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Comment by gnosis | Hacker News Reader

FAIR is independent of any mainstream media outlet.

While NPR is nothing if not mainstream.

I don't disagree, but you see how fuzzy a concept "mainstream" is, right? CNN is owned by a massive media conglomerate. NPR isn't. In that sense, NPR is independent. Meanwhile, there's plenty of outsider content to be found under corporate umbrellas, too. The Koch brothers, for instance, fund Cato.

And likewise, how fuzzy a concept 'independent' is, when you start digging into it.

But, yes, everyone has an ideology, it is true. Even people on NPR. Even those with the most mainstream ideologies, where you don't even notice it's an ideology because it's just the status quo -- that's an ideology too.

If you think FAIR's analysis is biased by their ideology, that may be. (And to show that about someone requires, well, showing it, not just showing that they have an ideology, as everyone does)

But it seems a semantic stretch to claim they are not 'independent' because they are 'ideologically dependent on the progressive left' -- "ideologically dependent", what does that even mean?

It means that they cater to a specific audience with a specific ideology and are less likely to present analysis that challenges that ideology.

(For what it's worth: that ideology is also my ideology).

I think that's probably true, but I'm not sure the language of 'dependency' or 'independent' is the right way to talk about it.

And I think most shows on NPR also cater to an audience with a specific ideology, and are less likely to present analyses that challenge that ideology. That ideology in the case of NPR, is just a status quo liberal ideology so mainstream that it appears invisible.

I do agree that FAIR could be less biased in their analytical perspective though, sometimes.

Specific to NPR: it's subject to manipulation by both Congressional funding (little to the organization itself, but about 10% of member stations' operating budgets), and by sponsorship arrangements from major sponsors.

http://www.npr.org/about-npr/178660742/public-radio-finances

Charles Seife's "Edge" 2013 essay "Capture" http://www.edge.org/response-detail/23674

NPR's cousin PBS here, but I'd argue the same rationale holds: http://www.prwatch.org/news/2013/05/12118/pbs-killed-wiscons...

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