[lsdafjklsd]

my dad is a fox news republican, a few years back we were driving for 5 hours and were listening to npr. he was basically waiting for the overt liberal bias, but instead we listened to a bunch of fascinating stories and interesting shows about a variety of topics. I read somewhere that npr isn't liberally biased, but their fan base is mostly liberal, because liberals tend to prefer news that has no bias. It's also not loud and obnoxious, which they like.

[colordrops]

> I read somewhere that npr isn't liberally biased, but their fan base is mostly liberal, because liberals tend to prefer news that has no bias.

You don't need to "read somewhere" about whether a news source is biased. You just need to read news across a spectrum of sources. And you will realize that NPR definitely has a liberal bias if you have enough breadth in your sources. I'm a far-left liberal but I'm not afraid to admit when a liberal news source is biased. Everyone loves to point out the obvious bias at Fox News and Breitbart and Drudge but then delude themselves that there are no liberally biased news sources.

[kristopolous]

If liberal is defined as "not alt-right" then sure.

But if you expect to find prominent socialists or leftist political activists or their ideas on NPR, you'll be waiting a long time. Chomsky, nader, said, hedges, parenti ... none of them get mentioned or make an appearance. Who teamed up with Richard Wolff's radio show? NPR? Nope, it was iHeartMedia. You can find these people on Al Jazeera, the CBC, RussiaToday, the BBC... Essentially the public media of every country BUT the USA.

On NPR, you'll get Goldman Sachs, BlackRock, the Heritage foundation, the Hoover institute, and other prominent vested interests and orthodox free market fundamentalism thinktanks.

The reality is the Alex Jones ilk are so out there that if you want to call anything that's not like that as liberal, you have a giant space to work with. That pejorative label corrals and prods everyone else closer to the Hannity and Michael Savages and what we get is a dedicated right and a not-so-committed, more gentle right.

When actual "not on the right" politicians rise, they get ignored, dismissed, or ridiculed by all the mainstream media. Whether it's Jeremy Corbyn or Bernie Sanders or Mélenchon. NPR was dismissive of Corbyn, who picked up the largest legislative gain in over 70 years, even on election day as trouble for Labor and mismanaging a failing divided party with old broken ideas...

It's important to remember what a non-skewed left would actually look like since it effectively doesn't exist in the mainstream us media.

[r00fus]

Funny I remember when Cokie Roberts was pimping Bush during the 2004 elections.

No, NPR's leadership since about the mid-nineties (at least) has been aligned with big business - they are part of the media elite, who collectively, despite the "liberal media" label are actually corporatists (because that's who owns them).

[alphaalpha101]

Your argument rests on the fault assumption that in a 'wide range of media', the median publication is unbiased and things that are more left-wing than it are biased and things more right-wing than it are biased in the other direction.

That's just not based in reality. In reality, almost all mainstream media is incredibly biased towards the status quo.

[hueving]

>because liberals tend to prefer news that has no bias

You have to be joking. Have you heard of the Huffington Post or MSNBC?

Even NPR is heavily biased at the editorial level. Most of the stories are intentionally selected to represent downtrodden folks, rust belt workers/farmers that realize they are closet Democrats, etc. The individual stories will be true but the representation of reality portrayed by the overarching theme of the stories will be a lie.

It's like a conservative station that constantly reports only crimes committed by Muslims. All of it can easily be 100% true, but the overarching theme will be complete BS.

[SerLava]

It's clear that NPR has bias in its choice of reporting, but every other political radio station has a clearly stated allegiance more than they have a simple bias.

The difference is stark -"oh boy this story is here for the lefties" versus a guy screaming into the mic that we have to fight the bastard liberals before they throw us to the sharks.

It's not close to perfect but it's at least news.

[dsfyu404ed]

This. Bias is primarily in what you choose to report.

[menacingly]

>because liberals tend to prefer news that has no bias

As a kid in the central US, I asked my mom why the people in our town didn't have an accent but people from everywhere else did.

[ryanx435]

> a few years back

I'm a centrist from Minnesota, which is where a lot of NPRs content is made through our local public stations MPR. We are pretty proud of our public radio here and pretty much both sides listen to the non political interest shoes like car talk, prairie home companion, etc.

NPR news and political opinion pieces used to be neutral with a libral flair: biased, but only a little bit.

The last year or so is when they really started going crazy left and it has become unbearable. I really think that whoever the editors are made a conscious decision right around the time of the primaries to stop trying to be neutral and just go full left propaganda. There was a noticable shift and I was no longer able to listen because of how overt and propaganda ish their reports became.

[ImSkeptical]

>because liberals tend to prefer news that has no bias

Hmmm, I think your liberal bias may be showing.

[SerLava]

Im not sure what you'd call it when liberals listen to... Slightly biased news, and conservatives listen to people with clearly expressed political allegiances who refer to conservatives as "us", liberals as "them", and talk about how to politically defeat the other side.

Just because bias is hard to separate out, doesn't mean everyone's behavior and preferences are equivalent mirror images of each other.

You could find someone yelling about defeating conservatives on YouTube but that viewership is going to be lower than NPR... thus liberals prefer the less-biased sources...