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Comment by nashashmi | Hacker News Reader

I used to love NPR but then I realized their content is exclusively liberal. Now I am disgusted by how partison they are. It's like if you listen to the news you don't get a fair report on things but a one sided view, mainly those who suffer under conservative government.

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It can be argued that large majority of Americans have liberal values. Many of them have non-liberal identity that makes them think they are non-liberal.

For example:

61 percent of Americans, 42 percent of Republicans, approve of labor unions

66 percent of Americans think money and wealth should be distributed more evenly.

80 percent of Americans think some corporations don’t pay their fair share of taxes.

78 percent think some wealthy people don’t pay their fair share of taxes.

76 percent believe the wealthiest Americans should pay higher taxes.

60 percent of registered voters believe corporations pay too little in taxes.

87 percent of Americans say it is critical to preserve Social Security, even if it means increasing Social Security taxes paid by wealthy Americans.

67 percent of Americans support lifting the cap to require higher-income workers to pay Social Security taxes on all of their wages.

https://prospect.org/power/americans-liberal-even-know/

Why do Americans use liberal to mean left?

They use it liberally

Because Democrats were the liberal party a very long time ago, in the 1800s and early 1900s.

Americans continue to use Democrats and liberal interchangeably, even though Democrats are no longer liberal on most issues.

Amazingly, when voting time comes, the country tends to appear center right. Could there polls be wrong?

Uhh, I'd check the popular vote counts over the last 25+ years.

No the polls are correct. Many people’s overriding concerns don’t show up in any of the parent poster’s numbers. Poll after poll shows the majority of Republican voters concerns are for more “cultural” than economic. Especially when you take into account how electoral votes are distributed.

We've never had a plebiscite on any of those issues. Conservatives have a structural advantage in the House and Senate due to the way liberals bunch up in cities.

Much of the country is gerrymandered. The popular vote skews less center right than the outcome of the election suggests. And only about half the country votes in the first place.

If you look at where the newly appearing votes went in big wave elections (notably Obama) a big chunk of those votes are left leaning.

The USA appears to be more than "center" right, but that's beside the point. People weigh certain issues more heavily than others. So while someone might be pro union, they might vote for an anti-union candidate because of another stance they are more passionate about.

In the US voting is first past the post, so the election result can differ radically from popular opinion.

Senate representation is also skewed.

So radio should be one-sided? NPR should be partison?

One sided view hurts all people.

Many of the people in your stats simultaneously hold other conservative or centrist values that both parties supported 15 years ago, like being strict on illegal immigration, crime, and late-term abortion. A large number are proud gun owners. Many union workers who like tariffs are now finding that the mainstream left has abandoned such policies in favor of soft negotiating stances on free trade deals. Remember the anti-globalism Seattle WTO protests? It wasn't conservatives doing the marching.

For their variance from the new zeitgeist they are currently being labeled racists, sexists, etc. Would you stay consistent with your argument, call them liberal, and accept them knowing that? Not many do, especially not liberal politicians and media, which is why they are voting the other way.

They didn't leave their values behind, the liberal party did.

I find politics can also be dragged into a lot of their podcasts even when they are not political in nature. With the mixing in of the heavy liberal views it can be hard to enjoy listening to some of the content, especially as a non-american :(

Like most of the media, it has a strong establishment bias. The center-left types are somewhat liberal in the older sense of the term[1], but establishment conservatives seem to be pretty welcome as well (Diane Rehm used to have people from AEI on all the time). Non-establishment types across the spectrum are frequently laughed at, ignored or dismissed. Osita Nwanevu had a decent column touching on this kind of bias in the media[2].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nFvhhCulaw [2] https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/03/there-really-are...

I listen to mostly the economics podcasts “Planet Money” and “The Indicator”. I consider myself a bleeding heart libertarianism capitalist. (ie Don’t increase minimum wage but pay more in taxes to help people help themselves.) I don’t see any real bias in their reporting.

Also, a “This American Life” episode about illegal immigrants working at a chicken plant (?) in Alabama single handedly made me see a few of the points that I thought were just right wing talking points.

Of course I don’t agree with the demonization of “other”. I am a minority who grew up in the south and whose parents grew up during the tail end of Jim Crow.

Listen to the one where The Indicator ponders if the Chilean dictatorship was worth it because they now have some good capitalism going. It's awful.

Freakanomics does the same thing - argue a contrarian point. This includes the famous study about whether increase abortions reduce crime.

And before anyone replies about how horrible this study was, the author explicitly said that public policy should not be based on his study and advocated more spending on education and other safety net ideas.

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