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Comment by pirate787 | Hacker News Reader

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NPR is partially state-funded only in the sense that they have won some government grants, which cover less than 1% of their costs. (Edit: I just learned that if you include local stations and local governments, this number could be counted up to 10%.)

As for their bias, they get a -4.6 on Ad Fontes https://adfontesmedia.com/npr-bias-and-reliability/ .

This is very misleading. It’s way higher than 1%

It’s not. NPR gets its revenues from member stations that buy the rights to the content.

It takes some government grants to support certain reporting and special projects but it doesn’t, directly, need government support for operations.

It’s member stations may take more government funding (I’ve seen numbers up to 10% but much of that is usually state funding not federal) - which it then uses to buy programming from NPR but that’s an arms length transaction.

By far the vast amount of public radio funds come from donations. You could remove all government funding and it would only really affect smaller, rural stations - the ones that mostly need governmental support.

A lot of people want to accuse NPR of having a liberal bias because of its governmental funding. Bias is hard to argue objectivelybut if you want to make the case that NPR is biased based on funding it would be more apt to say that it’s because most of their funding likely comes directly from its liberal leaning listeners.

PBS which is a similar organization for TV takes a slightly higher amount of government funding but that’s a similar setup.

My source: https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/national-public-ra...

Yours?

Literally on your own link and in the same sentence:

"Presently, NPR receives funding for less than 1% of its budget directly from the federal government, but receives almost 10% of its budget from federal, state, and local governments indirectly."

Thanks for pointing this out. I updated my original comment.

“Gender affirming care” is what the AMA recommends as its language it’s also used by the AP and Rueters.

Just because a news source doesn’t use your preferred language doesn’t mean they aren’t moderate. It frequently means you aren’t.

You have to understand, medical professionals have a deeply liberal bias.

(... is it sarcasm? Maybe. Probably not.)

Perhaps because the idea is that we should be open to gender-affirming care being an option, rather than being banned? Let people make their own choices for themselves rather than telling them what they should and shouldn't be allowed to do to their own bodies. Some will regret that choice, yes, and we should also empathize with them, but we shouldn't deprive others of the same choice just because those individuals feel regret.

Edit: This also feels like cherry-picking. Glancing a the https://text.npr.org/ URL from a sister thread shows some pretty moderate reading. For the sake of the argument, if we assume that this article is left-leaning, it's drowned out by a sea of otherwise moderate content.

Is it because it's 1% who regret transitioning? And over emphasising 1% would in fact be the propaganda?

1% is just an estimation. And it seems not a very good one[1]. And overall, the question is whether it will remain as it is now, or whether it will change with society and science for better or worse. Like always, we know far too little on this domain.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detransition#Occurrence

I think that's you telling on yourself when you consider the medically appropriate terminology to be politically charged. Or that failure to represent your personal bias is due to their lack of objectivity.

> Where's the profile of the many trans folks who regret their transition?

Many? It's barely 1% that do regret transitioning [1] and - warning, anecdata from here - most of that is due to societal pressure: parents and other family disowning their trans children, particularly for trans women having to experience the everyday discrimination and harassment of women, or being constantly mis-gendered or otherwise discriminated against at work and in general society. A small number will also express regret because of medical malpractice or a lack of training for the reconstructive surgery process (e.g. a lack of feeling due to damaged nerves), but that is common across all kinds of cosmetic surgery.

In contrast, suicide ratios among LGBT in general are immense [2], and it's worse for trans people [3]... that alone should make it clear, based on actually validated data, that it is better to assist trans people than to - in the worst case - force them to detransition.

[1] https://apnews.com/article/transgender-treatment-regret-detr...

[2] https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/press/suicide-coming-...

[3] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32345113/

> Many? It's barely 1% that do regret transitioning

I would argue that suicide after transitioning might also constitute regret and bump that number up a little bit...

Indeed, but there is data showing that gender-affirming surgery has a noticeable impact on lowering suicide rates and improving other mental health indicators [1], so it's still a net positive to provide people with such healthcare.

[1] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamasurgery/article-abstrac...

Have you ever considered that their position might actually be moderate and balanced, and it's your position that is so far off to one side that you find anything in the center to be the opposite of your beliefs?

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