Claims of media's liberal bias come and go [NPR spin alert]

With mainstream news organizations all getting tarred by the New York Times' ethical lapses, and commercial talk radio flagellating actual journalists as often as they hype their sponsors, there's no end of readers, viewers and listeners venting opinions on media inaccuracy, sloth and, of course, bias.

Jeffrey Dworkin, ombudsman for National Public Radio, says he got 45,000 listener e-mails in 2002, "and that's not counting e-mails for Viagra, pornography and toner cartridges." Dworkin was a guest on Minnesota Public Radio recently, explaining NPR's standards for reporting and fairness. He amplified his remarks in a phone conversation Monday.

A generalized perception is that conservatives' masterfully choreographed accusations of bias have public radio reeling in a siege-like state of perpetual self-examination. "There are certainly those who object to what they perceive as liberal bias on the radio," says Dworkin, who has been NPR's ombudsman for three years. "That is something of a constant these days.

"But my own view is that NPR has been quite careful to present voices from both sides of issues. If anything," he says, "we may have put more conservatives on in recent months.

"I think what some people are reacting to is that when the Clinton administration was in office, we put on critics of those policies. That is normal. But we were accused of being too conservative. Now, with conservatives are in power, when our reporting includes critics of the Bush administration, we're accused of a liberal bias."

Anyone in the business of journalism (as opposed to attitude, infotainment and "op-ed" TV) recognizes a certain parrotlike quality to most such accusations. Many voices simply repeat what they hear with no great infusion of individual thought.

Dworkin says NPR reporters are instructed to remain "reportorial" in appearances on television interview programs and to avoid playing pundit and making policy judgments.

"But that's a hard thing to do in a culture where punditry is held in such high regard. Personally, it strikes me as just so much bloviating."

Dworkin emphasizes that senior analysts like Juan Williams (criticized for being too conservative for his association with Fox News) and Daniel Schorr (too liberal for being on Nixon's enemies list and commenting so freely on perceived lapses in logic in Bush II policy) are held to a different standard than so-called regular reporters.

"It seems to me the public has become more opinion-phobic in recent times," he says. "What they really want is to hear their own opinions reflected back at them, and they really resent anyone who contradicts what they think. They seem to want a kind of informational comfort food provided by whatever media they use. That may be fine for entertainment, but I'm not sure that's the proper role for journalism.

Dworkin was reluctant to comment on listener response to Garrison Keillor, who took an aggressive political turn with his two November 2002 Salon.com columns on Sen. Norm Coleman's election and continues to have regular fun with George W. Bush. (Keillor and MPR are not part of his NPR responsibilities.) MPR spokeswoman Suzanne Perry says Keillor-related mail jumped in response to what MPR calls "the Keillor-Coleman" business, but that she's not aware of any unusual negative reaction to his current run of Bush humor. Moreover, her belief is that his national audience level remains high, in excess of 4 million weekly.

Now for some reality from Insight Magazine:

Insight on the News - National
Issue: 06/24/03

NPR Sets Dial on Broadcasting Bias

By John Berlau

Students at the University of Kentucky were treated in early April to a fervent antiwar and anti-Bush diatribe by a national left-leaning celebrity. In an accusatory tone, the speaker claimed President George W. Bush had "offered an attractive bribe to Turkey in exchange for permission to use Turkey as a base from which to invade Northern Iraq" and charged that he had "told the rest of the world that the United States is ready to act alone in virtually every field." The celebrity railed against the press for allegedly not being as tough on Bush as it was on former president Bill Clinton, declaring: "The press didn't wait until the intern scandal to ask tough questions of Bill Clinton, so why is the incumbent getting a pass?"

The long, rambling speech, which was reprinted in the Louisville Courier-Journal and by the Media Research Center, also bashed radio stations for playing patriotic music as the United States went to war and even for playing the national anthem. Of particular concern to the speaker was the Website of Washington's all-news radio station WTOP, which linked to armed-forces Websites and forwarded e-mails to troops. "Balancing all that were links to two peace groups," the speaker complained. The speaker then announced that public annoyance with the antimilitary pronunciamentos of celebrities such as the Dixie Chicks was symptomatic of a new McCarthyism. "Witch burning is an ugly chapter in our history," he said. "It should not be revived, even if it's good for business."

Who was this celebrity? One of the febrile Hollywood left? Tim Robbins, Sean Penn, Martin Sheen? No, the author of this rant was none other than newscaster Bob Edwards, host of Morning Edition on the "objective" National Public Radio (NPR). The speech came after he was inducted into the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame. And Edwards even used the platform to take a dig at his competitor, Clear Channel Communications Inc. He claimed that the Dixie Chicks' sagging album sales after the group's lead singer, Natalie Maines, said on foreign soil that she was "ashamed" of President Bush were not the result of listener disgust, but due to a conspiracy by San Antonio, Texas-based Clear Channel. "Clear Channel loves George W. Bush," Edwards said. He offered no evidence for the alleged conspiracy, and Clear Channel repeatedly has denied requesting, directing or ordering its radio stations not to play the Dixie Chicks.

Responding to the NPR anchor's diatribe, Chris Chandler, a news anchor for Louisville's WHAS-AM, which is owned by Clear Channel, wrote in a letter to the media Website Poynter.org: "Apparently, this brand of liberal reactionism is tolerated - or even expected - at NPR. ... If Edwards can deliver a speech like that and still expect to be taken seriously as an objective observer the next morning, somebody should really give him this message: Those who live in government-subsidized glass houses shouldn't be throwing stones."

Eight years ago, Newt Gingrich and the "revolutionary" Republican Congress wanted to zero out funding for NPR and other government-subsidized "public broadcasting." They cited what they called the liberal bias of NPR and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), and the libertarian principle that one group of taxpayers shouldn't be paying for another group's entertainment. But an angry backlash from NPR listeners, as well as the fading away during the go-go nineties of the fervor to cut spending, meant that NPR's funding not only was secure but soon was increased. Public broadcasting now receives about $400 million annually from federal revenues.

But now NPR again is being accused of blatant bias, and this time not all the grumbling comes from conservatives. The critics accuse the network of peddling gross distortions and falsehoods about Israel and muzzling criticism of militant Islam. NPR appears, for instance, to have blacklisted Steven Emerson, a prominent critic of militant Islam who has testified as an expert witness before Congress. After Emerson was interviewed briefly in August 1998 on NPR's Talk of the Nation, the network received angry e-mails from activists spurred on by the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), whose leaders have expressed support for the terrorist group Hamas. Producer Ellen Silva e-mailed one of the activists with this message: "You have my promise that he won't be used again. It is NPR policy."

When the e-mail came to light two weeks later in a column by the Boston Globe's Jeff Jacoby, NPR official Jeffrey Dvorkin (now the network's ombudsman) denied that any such ban existed. "There never was and never will be a policy of banning or blacklisting at NPR," Dvorkin wrote. "Mr. Emerson is not 'banned,' and in fact we anticipate that he will be on NPR again at an appropriate time." But the "appropriate time" did not arise for nearly four years - not until March 2002, a full six months after the Sept. 11 attacks - even though Emerson had in the meantime been on every major TV network and had been made a contributor to MSNBC shortly after the attack occurred.

NPR continues to deny that Emerson ever was blacklisted. An NPR spokeswoman, who insists Insight not use her name, says, "The producer was reprimanded for saying something that was not right." But the spokeswoman confirmed that Silva, even though she is supposed to have grossly misstated NPR's policy on blacklisting guest experts, still works as a producer at the network.

Emerson has heard of other NPR memos reaffirming the blacklist and says this is part of a larger problem of NPR bias. "I was a microcosm of a larger problem of [NPR's] not wanting to expose the false veneer of militant Islamic groups in the United States," he tells Insight. "They would routinely interview CAIR and other groups and take them at face value and not see through their very thin patina of deceit."

But he says the two stories for which he has been interviewed after the blacklisting ended were a little less biased than usual. "I think there is some improvement, but it's glacial improvement," Emerson says. "When you look at some of the egregious stories they still put on the air, it's hard even to measure it as improvement."

One area critics say definitely needs improving is the network's reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. When it comes to bias against Israel, "NPR's probably the worst. Worse than CNN, worse than ABC," says Alex Safian, associate director of the Boston-based watchdog group Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA). A CAMERA study of two months of NPR's Middle East coverage in the fall of 2000 found that, in 350 interviews, pro-Arab speakers received 77 percent more time than pro-Israeli speakers. The study also found that, for the same period of time, there were almost twice as many segments with only pro-Arab speakers as there were segments in which only Israelis were interviewed, and that the pro-Arab segments were nearly four times as long. Safian adds that even television's PBS network is less biased than NPR.

And NPR has refused to take responsibility when it falsely reports major facts, Safian says. He points to a story in the fall of 2001 describing the fatal shooting of a Palestinian girl working in an olive field. NPR reported that she was killed by Israeli settlers, when in fact her shooters were unknown and the shooting began when armed Palestinians hiding in the olive field opened fire on Israeli soldiers despite the presence of civilians. "The New York Times covered it, the AP [Associated Press] covered it, and they all got it right," Safian says. "NPR got it wrong." Safian recalls that it took six weeks to get NPR to air a correction, after CAMERA brought it to the attention of network President and Chief Executive Officer Kevin Klose and several board members. And even then it was not really a correction. While NPR said it was wrong to report that Israeli settlers had killed the girl, it implied that the real culprits were Israeli soldiers. "They don't mention that the Palestinians were hiding in the olive grove and ambushed the soldiers," Safian remarks. "That they leave out entirely. ... They still didn't do an honest correction."

Safian adds that NPR rarely if ever refers to Palestinian suicide bombings as terrorism, and referred in June 2002 to Palestinians who invaded an Israeli home and killed a mother and three of her children as "commandos." CAMERA pointed out on its Website that "to most people (and according to dictionaries), commandos are elite troops whose mission is characteristically to save lives and even to rescue hostages from terrorists - not to slaughter defenseless civilians in their homes." NPR did run a correction, admitting that Israeli officials did not refer to the gunmen as commandos, but the correction appeared on NPR's Website and was not broadcast.

Feelings became so tense between NPR and friends of Israel that NPR President Klose tried to defuse the criticism by speaking at a forum at Boston's Temple Israel in January. Boston Globe media columnist Mark Jurkowitz described Klose's response to the criticisms as "an unconvincing blend of deference, obfuscation and condescension." Klose did not defend NPR on specific charges and simply said its mission was to seek out "many voices and present many scenes and many agonies to listeners." This defense didn't satisfy his audience, some of whom chanted, "NPR distorts the news / Covers up attacks on Jews."

Insight tried to interview Klose to get his detailed responses to the growing criticism but was rebuffed. The NPR spokeswoman said, "I will not get into who was right or wrong in that reporting." She insisted: "We are a trusted news source" with "balanced and fair and comprehensive reporting." As for CAMERA's criticisms to the contrary, she replied: "They are an advocacy group. They want to have the story told from their perspective."

But if CAMERA has a perspective, and it does, so does NPR. While claiming to be balanced, many of its reporters and producers make no secret of the fact that they see the Palestinians as poor and oppressed victims of Israeli aggression, critics say. "It's an ideological sympathy with the Palestinians, but also maybe a hostility toward Israel as the quote, 'occupier,' end quote; as the reincarnation of South Africa or whatever," Emerson says. "They contrive a moral paradigm to impose on Israel and the Palestinians."

In NPR's paradigm, say critics of this contrivance, the real terrorists are conservative Christians. Last year, without any evidence whatsoever, NPR correspondent David Kestenbaum linked the conservative Traditional Values Coalition (TVC) to anthrax attacks on Congress. In January 2002, Kestenbaum called TVC Executive Director Andrea Lafferty to ask if she had been contacted by the FBI yet. The reason he gave for introducing this ugly innuendo was that TVC had put out a press release criticizing then-majority leader of the Senate Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) and then-chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) for dropping the phrase "so help me God" from the oaths of Senate witnesses. "Reporter Kestenbaum's tone was very clear," Lafferty recalled in testimony before the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet. "He actually believed that I, [the] Traditional Values Coalition, our members and other Christians and conservatives we associate with would mail anthrax to those with whom we disagree."

Kestenbaum then aired a report about anthrax which included the charge that the TVC "had a gripe with Messrs. Daschle and Leahy." The report also discussed the Unabomber and cited Planned Parenthood's allegations that hoaxers sent it white powder in the mail. Said an editorial in the Washington Times, "In essence, NPR was linking the TVC with anthrax hoaxers and a serial killer based solely on the fact it had criticized the senators' position on the prayer." It took NPR more than a year to issue an apology as part of the settlement of legal action by the TVC. Coalition spokesman Jim Lafferty, Andrea Lafferty's husband, says he is forbidden to disclose the terms of the settlement, although he confirmed that NPR paid TVC an undisclosed amount for damages. NPR declined to confirm or deny payment or settlement terms.

NPR airs many popular programs, including Car Talk and Jazz Profiles, which critics say could rely on private support, either from the profit or nonprofit sector. But the NPR's perceived news bias again is causing demands that Congress drop support. In her testimony last July, Lafferty said, "NPR has betrayed the public's trust. On behalf of our 43,000 member churches and the others that NPR smeared and defamed on Jan. 22, 2002, I urge Congress to eliminate taxpayer funding for National Public Radio." House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Billy Tauzin (R-La.) wasn't ready to go that far, but he remarked at the hearing that it is difficult to support government-subsidized broadcasting when "some public broadcasters behave the way NPR did."

John Berlau is a writer for Insight magazine.

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