements against Republicans, Trump, and others.
As I have stated in the past, I am not suggesting that NPR does not have a right to slanted coverage. Many outlets today have such bias. However, they do not have a right to receive public subsidies.
In a competitive media market, the government has elected to subsidize a selective media outlet. Moreover, this is not the media organization that many citizens would choose. While tacking aggressively to the left and openly supporting narratives (including some false stories) from Democratic sources, NPR and its allies still expect citizens to subsidize its work. That includes roughly half of the country with viewpoints now effectively banished from its airwaves.
While local PBS stations are supported “by listeners like you,” NPR itself continues to maintain that “federal funding is essential” to its work. If NPR is truly relying on federal funds for only 1 percent of its budget, why not make a clean break from the public dole? NPR would then have to compete with every other radio and media outlet on equal terms. And it would likely do well in such a competition, given its loyal base and excellent programming.
Maher and NPR want to continue to offer slanted coverage but require all Americans (including most who do not listen to NPR due to the bias) to pay for it.
Maher’s talk was a litany of faux expressions of concern with no indication of a willingness to change a thing at NPR. Maher expressed a heart-felt need to face “perceived criticism.” Putting aside that there is nothing “perceived” in the criticism, it is clear that she rejects the very premise of the obvious bias of the outlet.
When finally asked by Fox New Digital about voter registration records in 2021 showing an astonishing disparity between Democrats and Republicans in the NPR newsroom, Maher dismissed the data. Berliner found 87 registered Democrats and zero Republicans. However, Maher said that there were many employees not part of those stats. That is like dismissing a poll because not every American was contacted. There is no reason to expect that those self-reporting are hugely skewed toward Democrats without a single Republican participating.
She added that they are not allowed to hire employees based on political affiliation. It was again transparently evasive. No one is suggesting a political litmus test based on party registrations. The problem is the hiring of people who are uniformly left and Democratic in their outlooks and values.
Maher said that she believes that “it’s incredibly important for us to have people of diverse viewpoints in the newsroom, and the totality of the lived experience.” However, they clearly are not doing that in their hiring process. It is not an accident when you lack a single Republican in hiring.
We face the same rationalization in academia.
A survey conducted by the Harvard Crimson shows that more than three-quarters of Harvard Arts and Sciences and School of Engineering and Applied Sciences faculty respondents identified as “liberal” or “very liberal.” Only 2.5% identified as “conservative,” and only 0.4% as “very conservative.”
Likewise, a study by Georgetown University’s Kevin Tobia and MIT’s Eric Martinez found that only nine percent of law school professors identify as conservative at the top 50 law schools. Notably, a 2017 study found 15 percent of faculties were conservative. Another study found that 33 out of 65 departments lacked a single conservative faculty member.
When pressed, administrators and academics express the same befuddlement why their faculties are exclusively liberal. It is just a mystery. It cannot be due to their own bias in hiring people with clearly liberal or far left views.
Maher was clearly singing to the choir in this event. She noted that some of her viewers want NPR to be harder on Trump. That is hardly surprising. While taking federal funds from the entire country, NPR currently has a shrinking audience of largely liberal, older, white, female Democrats. “Balance” is viewed by many as considering whether Trump is an existential threat to democracy or to humanity.
The falling audience and revenue shows that Maher and NPR are not appealing to a larger audience. Once again, they should not have to do so. If they want a smaller audience while maintaining the current one-sided coverage, that is entirely between them and their donors. What they do not have a right to is a public subsidy for that slanted coverage.
It is time for NPR to operate entirely in the free market like all of its competitors from CBS Radio to Fox Radio. If it is truly offering a broad and balanced news source, Maher will have little difficulty thriving without public funding.
Bravo Jonathan Turley!
To flesh out his excellent commentary even more, I am reminded that this is not the first time NPR has faced such criticism for “prejudicial news coverage,” please note this from 1992 Congressional debate regarding reauthorization of funding for Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) (under which includes NPR and PBS) (It is important to note that the Public Broadcasting Act authorizing the creation and chartering of CPS notes that authorization for the creation of a public media system is “designed to serve the needs of a national audience.”):
Senators Dole and McCain were particularly critical, with statements warning of “liberal, leftwing programs” and Bill Moyer’s “unbalanced propaganda,” 138 CONG. REC. S2650 (daily ed. Mar. 3, 1992), id. at S7430 (daily ed. June 3, 1992);
“unrelenting liberal cheerleading”); “The viewer is predominantly exposed to liberal, leftwing
viewpoints without the benefit of alternative points of view.”138 CONG. REC. 52645;
and a review of 225 PBS documentaries, concluding that they “lack ideological balance, and [that
the] balance of opinion… consistently favored liberal positions.” Id. at S7430.
More recently, Sen. Ted Cruz challenged the biased programming, to which CPB’s President responded,
https://www.insideradio.com/free/cpb-president-responds-to-sen-ted-cruz-s-letter-about-npr-funding/article_9eeb40de-11cc-11ef-98b8-470288fedbe3.html
* The USA is finished. Religious people can’t participate in any of this and there’s a lot of them. It’ll split into separate nations with constant wars.
The “culture” is a hellscape created for you by the democrats by design all to destroy tiny Israel and it was allowed. You couldn’t believe it. Twin towers downed , denial. Obama, denial.
Marriage should be taken out of government jurisdiction. Register your offspring. Nothing else needed .
* Can’t trust the congressional record now. Digitized records.
Donald Trump is an ass-licking hound dog ’bout to get smoked tonight. Party on.
Spoken like a true Democrat. No issues, just name calling,
More than that. That’s the mark of a narcissistic sociopath.
J
I would have thought that people steer away from you at parties. You add little to none toward substantive exchanges.
Question is; can Betty Boop stay sober until after the debate? Should be pretty well lit about now after a week long binder…
The problem for Lawn Boy is that even after the press is done ignoring the word salads and declares Kameltoe the winner based on her canned remarks, the Don will still lead in the polls and be headed for a landslide victory. And he will be left sucking his thumb, just like 2016
Donald Trump is an ass-licking hound dog ’bout to get smoked tonight. Party on.
Ashley Biden has joined in… applying expertise she developed during Daddy-Daughter Inappropriate Incest Showers and crack smoking sessions with The First Felon Kid while she was serving as his pimp.
Welcome Ashley! Tell us what we can’t already see in the online contents of the Biden Bribery Laptop.
JT is in essence saying, “there’s room for fake news in a healthy democracy”. (Strike the word “healthy”.)
Not only should federal subsidies end, members of the audience should be able to sue NPR News for defamation and pushing out public frauds. Granted, NPR is not in the same league as Alex Jones’ Infowars, and Chan4. Those stinking garbage heaps of virulent infowarfare would be the first targets of public frauds lawsuits.
But think about what that would do to clean up biased news orgs like NPR. There has to be some “skin in the game” legally if we ever hope to get journalism back into its proper lane in a free society, where factual information is produced answering the pressing questions of ordinary Americans about their priorities and concerns. What we have now is nothing like that. It’s a roiling battlefield of attempts to opinion-shape, distract and mislead on the way to advancing special partisan political and business agendas. Most journalists are living in a bubble having little or no connection to the priorities of average Americans, at least those for who reject the purpose of politics as being daily entertainment.
Turley’s “you can say anything you want, and the most I can do is complain about it” expansive definition of “free speech” is already being used to justify the most manipulative, conniving, deceitful, fear-inducing garbage pushed out by professional infowarfare organizations. Their purpose is kept shrouded in stealth, and they routinely imposter who is speaking to dupe and confuse. Theirs is not to enlighten, but to mind-control. If you are willing to afford that kind of “speech” the same legal status as authentic, transparent voices self-restrained by civility, candor and decorum, then you have more thinking to do about how the moral fabric of a free society must be reflected in its laws and customs. Letting down the shield against inauthenticity is a colossal blunder.
If you can only frame the free speech issue by taking sides in the current polemic struggle (left vs. right), you’re walking into a trap of double-standards. The way out of this morass is to frame the battle as authentic vs. manipulative, hidden-agenda styles of political speech, and draw a firm line against the latter — but in a manner that completely avoids govt. prosecution as the deterrent.
You seem unusually bitter today.
You seem unusually bitter today.
Peanut Butter In Kalifornia is here to do his predictable false flag routine of being here to equally call out his fellow neo-communists, cosplaying as a fair minded commenter who applies the same standards to all. But he’s sent here to attack Professor Turley with his “not good enough” complaints as he’s here to attack Trump.
When he insults us with this fake flag crap he throws in our faces, he deserves to be insulted and mocked to his face in return.
MORE TORT!!
If you can only frame the free speech issue by taking sides in the current polemic struggle (left vs. right), you’re walking into a trap of double-standards.
pbinca, when you cosplay as being a Marxist Democrat from DEI California who fairly judges all, “left vs. right”, you’re dead in the water as you attack Professor Turley for not meeting your alleged standards. You’re boat is torpedoed by your ongoing virulent desperate moral equivalencies and standards.
An easy example being your post yesterday afternoon drooling over your favorite police state fascist, Jack Smith, being allowed a Lavarentiy Beria mini-show trial and attempting to prophecize what his target, Trump, could do in response:
The cowardly, loser midget in him might say to just keep denying and dissembling, which would hand Jack Smith a pre-election victory
That was your comment about Trump about 12 hours earlier. No taking sides and demonizing one side EVER seen coming from fair minded pbinca!
With all the ongoing denying, dissembling, and flat out lies that have been coming from Biden his entire political life, Obama as the neo-communist he served beside as they launched their criminal “Russia Dossier” fraud, and now Harris after four years serving up Biden’s decisions, you have NEVER used similar language to describe these police state fascists you serve here and give your vote to.
You aren’t slick enough to pull off the false flag fair-minded Marxist persona you attempt. You’re as incompetent at pulling it off as you are contemptible for attempting it.
You are a Cheap Fake American, Peanut Butter Brains In California. You deserve to be mocked and excoriated and treated the same in return every time you insult us by attempting one of these feeble attempts at being ethical and treating all equally, whether conservative or neo-communist Democrat. I will give you credit for using the same username every time instead of posting as Anonymous (although maybe you do that as well).
* Moted! Moted binca 😂
I learned “moneymaker”from you. Moneymaker not Haymaker.
NPR, MSNBC, NBC, CNN, ABC, CBS, and yes FOX too, receive government subsidies, it’s called the AD Council.
The government doesn’t need to hide behind the AD Council. If the government has a message to send, then call a press conference.
If the “news outlets” think the message is worthwhile, they can run with it, including the name and title of the person giving the announcement.
Dear Mr. Turley, I stopped listening to NPR many years ago as I could not stand the rudeness in their “reporting”. Ever since Ms. Totenberg’s reporting on Clarence Thomas, I stopped listening.
journalism is the cancer of society
They do not care. They don’t here us or see us. They are insulated by the rest of them. We are the tree in the forest no one heard fall. Hopefully, one day enough Americans will wake up like Tulsi Gabbard and recently Professor Dershowitz.
NPR used to welcome public discussion of their stories. But then they discontinued Disqus commenting. They were on Twitter, but then Musk bought it. You can email a comment, which will go unacknowledged.
Ich bin ein Berliner! (Go Uri!)
NPR’s position on its obvious bias is laughable. Maher stated, “It’s incredibly important for us to have people of diverse viewpoints in the newsroom, and the totality of the lived experience.” By “diverse,” I can only assume she means the differences between Marxists, Classical Communists, old school socialists, Maoists and Leninists.
I think by “diverse” she means people who shop at Neiman’s, and people who don’t.
Cindy, that was Excellent!
The Karen News Network.
I used to listen to NPR every day going to work. Now, I’d rather listen to North Korean television (it’s available on YouTube), it’s more entertaining and makes no pretense of not being propaganda.
NPR MSNBC NBC CNN ABC CBS – Anyone that can read understands the bias of these organizations. Nothing they say will change a vote anywhere. That too should be understood.
NPR was always a flaming liberal news outlet but at least it was somewhat substantive and could at least on some occasions demonstrate a modicum of fairness. Those days are long gone. I cannot even listen to 3 minutes of their news summary. NPR, like much of its peers is nothing more than an outlet for hard leftist propaganda. Worse is the fact that it gets public funding. It is nothing more than a public sector version of MSNBC. Why the hell should I subsidize it no matter how trivial that cost is. One-ten-thousandth of a cent is too much!
Once the “Car Guys” were off NPR I had no reason to Listen to NPR. It is so arrogant you can see them (conceptually) looking down their noses on the air.
When going outside of the DC-NY axis is referred to as “being in the field”, then you know they have been lost.
Once upon a time many reporters were actually normal people and then they went to the DC-NY axis and they caught something. Judy Woodruff was excellent when in Georgia and is unrecognizable now (reporting wise) as are many others over the years.
There is obviously something in DC that does things to your brain. I saw a moderate and reasonable democratic governor Evan Bayh go to DC and become a shill for Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer and a candidate who was unbeatable as a governor opted to not run in a followup senate re-election because he became unpalatable to Indiana, his home state. Took about 2 terms to see the illness take hold
Richard Luger held out for a long time but eventually lost touch with his state.
Strongest reason I can see for term limits. Makes me truly believe that “power corrupts”.
I think it has happened to the media as much as it happens to politicians and seems to gather momentum the longer that the individuals have broken loose from their roots.
The arrogance and superiority attitude of the many politicians in DC is mirrored in the media and they simple mimic each other in that huge echo chamber on the Potomac.
The Navy and Army for most of their existence tended to rotate officers out to field commands periodically and regularly and limit time in DC in order to blunt the effect. I’m not sure they do that so much any more but I think that is something thats needed with politicians and media also.
The government has too much debt. NPR needs to go off the taxpayers dime. They need to be “in the field” all the time and not in the studio.
There is obviously something in DC that does things to your brain . . . it has happened to the media as much as it happens to politicians . . .
It also happens to judges. Think David Souter and Anthony Kennedy. That’s the reason for the “conservative” effort to put judges on the bench who have a backbone and will continue to adhere to the Constitution and the acts of Congress as written, rather than reading in their own individual policy preferences. Such an effort is labeled as “right wing” by its detractors, but it’s actually more textualist than right or left.
Oldman, I would not appoint anyone to the Supreme Court who lived on the west or eastern coasts, DC or Chicago. Kavanaugh sounded good on paper. He isn’t bad but he was in DC too long.
There is obviously something in DC that does things to your brain.
GEB, I would suggest it would be more accurate to say whatever is already in your brain makes your soul adopt Washington DC as where your brain sees as your natural home: wealth without working for it, power, prestige, and having taxpayers fund your lifestyle as long as you can remain there. Leaving with a certainty that you can grift off your political time in office the rest of your life.
Our Senator Jon Tester here is a perfect example. He’s critical in this election as he’s been to Democrats since his first election win. He is the poster boy for what you wrote – and how damaging even a supposed nobody can be in Washington DC.
Tester, first elected while playing he would be Mr. Smith goes to Washington, promising to serve one term and then head back to the ol’ Montana family farm. Democrat Montana Senator Tester became that last critical vote for ObamaCare – despite the fact it was overwhelmingly opposed in Montana. Tester is the Democrat who recruited Harris to run for federal office – he approved of how she operated in California, even if people in Montana would have been appalled. He then endorsed her as Biden’s VP.
And then Biden gave his Montana vote to allow VP Harris to decide every single tiebreaking vote she cast in the Senate. Tester’s Montana soul got traded in for a Washington DC soul, where he voted 95%+ for Biden, and 100% to enable Harris to cast tie breaking votes.
The point being, Tester went to Washington DC as what appeared to be the usual Montana Carhartt coverhalls small farmer and rancher with the values of the tiny nearby farming town.
Now he’s as desperately trying to play moderate Montana Democrat running from his record in office, claiming he usually supported Trump as president, while claiming his former Navy SEAL opponent who has lived here for years is an outsider without his Montana values. Just as Harris is hoping she can hide from her record.
GEB, they arrive in Washington DC with character faults in place, Washington doesn’t do anything to them other than provide them with what they really want.
Whether their name is Jon Tester or Mitch McConnell.
Very much agreed and many of us have stated it before. Let them fend for themselves like others do and see how they fare. So many of these companies/organizations are the province of (often white) privilege and even nepotism in many cases. It’s absurd that we are funding it to any degree. They can compete on their ideas; if they are offering value, people will respond.
So I understand, are you saying these non profit companies like NPR (I think they are anyway) that are subsidized by federal taxpayers are often White privileged nepotistic entities? If so, could you provide a few examples?
@Traveler
Not all are subsidized but all are products of woke/(often white)privilege/and very often, nepotism. Google, Apple, (formerly) Twitter, Facebook, Microsoft, NYT, LAT, PBS, too many universities to list but Columbia being a great example, Teen Vogue, Disney, HuffPo, The Atlantic, Vox, and on and on and on.
Bingo.
Why not just limit public broadcasting to non-political, non-news subjects. They do have good programing for children, nature enthusiasts, medical information, drama etc.
But, yes, the news and politics is laughably slanted and very insulting to half the country.
Across the past forty years they’ve found themselves necessary to appeal to a segment of the population which virtue seeks through the Woke Volks Initiative enforced by its Cancel Culture Gestapo, likely stepping to the piper which calls the tune. Judging from the percentages seemingly in favor of this social justice philosophy, its policies and procedures, this Constitutional Republic is sliding down a stair case banister that ends in a razor blade. “Driving that train, high on cocaine, Casey Jones you better, watch your speed. Trouble ahead, trouble behind, And you know that notion just crossed my mind”
“National PUBLIC Radio”: its inevitable fate (doom, actually) as an instrument solely of Fedgov propaganda is ably forecast by it’s name. The Federal government has no mandate, no constitutional authority, and no legitimate business engaging in the broadcast of news or any other kind of information, possibly excepting emergency bulletins. We do not have a “National Public Newspaper”, do we? Although I have no doubt that quite a few US fascists in positions of power would very much like to establish just such a thing.
As I have stated here on the good professor’s blog more than a few times, NPR used to be a daily staple in our house from sun up till dinner time. I would listen to NPR in the truck all the time.
They had their bias, but you could easily over look it and still get the news. And there were those “driveway” moments where the story was so good, I sat in the truck to finish the story being reported on till the end.
Then 2016 happened and they went all in, CNN like panel-o-pundits who did nothing but agree with each other about Trump. If they could find a way to mention Trump in some negative light, even if it was completely unrelated, they would do it.
They also went all in on race, gender and sexuality. There was NO news. Matt Tabibbi even wrote an article on it.
So, I switched off. Rather listen to Taylor Swift, or Miley Cyrus than that so called journalism.
Every-once in awhile I will tune in in the truck to see if it is the same garbage. Sure is.
Now, I support independent news like The Free Press, Matt Taibbi, Glenn Greenwald, Sharyl Attkisson and others. Better news, well worth supporting.
“They had their bias, but you could easily over look it and still get the news.”
Upstate, conservatives are very tolerant people. I used to watch NPR and had the same feelings as you. In the 60s NPR produced a series of Milton Friedman’s book Free to Choose ( it is on the net now if anyone is interested). If they did it again their viewership would skyrocket. Democrats want to hear the lowest style of junk so they became too lazy to listen to NPR propaganda. They would rather watch reruns of the View than NPR,
Is there any government (taxpayer) funded media on the planet that does not function like National Propaganda Radio? If so, not for long. Just like with Public Education, government was necessary to breathe life into it. But it was always going become a servant of the Regime, if left to natural forces.