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Comment by earthviaradio | Hacker News Reader

I got into Planet Money during the GFC meltdown but more recently I've found the quality of their shows waning. They seem to be dumbing down topics (a recent show on the Greek debt crisis made out that the problem was essentially "office politics" between the ECB and the Greek government with no mention of the structural economic problems of the Euro experiment). For a deep dive on economics and politics from the left check out the Behind the News podcast with Doug Henwood, as opposed to Hayekian/Keynesian blathering it is firmly Marxist.

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NPR isn't supposed to be leftist, it's supposed to be journalism. That's what separates them from other outlets, they're either focused on advocacy (fox, currentTV) or entertainment (CNN, MSNBC).

In journalism circles you can often hear that the truth leans to the left. When things like Evolution and Climate Change are brought up you can either go with the facts which leans left or teach the controversy which leans right but there is no safe middle ground. The left has plenty of less than rational views, but when you simply speech the truth your far less likely to seem to lean to the right.

Why do facts lean left?

It's more that the right leans false.

It is not _supposed_ to be leftist, but that's sure the way they lean.

I hear this asked, once in a while, on WPR, when the station manager is on a call-in show in the morning: why do you guys program to the left. And the answer is (I'm paraphrasing) That's who our audience is, so that's what we program for.

Heck, last week he as much admitted as such when he noted that they focused more on politics since the election of Scott Walker (R) as governor, and they will focus less when he's out of office: that's what our audience expects.

Which is understandable: if they had a Rush Limbaugh kind of guy on they'd loose audience and see donations drop. Be nice if they just admitted it.

I really think that if the manager said this, then there would be major ructions. Can you point to what he said exactly? It would be a scandal if this is what he really said.

Can you point to what he said exactly?

I was in the car, listening because they were going on about Jean Ferraca - whom I really dig. And it did catch me out as something extraordinary, but not unexpected, for WPR. I started to write it down when I got to my desk and thought 'whatever'.

Joy Cardin show for 3/12/2012, show number 120312C. I'll download and give it a re-listen, reply here.

Listening twice to Cardin - the things I do for integrity.

Show is archived here: http://www.wpr.org/webcasting/audioarchives_display.cfm?Code...

I suck - meant to add this last week.

The things I do ...

Joy Cardin Show Dir WPR Mike Crane after 27:48 Greg in Stevens Point "I get tired of the political talk in the first two segments (tl:dl - he doesn't like politics, would donate, would like the morning programs to be more like the mid-day one, with gardening, home handy tips and various other stuff) "It's just listening to college teachers with an opinion .. it never ends .. been going on for three, four, five years however long it's been."

Mike WPR Director "Bascially starting with the election two years ago now that there just seemed to be a lot more politics to talk about. that we had a significant change in governance that I think has caused a lot of people to be curious about it maybe we'll find after this next election that things will shift a different way and there will be other things to talk about."

The second comment was rich. Greg complained about diversity - race issues. "Only one person of color."

Mike:(paraphrase) We have a Latina, too. And we're working on some other stuff.

The 'person of color' is the (imho) best guy _on_ WPR, Jonathan Overby. His 'Higher Ground' used to be a really entertaining live show with an audiance, live music. A few years ago they cut it back to Overby playing records.

I miss the way it used to be.

http://wpr.org/higherground/

Now, Crane's comments can be seen as innocuous. And, maybe, he really did mean them that way.

But it's funny that the swing to 'talk about politics' didn't happen until after Walker (R) was elected. And that he said it would swing right back if he was voted out.

In a world where 50% of primary voters in Miss and Bama last week believed Obama's a muslim, yeah, I guess journalism leans to the left.

I mean, what would consist of "balanced" in your view? The science leads towards a global warming hypothesis, and what's what they report. Most non-foxnews viewers agree that no WMD were found in Iraq. How are they supposed to split the difference on stuff like that?

NPR does not have ranting opinion shows that are political first. They have programs that are intended to inform. To the extent that liberals are more attracted to outlets like NPR than they are to outlets like currentTV, that's a statement about liberals, not about NPR.

I mean, what would consist of "balanced" in your view?

I'm not the parent post, and I generally agree with you, but I'll take a stab at it.

I used to have the opinion that NPR was left-leaning. This was primarily due to when I listened to it, which was during my late-morning commute. I believe I was listening to "All Things Considered," which is usually quite a good listen.

However, on certain subjects, I noticed what seemed to be a significant bias in the moderator. Expressions of shock or disbelief at certain things, giving some speakers more time than others, and not calling some speakers on blatantly talking around the question, for example.

Last time I checked, I think I was evaluated as a mildly socialist libertarian. I happen to know a fair amount about guns. As such, I notice terrible inaccuracies and biased language fairly often when reading mainstream media reports on gun-related incidents. The misuse of automatic, semi-automatic, "assault rifle" (which means "scary looking" to journalists), cache versus personal arsenal, etc. It's really a lot like the low quality of technical and science coverage. Basically, similar technical ineptitude leads journalists to appear right wing (e.g. climate change deniers) as what leads them to appear left-leaning (e.g. complete ignorance of gun terminology).

Other parts of NPR have a ridiculously narrow view of the world. "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me" drives me mad with the narrowness of the comedy on there. As it happens, much of their comedy would probably fall under the category of leftist, but I was personally offended by the narrowness and inanity of an apolitical joke (specifically, they were laughing at an experimental airbag for motorcyclists which protects the often-broken hips from impact with the gas tank, but the commentators repeatedly assumed it was solely to protect the groin, so they effectively made "pee-pee" jokes for five minutes).

Anyway, while I don't consider NPR to be a leftist news outlet, per se, I would appreciate if they spent more time educating themselves on certain subjects and tried harder to hold guests accountable for answering questions presented.

I don't have a car anymore so don't listen to NPR like I used to but let's just take your complaints for granted.

Those are imperfections more than the sign of some ideological motive. Presumably, the NPR hosts know very little about guns, so they misuse some terminology. Would be better if they were more educated but journalists are generalists, they can't know everything. They're not the gun network.

The climate change thing is totally different, Fox News will spend significant airtime harping on global warming, like we're talking many mentions per day, and the point isn't that they're not climate scientists (I'm not either), it's that they have no desire to listen to what climate scientists say. At all. Unless it agrees with their pre-conceived narrative. There are miles of distance between that and ignorance on the technicalities of the subject.

Whether it's an ideological motive or not doesn't really matter. Whether a bias comes about due to intention or side-effect doesn't matter. I wasn't discussing NPR vs. Fox 'News', I was merely explaining some ways in which NPR -- whether intentional or not -- creates some bias in some of their content.

You don't have to be "the gun network" to know basic terminology about guns. If you don't have knowledge of something, don't report on it, or simply repeat the literal words of, say, the police. Don't try to spice up the story for broadcast by misusing terms. Similarly, you don't have to be a physicist to realize that you should create inflammatory headlines like, "neutrinos traveling faster than light, Einstein in tears!"

And anyway, the gun thing was just an example of how news outlets in general often get things wrong in a way that effectively creates a bias which is perceived to be left-leaning. I've seen the same thing happen when discussing nuclear power, military weaponry research, and countless other topics. And it's not simply about ignorance of technicalities, it's about misuse of terms and misinterpretation of information.

Truth is I've found the same re planet money's quality waning. For the first time I actually stopped a podcast 2 thirds through because I found myself yawning.

Thanks, I hadn't heard of Behind the News, found it on iTunes and it sounds awesome. Link for those interested:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/behind-news-doug-henwood/...

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