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NPR’s Ombudsman Alicia Shepard
By Laura Knoy on Wednesday, September 3, 2008.
NPR's ombudsman serves as its public representative, as an independent source of information, explanation, amplification and analysis of NPR’s programming. Alicia Shepard took on the two year appointment as ombudsman last November; before that, she worked as an educator at Georgetown University and contributor for newspapers like The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune and the Washington Post. We'll talk with Alicia Shepard about NPR and its journalistic mission.
Guest
- Alicia Shepard, NPR’s Ombudsman
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when interviewing people why not say what their affiliation is. NPR used to say "so and so from the Brooking Institute a conservative think tank" would help the listeners understand their leanings. Most people don't know what is the purpose of the various "think tanks" and the "possible" bias.
I recently complained to NPR about Messrs. Simon and Schorr's "tongue in cheek" remarks about watching the women's beach volleyball and swimming in the Olympics-their comments clearly referring to their pleasure at watching scantily clad women....sounding like a couple of "dirty old men". I received an acknowledgement of the complaint, but no substantive response. Would Ms Shepard comment on their joking about our female Olympians, please?
when it comes to politics especially, I wish NPR could restrain from the echo chamber, it does not have to repeat bogus 'he said, she said' smears just because its all over other news media.
NPR also clings to polls and the horse race, yet only the leaders. If McCain and Obama are at 45%, and Nader or McKinney are at 4%, we should hear at least 1/10 the coverage of the leaders- which we don't.
Why has there not been any coverage of Amy Goodman's arrest and the police brutality in St. Paul?
Laura's Kinoy's guest today, Alicia Shepard, defended NPR's claims of unbiased news reporting by citing general survey results of listeners political leanings as being 33% liberal, 33% undecided and 33% conservative?! How can it get more perfectly homogeneous, and simultaneously disingenuous. Come on Alicia, you cannot measure the overall political intent of NPR program content by noting the listeners are evenly weighted. Rather, we need to know, upfront, the political/ideolgical leanings of the hosts and their guests.
Now if you really want to get the "liberal bias monkey" off the back of all "public" media programming it makes sense to actively engineer the hiring of all employees of these organizations to be certain there is equal representation of democrats, republicans and independents alike on the payroll. Of course, this will never happen because it would disrupt the democratic monopoly in the current ranks of personnel.