NPR ombudsman: Most think tank guests are right wingers

[quaoar]

NPR has been beaten into submission by the Bush crime family. Hardly worth listening to anymore. I hope they are happy with the new pals on the right, who I'm sure will gladly fork over the dough during pledge week to keep NPR on the air.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5053335

NPR often calls on think tanks for comments. But NPR does not lean on the so-called conservative think tanks as many in the audience seem to think.

Here's the tally sheet for the number of times think tank experts were interviewed to date on NPR in 2005:

American Enterprise - 59
Brookings Institute - 102
Cato Institute - 29
Center for Strategic and Intl. Studies - 39
Heritage Foundation - 20
Hoover Institute - 69
Lexington Institute - 9
Manhattan Institute - 53

There are of course, other think tanks, but these seem to be the ones whose experts are heard most often on NPR. Brookings and CSIS are seen by many in Washington, D.C., as being center to center-left. The others in the above list tend to lean to the right. So NPR has interviewed more think tankers on the right than on the left.

The score to date: Right 239, Left 141.

[Harper_is_Bush]

1. I don't know if that's indicitive of bias or rightwing influence...

most think tanks ARE rightwing. It was part of the rightwing long-term stragegy going way back to establish and invest in think tanks that would promote thier views, and assuch they have more and the ones they have are larger and better funded than the left.

Think tanks in general are a bad element in the political mix.

[Leilani]

7. Exactly.

Where are the liberal think tanks?

[sendero]

2. This started in earnest...

... around 2001. There was a time when they were fairly balanced.

I stopped sending them my $$ in 2002, when I'd finally had enough.

[1932]

10. I think it happened sooner.

Throughout the 90s they celebrated consumption, wall st, the world of finance, stoked the dot com bubble, talked people into dumping money into 401ks, and made the middle class feel like heroes so long as they suffered and then solved their problems by buying something.

I can't remember hearing a hard truth or a hard question any time in the 90s. I don't know the last time I heard ME or ATC break an important story.

[sendero]

11. I don't disgree...

... that their tone changed, but then the tone of the whole country changed.

What tore it for me was when they started running regular and persistent commentaries from the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, National Review, etc.

They have since stopped doing that, although folks from these organizations still appear here and there on talk shows, etc - it's nothing like it was in 2001-2002.

[mantis49]

12. They lost my support in 2004.

One AM on Morning Edition, they were talking to a representative of PNAC to analyze John Negroponte's appointment! That tore it for me. To the average listener that doesn't know about PNAC, that would legitimize them!

I WAS LIVID!!!!!!!!!!! To top it off, there was no alternative viewpoint offered.

Where is the MSM expose of PNAC?

[Drum]

3. (warning: graphic language)

think tank
a.k.a.
circle jerk

is it any wonder??

[Nutmegger]

4. I'm so tired

of the RW jamming their way in every media outlet just to get their corrupt message across. I still pledge but I'm not as generous as I use to be. Damn the Repukes! :argh:

[radio4progressives]

5. Yes... This report comes on the heels of scandals with CPB

and the board of NPR.

it's been headed this way for a number of years, most particularly during Clinton's administration believe it or not. I was very involved in NPR and Public Radio as a programmer and media activist and when i discovered what was going on, it blew my mind.

the first thing i discovered was the right wing heads of the CPB.

The President of CPB (appointed by President Clinton in the late 90's) was a man named Robert Coonrad who was formerly the head of Voice of America - (VOA is a DoD supervised Propaganda feed for the international community) and the Vice Chair was a guy who was the former head of Radio Marte' which serves the School of Americas - this was/is the paramilitary death squad training school (at the time located at Fort Benning, Georgia) which trains death squad goons for our paramilitary activities in South America, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Columbia, Brazil and other SA regions.

There were other characters associated with VOA, before Coonrad and following Coonrad. But the fact these were the people who headed a non-profit corporation whose mission is supposed to provide funding and support for local and national PBS and NPR programming, and at at the same time be a firewall between PBS/NPR and the GOVERNMENT, but was actually headed by a chief government propagandists under the Clinton administration was an important turning point for me and my political activism.

[quaoar]

6. It seems only a matter of time

before NPR is just a shell, because I can't see its loyal listeners staying too long with this crap and I sure don't see freepers flocking to it.

[sendero]

8. Interesting..

...information.

I still listen to NPR and they have improved a small amount over the nadir of their performance - the leadup to the Iraq "war".

They were so out of balance at that time, it pretty much ruined media news of all kinds for me altogether.

They were very subtle, but relentlessly pro Bush* - even the ostensibly countering views were carefully crafted to leave a lot of doubt.

You'd think there would be an audience for the truth - I'm not sure that in America there really even is any more. When people get divided up like we are, they eventually just fall into the "hooray for our side" mode.

There will be a much bigger appetite for the truth in 2-10 years when the house of cards falls and everyone is trying to understand how it happened.

[1932]

9. Aside: Seymour Hersh criticizes NPR in his lecture tour.

He says that it's too bad that NPR isn't what it was 20-25 years ago. He says that Amy Goodman is one of the few out there doing her job, asking hard questions. He says that Amy Goodman won't interview someone until she's confident that she knows enough about the person to ask the right questions. (I guess the implication is that NPR doesn't know enough to ask the right questions, which means their interviewees easily use their time on the air propagandizing for their causes and NPR just lets their statements sit there unchallenged).

[Loonman]

13. Mara Liasson is certainly a right wing hack

Playin' footsie with smarmy git Brit Hume almost nightly.

[Bucky]

14. And notice the righties get diversity. The liberal tanks number only two.

72% from the liberal establishment Brookings Institute. 38% from the center-left CSIS. But along with moderate conservatives you also get the hard righties like Cato and AEI.