By Rick Manning — One of the primary assumptions of the public is that journalists are supposed to provide the perspectives of diverse points of view in reporting stories. Editorial pages, on the other hand, are expected to provide readers with an unvarnished point of view, free from the constraints of balancing the arguments in a story.
Now, the far left advocacy group, DailyKos, is praising taxpayer funded National Public Radio for issuing new editorial guidelines that specifically reject fairness without injecting the bias of the outlet.
Here is what DailyKos writes to their subscribers: “Too many news outlets seem to consider it their job to tell the competing sides of any given story, instead of focusing on reporting the truth. No matter how unsupported by the facts one side may be, this widespread ‘he said, she said’ journalism is how, for example, climate change deniers are treated seriously in the media.
“In a positive move, National Public Radio recently issued new editorial guidelines rejecting this false balance. Disavowing the worst excesses of ‘he said, she said’ journalism, NPR’s new code of ethics states that ‘if the balance of evidence in a matter of controversy weighs heavily on one side, we acknowledge it in our reports.’ This is an important step to curing what has become an endemic plague of false “fairness” in American journalism.”
In other words: they report, they decide. This bald admission that NPR will no longer even pretend to provide balance on the issues that they consider to be decided is shocking in itself.
The fact that DailyKos, which is the standard bearer for the far left blogger community, is praising this biased based “journalism” and a rejection of telling the competing sides of any given story, reveals the lie that NPR is anything more than a liberal shill. All paid for by U.S. taxpayer dollars.
Americans for Limited Government president, Bill Wilson was not surprised by the NPR move saying, “There should be no public broadcasting at all. The fact that DailyKos is praising their decision to mute points of view that differs with the left’s mantra just reinforces the reasons why the government should not have control over the airwaves.”
NPR caused a furor last year when they fired commentator Juan Williams for offering alternative views. The resulting coverage catapulted legislation defunding NPR by Representative Doug Lamborn (R-CO) through the U.S. House of Representatives.
Not surprisingly, the Lamborn legislation has subsequently languished in the U.S. Senate.
Wilson reminds, “The fact that NPR had to clean house and issue new ethics guidelines to their journalists implicitly shows they were biased all along — and taxpayers should not be forced to pay for an agenda they find to be repugnant. These organizations should be defunded by government and should survive on their own in the private marketplace — just like everyone else.”
Perhaps, at the very least, NPR should be required to broadcast a political disclaimer every hour saying, “Taxpayer funded NPR has a policy against providing our listeners with diverse points of view, while others are ‘fair and balanced’ we make no pretense that we are, listen at your own risk.”
Better still, maybe the Senate will wake up, save taxpayer dollars, eliminate NPR’s funding and free them up to try to compete with conservative talkers in the private sector marketplace.
Then, NPR would be able to honestly do what their new “ethics” policy allows them to do through the back door. They could be radio commentators without the burden of even pretending to be fair.
Rick Manning is the Communications Director of Americans for Limited Government
