I used to look forward to listen to NPR

In what way is NPR accountable to the public? Is there a committee that evaluates their fairness and quality before approving their annual budget? How do we keep them accountable? I think these are tougher questions than you are recognizing.

 

I can assure you that in a world without significant public spaces, there will be no public good, that concept will disappear almost completely (which I'm sure is the point of opposing those things if you are a libertarian, fascist or don't value democratic pluralism). As someone who has often argued in favor of consensus driven politics, you should be 100% for vast public media, spaces where people can actually have some kind of vigorous debate and finding/building consensus is at least theoretically possible. It is impossible in a fragmented media landscape driven by monetary concerns and beholden to either corporate structure or the generosity of donors (who will probably skew affluent). Those type of outlets could still operate where public media exists too. Yes, public financing will be based on the whims of the public as priorities, moods and attitudes change, as it should be, that's how politics and democracy work. If you think that's bad, I've got some bad news about how privatized media operates (its even more volatile)!

 

If NPR really was just doing Biden agitprop or decided that Nazis have a point, or failing to serve the public good, they could be stripped of their funding (I'm sure that will be the excuse if the Republicans do that anyways). I'm not suggesting because they get public money that gives congress editorial control, that would be state media if that were the case. But they could certainly demonstrate as part of their arrangement that the money is going toward generating reporting, multiple view point content and supporting public good, rather than paying salaries to executives or wooing advertisers. If they decide they don't need the funding, good for them - no one has to take public money after all. That's more accountability than anyone has over Fox right now, who are only accountable to their shareholders and advertisers.

 

There are two ways to approach what you're asking. Can the government do it? Yes. Should the government do it? Debatable. On one hand, if the government wants to create multiple news outlets to increase ideological diversity, I don't oppose it on principle. My issue is that it sends the message to society that we are right to segment ourselves based on ideology in the media sources we consume. But that's happening regardless.

Should the government strip funding because it doesn't like the news source's point of view? Technically speaking, it can do it, but I consider that extremely harmful. If the government is going to fund some media, and I think there's utility in that, it should take a hands off approach. When it starts to dictate funding based on viewpoints, we get in a situation where there's pressure on the media source to tell the government what it wants to hear. And that is an untenable position for any media source that wants to be taken seriously.

FWIW, while I read NPR's online reporting now and then, I've never listened to its radio shows, podcasts, or other similar media. I don't listen to any news-based or politics-based radio or podcasts.

 

Perfect - well said.

 

Do you feel the same about Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Radio and TV Marti? Just asking.

 

I did not read the linked piece because I knew it had to be stupid from the description. But I didn't realize how stupid.

Kevin Drum breaks down how the author's 3 descriptions of "liberal bias" are all in fact examples where NPR was correct and simply did not describe things falsely. I would go even further on the Russian angle - it's absolutely clear and indisputable to anyone who is loyal to the US that Trump is and was a Russian asset.

In all three of these instances, Berliner has fallen prey to a sort of conventional centrist wisdom that requires liberal reporters to bend over backward in order to be "fair" to right-wing inventions. But at least in these three cases, conservatives don't have a leg to stand on. Berliner is accusing NPR of nothing more than exercising pretty good editorial judgment.

The peculiar tale of NPR’s decline and fall - Kevin Drum

 

I don’t know if I’m a libertarian (and I hope I’m not a fascist or against democratic pluralism), but I dont think I’m trying to fight the concept of a public good. To my lights, it appears that we differ in how we view the choices of consumers. When we see people consuming Fox News media, I think you are seeing a bit more of Fox News manipulating people to feel the way they want them to feel, and I am seeing a bit more of Fox News tailoring their content to match what the people want to see. (Obviously both of these must be valid on some level). It seems that if we are going to respect citizens’ opinions as voters, we should also respect their opinions as consumers. Regardless of the nature of stockholders, companies presumably can’t last too long as pure Ponzi schemes without any consumer interest.

I agree that it seems wrong to publicly fund a media source that few believe is actually benefitting the public good. I also think it difficult to objectively measure a media company’s contribution to the public good. Clearly the members of Too Hot have a divergent set of appraisals of NPR’s contribution toward that end.

I am less against your idea of giving a few independent media companies public assistance, but I am also unsure of the value of this. Would the reporting of NYT, WSJ, or Fox News improve if given this money? I would guess that if acceptance by the mainstream populace was a condition of the funding, their views might become more mainstream, but I am not even sure if that is a good thing. To me, the diversity of media outlets is its own strength. Philosopher of science David Hull noted that science does not require scientists to be unbiased, only that different scientists have different biases. I agree and believe this applies to media outlets as well.

 

I am with you that it would be troubling to make public funding of a media outlet dependent upon the government’s views on the nature of its reporting. But then I also wonder what is the value of publicly funding any media outlet that is 100% independent and can report however it wants, as that is exactly the case with the countless private media outlets that already exist. What vacuum is an NPR filling at that point?

 

Seems to me you are fighting the concept of public good if you are going to boil it down to consumer choice. If we are all just atomized individuals consuming what we please and that leads to freedom and prosperity for all, no need to worry about a public good or our obligations to one another as people. Pretty much what Thatcher meant when she said "there is no such thing as society." Our only obligation is to be wise consumers, and if you arent, well, you only hurt yourself, because the market decides. Maybe you are a libertarian?

As for public funding it would probably come with the stings of some kind of Fairness Doctrine which is up to the viewer to decide if it makes certain legacy media's reporting better or worse. If Fox had to cover certain things, and so did the NYT, then it would probably kill half the arguments here when people try to pretend something isnt being covered. That alone might be worth the cost!

 

The vacuum it's filling is not being reliant on profit, which frees it from some perverse incentives and restraints.

 

There are also a couple intelligent points I saw on Twitter in response to Berliner's claims here.
1. There has been a realignment in the parties over the past decade. There are a lot of Mitt Romney Republicans who no longer identity with the Republican Party. That alone could cause a shift in the data if those voters were disproportionately likely among Republicans to patronize NPR.
2. Trump has built his brand around distrusting media sources that aren't "friendly" to him. How has that shaped what news sources "conservatives" use? That wouldn't be account for in data that is 10+ years old either.

 

Ok I think I better see your public good argument. Yes I probably have more of an economist’s definition of a public good that likely would not include media today. However, I don’t endorse the idea that everyone doing whatever they want automatically leads to prosperity for all. I also reject the idea, as I’d imagine you do, that anything publicly funded automatically leads to prosperity for all either. This is much more of an art than a science.

As such, I am uncomfortable with empowering some people to decide what ideas to which the rest of the people should be exposed and am uncomfortable with the fairness doctrine for this reason. Who decides was media coverage is and isn’t fair? I certainly don’t want a Trump appointed committee empowered with such a task. As ugly as privatized media might be, that development would be way worse, IMO.

 

Realignment is a strong word, but people with college degrees have certainly shifted to the Democrats (whether they were ever Republicans or not), and I'm guessing that is a pretty strong demo for NPR

 

Again, I did not read the piece in the OP so I may be way off base. But based upon the discussion thread, it appears that there is a presumption underlying almost everyone's opinion, in whole or in part, consciously or subconsciously. And I believe it's wrong.

We are a two-party system. As a result, there is the presumption the parties are equidistant from the center, and that the center must be right factually, and that any media source reporting that alienates a substantial portion of one side must therefore be the result of bias.

Obviously those are broad oversimplifications. But at a high level of generality and on a long enough timeline, it likely would have been true in American politics up to 2015. Parties that stray too far from the center were punished electorally and therefore moderated back.

We just don't want to accept the fact that a substantial plurality of the American electorate has either consciously or subconsciously separated from verifiable reality. Consequently, their collective distrust is not a symptom of bias in the source but of discomfort and rejection of the underlying facts.

 

If only people finding out most cops are Republicans led to a rush to defund the police or pursue some kind of political fairness project! OR was even viewed as some kind of serious problem? In seriousness though, most conservative politics seems to revolve around "the right to be popular" as some people have termed it. Its not enough to have lots of power, you must be loved too. If NPR and professors are a bunch of libs, there must be a problem, because they represent some kind of mystical "cultural" power that cant be quantified. Never mind that NPR doesnt influence anyone, if they were capable of sophisticated mind control, there would be no need for those damn pledge drives.

 

Even if we accept that claim that public funding removes perverse motives for media (which again, I think must entail the disconcerting assumption that consumers don’t actually want quality news), your solution seems to leave these companies with no motives at all. If revenues are 100% guaranteed and there is no oversight, why should we expect anything other than random outcomes?

 

Do you look at the for-profit media landscape and think "boy customers really want quality news?" And if you do, do you think it is being supplied? But lets put that aside, instead of thinking about the entity and its motives, lets look at if from the perspective of the seeker of information. Good information costs money to get, bad or low quality information is usually free to generate clicks that drive ad revenue. Public funding might reduce that imbalance and make good information easier to get for the seeker. Maybe I dont get hit by a paywall anytime I want to read an article. Maybe think of it as a low-level tier of subscription to all media that takes public funding (maybe an easier sell to people if they think they are getting something rather than giving). Even in the old days news was considered a loss leader, so here you basically have someone covering some of your losses and the potential to attract more eyeballs from people who have been trained not to pay for news.

 

Love '70's rock...

 

This is a complex question, but let’s say for the sake of argument that I don’t think customers desire quality news. What does my appraisal justify? Nationalizing the news? Shutting down some of the worst offenders? I don’t think we want to get to a point where idiots like me are in control of to what ideas everyone else is exposed. (And certainly not idiots like Trump)

More fundamentally, I think that once we decide that people can’t be trusted to decide for themselves what is quality news, everything is lost. It wouldn’t matter even if we could create fantastic news, because we wouldn’t know if we saw it. Not only that, we shouldn’t be trusted to take part in democracy or judicial matters either. Clearly, we must concede some level of intellectual competence to the people or we are in trouble on a lot of fronts.

I like your creative thinking viewing the subsidies as a kind of subscription. I do still wonder why we should expect these excess funds to be put toward quality, if we have no mechanism to align incentives with quality. Or even any mechanisms to evaluate quality. Why shouldn’t the companies put these funds toward increasing administrative salaries or any initiatives unrelated to quality that just generates more clicks?