NPR bias

Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) released a study that I recently read indicating serious issues with NPR's news coverage. I will go through some of their findings in this post.

The first thing that struck me, although it was not suprising, was the fact that Male sources outnumbered women by more than 4-to-1 (82 percent to 18 percent). 

The second thing that hit me was that 72 percent of U.S. guests were white males, while just 6 percent were women of color.

People of color made up only 15 percent of U.S. sources.

Finally, Republicans outnumbered Democrats on the NewsHour by 2-to-1

Now like I said, these things were not surprising, but knowing these are true after empirical studies is stunning.  One response may be that racial and gender issues are being covered by white male republicans that make up the bulk of NPR; NPR doesn't need black guests or hosts to cver black issues...

In class we were shown evidence that similar journalistic issues were present aroun environmentalism.  During the rare moments when the environment was discussed, it wasn't done by experts.

If this is the case, NPR is conceding that it is seriously dropping the ball in terms of getting experts on their shows.

It seems like common sense that if you are going to be talking about gender issues, you'll want women as a part of the discussion (though obviously there are male experts/scholars of gender issues).  In the same way, you'll want environmental science experts when you're talkng about environmental science issues.

In my view, this FAIR study shows one of two things.

Most likely, NPR is biased against these moe lefty issues, and that's why they aren't touched upon.

Or less likely, NPR is just poor quality in terms of getting expert, knwledged voices on the air.