A slamming of NPR that's full of holes

For a second I thought I had clicked on The Onion. Last Thursday, The Times ran a major story titled "NPR in Turmoil After It Is Accused of Liberal Bias." You can understand my momentary confusion. When has NPR not been accused of liberal bias? What blockbuster awaits? "Donald Trump Accused of Lying"?   

Disclosure: I once worked for an NPR affiliate where I had the opportunity to interview Bob Edwards, host of "Morning Edition." When I asked him about the charge of bias, his first response was to laugh. He then noted that NPR is also accused of conservative bias when it runs a story that liberals dislike. His conclusion: When we're criticized by both sides, we know we're doing our job.    

The Times story emerged from an essay penned for The Free Press by NPR's senior business editor and reporter, Uri Berliner. It's title: "I've Been at NPR for 25 Years. Here's How We Lost America's Trust." What Berliner reflected on — NPR's lapses in journalistic judgment — is far too lengthy to go into here. But as luck would have it, there's also no need. Right off in his essay I spotted his lapse in judgment — and logic: 

Back in 2011, although NPR’s audience tilted a bit to the left, it still bore a resemblance to America at large. Twenty-six percent of listeners described themselves as conservative, 23 percent as middle of the road, and 37 percent as liberal.

By 2023, the picture was completely different: only 11 percent described themselves as very or somewhat conservative, 21 percent as middle of the road, and 67 percent of listeners said they were very or somewhat liberal. We weren’t just losing conservatives; we were also losing moderates and traditional liberals.

From those statistics, Berliner believed he had identified proof of the network's bias, concluding that "an open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR, and now, predictably, we don’t have an audience that reflects America."

First it must be observed that his stats are essentially meaningless in terms of real change regarding one audience bloc. What is "somewhat liberal"? I'd say middle of the road, but Berliner conflated this group with "very liberal." Without seeing a competent breakdown of the survey, we have no idea of NPR's true audience.

The principal flaw in Berliner's analysis, however, is that he confused correlation with causation. I'd not be shocked that conservative listeners drifted away throughout the noted interim, given that the right's very noisy media machine has for years lambasted NPR as a "liberal" outlet unworthy of conservatives' attention.

Yet Berliner blamed network bias for the drop-off. That's just sloppy thinking. He attributed NPR's bias as the cause, when in reality conservatives left almost certainly as a function of correlation: that being the right's relentless jackhammering "warnings" about NPR. 

The network's journalism hadn't changed. Only the audience did. But NPR can't be blamed for that.