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Comment by MartinCron | Hacker News Reader

A lot of people conflate "NPR" with "public radio" in general. So your local public radio station may air some things that are "clearly aligned with the Democrats" but as an actual news organization, NPR News is as good as any out there. They take fact checking seriously, they issue corrections when they get things wrong. They take time to put things into historical context and they don't bend over backwards to give "both sides" to debates that clearly don't have two reasonable sides.

If it's so clear, find me a single example of NPR news being aligned with the Democrats in a way that is divergent from objective reality.

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I remember hearing a discussion of affirmative action on All Things Considered. All of the guests on the show were in favor of affirmative action (so much for all things considered), and when the 'mismatch hypothesis' (which postulates that affirmative action may actually harm some of its intended beneficiaries by putting them in institutions where they are less prepared for the academic rigor than their peers) came up, the idea was dismissed out of hand as being outdated and debunked. This plainly misrepresents the state of the research, which has pretty conclusively shown that the mismatch effect appears in elite law schools and in STEM graduate rates.

When I heard this dismissal and noticed that no one pushed back, it made me realize that the guests and host were all ideologically aligned. I still listen to NPR, but I now know that they are much more biased than I previously thought.

To downvoters: do you doubt that this happened or think it isn’t an apt example of NPR being aligned with Democratic Party positions?

I didn’t downvote, but I am wondering if this happened. A quick search of NPR transcripts makes me think the last time the mismatch hypothesis was discussed on All Things Considered was in 2012 and it was actually taken seriously (it was the focus of the piece). Perhaps you are thinking of a different public radio show, and inadvertently proving my point that people are unable to differentiate NPR news with other stuff they hear on the radio.

I appreciate your trying to find it. Here's the link. [1]

The guest refers to the mismatch hypothesis, described by a Supreme Court Justice, as an "arcane argument" that is "really proven not to be the case". Then the other guest on the show laughed at the Justice (Scalia) and mischaracterized his statement. According to her, Scalia believes that "African-American people are stupid".

In reality, the mismatch hypothesis is about largely about preparation level. If you have equally intelligent students with large differences in academic preparation, the student that is less well prepared is likely to be harmed (in terms of GPA, class rank, likelihood to drop a well-paying major) when surrounded by other students that are more well-prepared.

If one of the guests or the host were even vaguely familiar with the concept, this mischaracterization would have been questioned.

I would also note that it is mischaracterizations like these (Scalia thinks "African-American people are stupid"!) that lead to further polarization. I would expect partisan framing like this on some news outlets, but it's pretty sad to hear it on NPR, on a show whose name implies openness to all perspectives.

1: https://www.npr.org/2015/12/11/459392702/week-in-politics-tr...

So your smoking gun is... an opinion piece from 2015 where the host didn’t contradict or challenge the opinions of the guests? I’ve heard lots and lots of unchallenged opinions from guests on NPR, many of them from conservative perspectives. It is not always possible (or even desirable) to be a real-time fact checker in a daily interview show.

So again, an example of bias in actual news reporting?

It's not an opinion if it completely misrepresents a well-known sociological phenomenon. I also never said this was the only example, but it was particularly egregious because the show purports to present multiple perspectives. But hey, it looks like you're pretty set on not believing others (even when they take the time to dig up the proof that your original comment asked for), so I'll sign off here.

You do understand the difference between opinion journalism and news reporting?

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