From NPR news in Washington, this is ...Rush Limbaugh?

I love NPR. On weekdays, I get about 3 to 4 hours of it per day. On Saturday- about 8 to 12 hours, no joke. I think I know the names of all the hosts, commentators, reporters, editors, and can recognize all their voices. The thing is, I used to listen to right wing AM radio as of about 2 years ago. Why did I make the switch? I still consider myself to be a pretty conservative republican, so no change in politics can account for it. What did it for me is the format. After listening to NPR for about a year, I tried to go back to regular commercial radio and it drove me nuts. I like how the NPR programs operate. They talk in normal voices (I used to call them NPR voices). There's no arguing with the guests or callers (for the most part- like one time Ira Flato had John Grisham on and was pretty rude to him, but that's a rare exception). They find stories to report on that you don't find anywhere else. They interview pretty high profile guests. There are no commercials. The list goes on.

There is however one thing I don't like about it, and yes, you guessed it. There IS a liberal bias. A friend who also listens to NPR once asked me if I had ever noticed a bias- because he hadn't. I said yes, but since then I've really tried to pay attention to see if I can distinguish actual bias from my knee jerk reaction to any story that reports unfavorably on conservatives. During that time I've come to the conclusion that, yes, there is.

Now here's my take on it: that's not necessarily bad. You can't avoid bias. We're human. I don't think you can ever look at something truly objectively. That's ok, I don't mind that- as I've said I'm still a dedicated listener in spite of it. But is it good for a publicly funded media outlet like NPR to consistently lean one way? Why not in addition to a commentary three times a week by Daniel Schorr we also have one by George Will or Rich Lowry or Bill Buckley. As far as I know there is no conservative editorial on All Things Considered or Morning Edition at all. Its mostly done by Shorr. How about on Dianne Rehm's weekly news roundup we have 2 conservatives and 1 liberal instead of the opposite- which actually makes 3 liberals beating up on 1 conservative who usually gets cut off by Rehm in the middle of his argument anyway. How about just getting rid of Brooke Gladstone altogether and replacing her with Ann Coulter- both have sarcasm as palpable as feta cheese, and logic just as crumbly.

I've mentioned the moral reason (and possibly legal reason) for introducing a little more balance in NPR personnel (ie: public funding should = a more accurate representation of the public's political and social ideology), but there is a more pragmatic reason. It seems to me that the mission of NPR is to educate the audience, to better them, to get them to think and create intellectually honest and openminded listeners. Introducing conservative commentators would advance this goal in two ways. First, it would introduce the vastly (no numbers here, just my hunch) liberal audience to well thought out and reasoned conservative thought as opposed to the conservative babble on talk radio and Fox News shout fests that they see as the only voice of conservatism. That just might induce liberal listeners to finally think critically about conservative ideas as opposed to outright dismissing them as backward, only espoused by mindless evangelicals or toothless country hicks. Second (and possibly more importantly from NPR's financial perspective), it just might lure conservatives away from the popular ear plug inducing talk radio programs. It would broaden the listener base considerably. It would introduce those conservatives to well thought out liberal ideas as opposed to the mindless mush that moveon.org throws onto TV commercials denouncing Sam Alito. It would make better conservatives. It would make better liberals.

From NPR news in Washington, I'm Nick Webb