My response as submitted to The Smoky Mountain Times was limited to 500 words. Additional commentary is included here-tve
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The letter to the editor extolling NPR was the most risible that I can recall ever being published. They offer no substantiation to support their hypothesis.

At first, I suspected that it was the third installment of Editor Lee Zion’s joke columns or a reprint from The Onion.

The writers’ claim that “NPR is ... good, honest news and reporting” can be refuted in two words—Nina Totenberg.



NPR’s legal reporter with no legal education or college degree. Fired by The National Observer for plagiarism. Severely misquoted a legal scholar to make it seem he considered Clarence Thomas a radical. Hired John Edward’s daughter as an intern. Sister nominated as a federal judge by Obama. Hoped that Jesse Helms would “get AIDS from a transfusion, or one of his grandchildren will get it."

The full Senate assembled a special independent counsel to persuade her to reveal the source of leaks. She declined to answer.

On October 18, 2003 NPR legal reporter Nina Totenberg pronounced from her regular panelist perch on the TV show "Inside Washington" that Gen. Jerry Boykin, who sermonized in Christian churches with the shocking, less-than-Unitarian message that Christianity is true and other creeds are false, should be fired.
Well, that's not the way it came out.
First, Totenberg said Boykin's remarks were "seriously bad stuff," and then she said, "I hope he's not long for this world." Host Gordon Peterson joked, "What is this, 'The Sopranos?'" Withdrawing to damage-control mode, Totenberg said she didn't mean she hoped he would die, just that he shouldn't last long "in his job."



Totenberg has made friends with a number of politicians and lawyers in national politics, and her personal connections to these people has occasionally generated discussion. Totenberg was criticized by some commentators for hugging her friend Lani Guinier during a press conference announcing Guinier's nomination by Bill Clinton to the post of Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights. Media critic Howard Kurtz reported that while Totenberg said she did not intend to give special treatment to Gunier in her reporting she had hugged her because she had not seen her in some time. Then in 2000 some journalists expressed concern that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg officiating Totenberg's marriage could be seen as a conflict of interest. Totenberg responded she did not consider it a conflict of interest since her friendship with the jurist was established before Ginsburg was nominated to the Supreme Court.

Conservatives such as Paul Gigot and L. Brent Bozell III have asserted that Totenberg exhibits a liberal bias in her reporting. Additionally, the National Rifle Association of America and Don Kates have both used Totenberg's legal reporting on the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution as an example of what they perceive to be a bias in the mainstream media against pro-gun rights positions. Conservative Wall Street Journal columnist James Taranto criticized Totenberg for "distorting the meaning of a quote by leaving parts of it out", a tactic he attributed to liberal New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd. Other conservatives including Jeff Jacoby and Bozell's Media Research Center have also accused Totenberg of engaging in a kind of rhetorical argumentum ad baculum against conservative news-makers Jesse Helms and William G. Boykin in comments made for Inside Washington. Her comments about Boykin in particular were discussed by the NPR ombudsman in a piece where he made a case for distinguishing between the punditry and reporting of journalists.


A study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism and Harvard's Shorenstein Center found that news organizations which hold themselves up as the most neutral and professional—including NPR—actually produced stories that were slanted in favor of Democrats, while online news and talk radio have been the most balanced.

Kenneth Tomlinson, the former board chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting conducted a private study to determine if PBS and NPR shows tilted to the left. An inspector general's report suggested Tomlinson somehow had violated CPB bylaws, and he was forced to resign.

Politifact, part of the St. Petersburg Times, itself a very left wing publication, now partners with NPR as a fact checking archive. Politifact equivocated over abuses of Halliburton billing practices, ACORN funding etc. Back when JFK was assassinated the newspaper's publisher, Nelson Poynter, was dejected when associate editor Martin Dyckman relayed the report. "'Oh, no,'" Dyckman quoted the publisher saying. "'I was hoping it would be a right-winger.'" Instead of a suspected Marxist.


In May 1994, NPR announced plans to air prison-life commentaries by convicted cop-killer and former Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal.

NPR has made it "official" policy not to label suicide bombers in Israel "terrorists."



NPR spends nearly $500,000 on lobbying. Why?

Totenberg has company:

In 2003, radio host Terry Gross was famously reprimanded by NPR’s ombudsman for fawning over a liberal while being hostile to a conservative.

To their eternal discredit, the reporters and editors of NPR fell victim to allegations of the “Jenin massacre” in 2002. Secretary Colin Powell refuted Palestinian claims that Israel was guilty of atrocities there. Powell's view was confirmed by the United Nations, Human Rights Watch and an investigation by the European Union.

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Another NPR program is "Day to Day," hosted by Alex Chadwick. It features reports and interviews by reporters and editors of the liberal Microsoft-owned online magazine Slate.com. In a forthright poll of the partisan views of its reporters, editors, writers and staffers published prior to election day, Slate.com reported that more than 40 of those who create this magazine planned in the 2004 election to vote for Democratic candidate John Kerry. Only 2 planned to vote for the incumbent, President George W. Bush.

Charlie Rose confronted playwright David Mamet ideologically during a recent interview. Rose obviously knew that in 2008, Mamet had written "Why I Am No Longer a Brain Dead Liberal", and was looking for controversy. But, Mamet was on the show to plug a book and a play, not endorse political candidates, so he prudently avoided Rose's leftist gibes.

After an unsuccessful attempt to tag Mamet as "a former liberal or something", Mr. Rose eventually baited him by asking bluntly, "What do you think of President Obama?"

Mamet replied, "I'll tell you when we get off the air." When Rose persisted, he explained, "Since we're talking about the theater, it's not my job as a playwright to burden the audience with sectarian politics, because that's misusing their time."





Recently a guest on NPR’s Science Friday agreed with a recent compromise hatched by the American Academy of Pediatrics that a slight ritual nick—a criminal action by the way—might be a good compromise for some families rearding FGM. The host did not weigh in with condemnation. The news organizations the letter writers portray negatively would have taken a stand—AGAINST it.

But, rest easy liberals. It’s probably a procedure that ObamaCare will eventually cover.

From the article (FTA)
“Big businesses and advertisers are collectively and essentially the boss of FOX, MSNBC, etc., because they are the ones who pay these stations. For-profit corporations such as FOX News, MSNBC, etc., receive all their income from whoever will pay them to have a commercial on their station.”

What? Following that logic—or lack thereof—we are the culprits. Stations get money from big businesses and big business ultimately get their money from who? That’s right, us. We have found the enemy.

“It would be like running around spreading true rumors about your boss, which is practically suicide.”

True rumors? WTH? Suicide? Firing, maybe. But, suicide? Perfect illustration of a non sequitur.

“Nonprofit news organizations are paid primarily by their donors and listeners (30 percent for NPR). For NPR, governmental contributions make up a very small percentage, so there is little worry about inappropriate governmental influence.”

Whaaaat??? If by donors and listeners they mean individuals only, the “primarily” is wrong. The other 70 per cent would be primary. If it is by virtue of poor writing that they meant the 30 per cent (which is the accurate per centage that individuals contribute) contributed by listeners and the unstated percentage contributed by corporate donors and foundations, they would be technically correct. But, there is no way to know what they mean.

The whole thrust of their letter was to trash private, not governmental, deep pockets. So, what’s the point of “inappropriate governmental influence?”

That is BS, anyway. Who do they think comprises the money behind the foundations that make up the bulk of the support? Don’t they realize that by running afoul of these sponsors, “It would be like running around spreading true rumors about your boss, which is practically suicide.”

In other words, no difference.