One of the stranger responses to the controversy over Juan Williams’ firing was National Review’s attack on public radio for rural America. They singled out for scorn the idea of “coastal liberalism” being broadcast in Ogallalla, Nebraska. They might as well have said O’Neill, my home town in the same state.
O’Neill is a small town, though the largest in the area at about 3,500 people. Each year seventy students graduate high school and, for the most part, leave. For the eighteen years they’re there they listen to one of three stations. One station begins the day by playing “The Star Spangled Banner,” features a daily devotional led by a member of the ministerial association, and also carries a “Pro-Life Update” from National Right to Life. That’s the country station. There’s also a Christian one.
And then there is NPR. When just a few years ago I worked in the summers as an apprentice electrician I would tune in every day at four o’clock for a stream of remarkably calm, far-ranging reporting would carry me to the end of the work day. In a media environment that often blurs the line between information and provocation, article and advert, public radio provided a welcome respite.
I knew other NPR listeners in rural Nebraska: electrical journeymen, shop keepers, school teachers. They noticed NPR’s political and religious blind spots. But they appreciated its consistent effort to put policy before personality and substance before scandal. I am not sure if these virtues are conservative, but the people who valued them were.
Attempts to spot and highlight media bias have, I think, caused us to overestimate its importance in media coverage. Say one station is biased but offers otherwise excellent content while another is unbiased but does spotty and shoddy reporting. Any person willing to expend a little effort in listening can simply ignore the bias and take in the good content, though he may find it necessary to occasionally shake his fist at the radio. Rural Americans are no more susceptible to being buffaloed by liberal bias than their suburban or urban counterparts.
National Review’s editorial assumes that NPR represents “coastal liberalism” disconnected from middle America. This rhetorical trope goes back to Richard Nixon, who became an unlikely advocate for a “return to localism” when he launched one of the earliest assaults on public broadcasting. This misses just how connected to local communities public radio really is. NPR’s affiliates stretch their shoestring budgets in order to report on state and local issues while producing their own cultural programming. Much of NPR’s nationally syndicated programming is produced and controlled by local stations and retains a hometown flavor.
The alarming decline of traditional news organization and regional papers has, if anything, greatly increased the value of the news coverage provided by America’s many scrappy local NPR affiliates, especially their reporting on state and local issues. Which is why this bit of analysis seemed so far off:
Today we live in an age of surplus media: thousands of television channels, C-SPAN (the privately run organization that does a better job of what it is public broadcasting is supposed to be doing), YouTube, satellite radio, podcasts, blogs, and a smorgasboard of web offerings ranging from dizzying aggregators to nonprofit investigative news sites — is there a commercial market that needs subsidies less?
All kinds of things in rural America, from the highways to the schools are supported by federal and state largesse. Indeed, the region’s whole economy is underwritten by agricultural subsidies. There are some workable proposals for making NPR financially independent—and viable. One involves the creation of a trust fund that could support its work.
But the suggestion of National Review that NPR rely solely on subscriptions makes little sense. There’s a significant difference between broadcasting in a dense metropolitan center and broadcasting in a sparsely populated and far-flung state. To insist that rural stations rely solely on the subscription model that barely supports urban ones would effectively end public radio in rural America and, in turn, diminish the vitality and voice of its communities.
Matthew Schmitz is managing editor of the Witherspoon Institute‘s online Public Discourse.
October 29th, 2010 | 5:32 pm
Thanks for a nice piece of analysis. A large segment of my family are conservative, small-town, Nebraskan NPR listeners. I think you’re right: the perception is that NPR offers something a little more sane, local, and quiet than the commercial networks.
October 29th, 2010 | 6:11 pm
The discussion is not about banning NPR, but having others pay for it. A local station could still buy the programming. But if funding goes, they have to pay for it with other revenues. Local dues, ads, etc.
Appropriately, not everyone in the area has to put money in the pot for the Christian or country station. But should the folks who prefer the Christian or Country station have to pay for their neighbors to have “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me!” Or, even, “Prarie Home Companion”?
October 29th, 2010 | 9:29 pm
No one denies your right to listen to NPR. Nor do we insist that you pay more for a “subscription.” your local NPR station could sell some ads. You already listen to a lot of advertising on NPR but simply call it pledge drives. Your neighbors listen to ads to support their country and Christian station. Exactly what is it that makes you so darn special?
October 29th, 2010 | 10:30 pm
So you appreciate NPR’s even tone and local reporting. But just about everyone agrees that NPR is almost monolithically liberal. Why should non-liberal Americans pay for this propaganda? No one has forced NPR into that mold. If it wants to retain public funds let it at least try to present opposing views with some semblance of balance.
October 29th, 2010 | 11:21 pm
In addition to everything else that’s been said, when you boil down the argument, “Everyone should be forced to pay for the cultural enlightenment provided by NPR because it’s so good for them” just doesn’t sound terribly compelling in the American republican context. I, too, listen to NPR — a bit less in the last week out of pure disgust — because I find the liberal slant a fair price to pay for the expansive subject matter and intelligent level of discussion (when it isn’t a descent into erudite yet mindless liberalism, which is more frequently than I like.) But the idea that everyone should be forced to pay for it for their own good and that of their otherwise benighted neighbors doesn’t strike me as an argument that’s going to get much traction with the First Things constituency.
October 30th, 2010 | 12:42 am
The argument that I should pay so that others can listen to NPR gets no traction with me, that is certain. In principle, I should not be forced under penalty of law to pay for any broadcast programming for anyone. (It is also, by the way, very debatable whether I should similarly be forced to pay for those other things, such as ag subsidies, which the article blithely takes for granted that I should continue paying for.)
The above is true whether NPR is biased or not. The fact (come on, no one can deny this) that it carries a liberal bias makes it all the more repugnant that I should be paying for its propaganda.
Cut off all taxpayer support for this type of thing.
October 30th, 2010 | 7:11 am
Yes, let NPR support itself just like every other broadcaster. When its listening audience shrivels up and turns elsewhere another entrepeneur will seize the opportunity and take its place. It’s the American Way!
October 30th, 2010 | 7:53 am
When I listen to NPR “news”…it’s as though they have boxes they check before they run any “story”…here’s one that’s pro homosexual marriage…here’s one that’s a minority as victim…here’s one that’s pro abortion…etc…etc.
They also do a large amount of GOP and Christian slamming on their opinion programs. My idea of a conservative commentator is not David Brooks from the TIMES. He’s about as far right as they go…and to me, he’s on the near left.
I wouldn’t mind public dollars supporting them…I love my local classical music NPR station…but clearly, they need real balance in their news and opinions.
October 30th, 2010 | 8:40 am
NPR is a good thing on balance, and the country would be a poorer place without it. (I’m not for making the country a poorer place.) NPR is a model of Christian virtue next to the character assassination, sloth, and bad faith of AM talk radio. The pure free market hopes of the 1980s, of the good driving out the bad, have been disproved by the 2000s. If you like the bank crisis and the downward slide of pop culture , you’ll love the Libertarian future some are dreaming of. Culture is a garden. It requires tending.
October 30th, 2010 | 9:13 am
Is it not the case that NPR receives only a fraction of its revenue from federal taxes (under 5%)? If so, it is money well spent. I travel only infrequently on the interstate but do not complain because my taxes paid for it.
October 30th, 2010 | 11:54 am
Yeah, I occasionally listen to NPR news programs. I am intelligent enough to filter out the liberal slant. And they don’t lower themselves to the “bread and circuses” reporting on everything the celebrities do, which even Fox News Radio does. If only there were a conservative news outlet that ignored the entertainment news and presented in-depth reporting like NPR.
On a side note- If Fox News Radio is indeed “fair and balanced”, why do they need to remind us every hour in their news broadcast?
October 30th, 2010 | 1:02 pm
>>travel only infrequently on the interstate but do not complain because my taxes paid for it.
But both conservatives and liberals are allowed to use the interstate. Not so with NPR, that information highway only has a left lane.
October 30th, 2010 | 1:03 pm
“I travel only infrequently on the interstate but do not complain because my taxes paid for it.”
That’s good, because unless you’re a self-sufficient farmer who uses no petroleum-powered vehicles, you use the interstate multiple times every day of your life.
As for the 5% figure, that’s not really correct. That’s what NPR would like you to believe, but they’d also like you to believe that somehow the Corporation for Public Broadcasting *isn’t* sustained by tax money.
TB Root, I’m not for making the country a poorer place, either. In fact, I think we’d be even better off if everyone had free subscriptions to professional orchestras performances and memberships in every museum in their city, not to mention a good selection of journals of various types. Should we make everyone pay for that, too?
It’s not entirely a question of whether having NPR around is to our benefit and losing it would be to our loss, it’s also a question of whether it’s right to make people pay both for cultural resources they couldn’t afford on their own, and a news organization that diligently promotes views they may find objectionable.
October 30th, 2010 | 3:40 pm
I find the comparison between a highway system and an entertainment and opinion medium less than compelling. I hardly think that NPR is as widely used or as necessary as roads! I’ve read that les than 2% of NPR’s budget comes from the government. If that’s so, it should be easy for them to cope with the loss and it most certainly wouldn’t mean that Nebraskans would lose their NPR.
October 30th, 2010 | 3:58 pm
Mr. Cunningham: the interstate doesn’t foist political propaganda on us. And I understand that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting gets more than half its funding from Gummint. Where else do you suppose it would come from? Those interminable local fund-raising drives bring in only about a third of the budget, I hear.
October 30th, 2010 | 5:57 pm
This (inevitable) call from some conservatives to defund NPR is odd. Is the point just to annoy people as much as possible without any real benefit? Is it a deeper civil rights/diversity issue: that the government should not be in the business of promoting certain cultural preferences? This is a conservative argument?
pentamom: With my taxes I help support a lot of people with whom I often disagree: teachers, politicians, town planners, road builders, arts councils, etc. I suppose this is, in some sense, unfair (and the more eccentric my beliefs, the more unfair). But I don’t just get to have the things I like.
October 30th, 2010 | 8:02 pm
Many commenters here have echoed my first point, lack of fairness in editorial content.
My second point is that maybe rural Americans who like their daily local NPR dose need to rethink their situation. For years they’ve justified their participation in and acquiescence of an unfair and inequitable system because they received some benefit from the straight news content. In my view “fly-over” country is where NPR belongs, not the liberal coastal cities. They need to organize themselves politically and either take over NPR or force it to reinvent itself into a fair and balanced broadcast entity. Yes, I’m laughing. But if they can’t, won’t or refuse to attempt that, then defund the sucker and let it sink or swim on its own.
October 30th, 2010 | 10:24 pm
Yes, we fund many things we don’t necessarily agree with. But in most cases, those are because they are the people offering the necessary services, and we don’t always agree with what they do, but we do acknowledge the necessity of the service.
But NPR is not the only service offering news, or music, or information. There is no reason we should all be involuntarily funding a redundant service that to a large degree *exists* to undermine what some of us support. Again, it’s very nice that they offer something of value beyond their news service, but there are many “nice” (and genuinely valuable) things that we don’t force people to pay for out of the taxes take out of their unemployment checks. I have yet to see a rational reason why this must be the one we do it for.
October 31st, 2010 | 1:50 am
Hi Matthew! Glad you liked NPR over in O’Neill. We listened to it too in Scottsbluff and up in Sioux County (that’s the part of the state in the northwest corner of Nebraska, borders Wyoming and South Dakota for you folks who aren’t too clear on Nebraska geography, it’s got hills and buttes and fossils and the Pine Ridge but please don’t come visit; it’s so nice and quiet you’ll spoil it and probably scare the cattle and antelope–not that it’s likely that you’ll visit, the nearest interstate is I guess about 80 miles away). But we listened to the music—Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Bruckner, Copland (Nebraska NPR played full symphonies, just not six minutes of this or that Baroque noodle). But when the talking started we turned it off. No use fouling the fine high plains air with that eastern manure. Oh, sorry, that’s redundant. Eastern. Just Eastern. But it’s not your fault folks, being Eastern. It’s kinda like a learning disability, You can’t help it. And we make accommodations for the disabled, like not asking Terry Gross or Nina Totenberg to eat their Jackalope rare; we cook it real good for them—So they can chew on it a l-o-n-g time, since chewing the cud will make them feel t’home.
October 31st, 2010 | 9:12 am
I’m totally with Mike Linton on the benefits of segregating East and West if that means no more cowboy poets.
Actually I’m irritated at NPR these days for pushing out classical programming on local stations. But still….
NPR shamed itself by its overreaction to Juan Williams. Why some conservatives are dying to get some of this negative attention for themselves by overreacting to NPR is beyond me. Let NPR have its moment.
October 31st, 2010 | 3:24 pm
I’m afraid I’m not sure what everyone else is arguing over. Every time I tune into the two local NPR stations, all I hear is folks talking about “pledge”–so, back to the iPod.
October 31st, 2010 | 4:00 pm
If the country is as fiscally bad off as people claim, and we cannot even bring ourselves to defund a self-consciously cultured radio outlet, does anyone seriously think there is any hope of balancing the budget? As for the “some conservatives” canard, anyone whose filters are not clogged will realize NPRs liberal bias colors *everything* it covers just as much as does FOXs bias theirs. The difference is NPR is perceived as unbiased, and so it is that much more disingenuous. And its tonal posturing is pretty intolerable. “We are all informed intellectuals now.” Right. Which is the problem. Now off to the Jon Stewart rally!!
October 31st, 2010 | 4:35 pm
“One station begins the day by playing “The Star Spangled Banner,” features a daily devotional led by a member of the ministerial association, and also carries a “Pro-Life Update” from National Right to Life. That’s the country station. There’s also a Christian one”
Gee, Matthew, I can’t comprehend the horror of having to hear “The Star Spangled Banner” on a regular basis. So glad you escaped O’Neill and its provincial terrors.
BTW, if for the most part each year 70 high school students move away, the remaining few must be remarkably fertile.
October 31st, 2010 | 5:58 pm
Mr. Schmitz, I’d like to express my agreement with your original post. I’d certainly like NPR to be more genuinely diverse and neutral in their news and opinion programming, but I think their public funding is still valuable. Some things ought to be insulated from the marketplace by public subsidies, and in my opinion radio stations that keep the classical music tradition alive are one of those.
It would be wonderful if more NPR programming was created with the rural audience in mind. But expecting the marketplace to correct this is a fantasy. As long as the coasts have more people and more money, any profit-motivated national network is going to focus on their interests.
October 31st, 2010 | 8:17 pm
Dave S. wrote
Exactly what is it that makes you so darn special?
The quality of reporting and analysis.
October 31st, 2010 | 8:46 pm
“The quality of reporting and analysis.”
Cute, but that should mean that he doesn’t need government supported radio.
October 31st, 2010 | 9:00 pm
When I want to listen to classical music, I change my channel to one of three that plays the classics exclusively. One is solely vocal/operatic. Should I not be in the mood, I can listen to 40s swing, 50s doo-wop, radio dramas like the Shadow or the Green Hornet, two Catholic channels, comedy channels, a range of jazz, rock, country, and… if the mood strikes… NPR or Fox or a series of other all-news channels. We’re in the satellite era.
October 31st, 2010 | 9:20 pm
Dave S, my point is that unusually fine journalism is worthy of taxpayer support. And it’s worth not mucking up with ads.
October 31st, 2010 | 9:47 pm
Do you realize that your listening to a conservative talk radio station in many cities, also funds a rock station, a sports station and/or a rap station.
In many areas the talk station is the low one on the totem pole (in advertiser dollars), and is supported by the others.
Maybe it’s time to return to the FCC ownership rules of the 50′s (for those who want to turn the clock back) and see how many of these talk stations would survive.
November 1st, 2010 | 12:42 am
I have always enjoyed listening to NPR, even though catching the signal often involved balancing my radio on top of my curtain rod, but I do not agree that it should be subsidized in its current state. Though the classical music was a welcome reprieve from “The Top Dog in Country,” the reporting has an undeniable liberal slant. When the news came on, I switched to the Christian station whose unpolished local djs gave the most unbiased news in the least obnoxious manner available to listeners in O’Neill. And Buttercup, Mr. Schmitz is not incorrect that most students move away. Most of my classmates as well as myself have left. However, in your rush to make a pithy remark about fertility, you neglected to consider that it is a lovely town to live in and there is a steady influx of new residents. In fact, if an engineering position near there opens up, I would eagerly return.
November 1st, 2010 | 11:32 am
Also from O’Neill: The pithy remark about fertility was made because Mr. Schmitz implies that the conservative nature of O’Neill and its 3 radio stations is what is driving those classmates away.
November 1st, 2010 | 3:58 pm
Buttercup: If you merely meant to comment on the implication that the stations drive away young people, I believe you would’ve said as much. Instead I think you wanted to point out a potentially ridiculous point. However, despite Mr. Schmitz’s perhaps needless reference to the size of the graduating class and their future destinations, I think you and I both realize that his point was likely that O’Neill is not big enough to support a 4 year college or other lucrative careers and opportunities which is why students leave town for their higher education and that is merely indicative of the fact that being a small town with few opportunities for intellectual and artistic growth, NPR is an asset for residents of smaller communities. However, the internet, had it been available doing my childhood, would have been a better source of news, music, and culture than NPR. Since that is available pretty much everywhere, including Nebraska, NPR and its liberal-leaning news are not something I care to use my tax dollars to support.
November 1st, 2010 | 4:03 pm
It’s national PUBLIC radio.
If people with money think that NPR is only reporting liberal views, they can contribute money to it so it can hire more reporters and staff to build a better program.
The airwaves need at least one non-commercial news source, both on radio and television.
November 1st, 2010 | 4:57 pm
Thank you Matthew Schmitz for making a case for funding, not cutting public funding for NPR. I live in a rural area, having returned to the family ranch after retiring from teaching in public schools in several different cities. Given my modest pension I make a generous contribution to support both NPR and PBS.
I do not agree that the same kinds of programming would be done on commercial radio & television stations if de-funding silenced NRP and PBS.
Advertisers chase demographics and largely dictate the types of programs aired. That does not result in informative, thoughtful, diverse, insightful, comical, exuberant, dramatic, gentle, zany, artful content for all ages.. regardless of the huge number of commercial stations available.
We will all be losers if NPR and PBS are stripped of the public funds.
November 1st, 2010 | 10:07 pm
Ken, public radio, and public tv for that matter. Is full of ads? They’re called pledge drives but they are ads. Here in Minneapolis, the number 2 drive time station is a Christian station. It is 100% commercial free and, obviously, it receives no government support. The broadcasting is first quality and is broadcast around the U.S. Their funding comes exclusively from donations and from the private college that sponsors the station. If you like NPR and don’t want ads, then pay for it, but don’t ask me to pay for it for you.
November 1st, 2010 | 11:06 pm
Also from O’Neill: I found it absurd that Schmitz implies that the high school grads move because of the radio stations with this quote: “Each year seventy students graduate high school and, for the most part, leave. For the eighteen years they’re there they listen to one of three stations.”
I don’t know why you’ve seized on my comment about the demographics of O’Neill seemingly defying all logic, according to Schmitz. If far more people, particularily young people who haven’t had children yet, are moving away than sooner or later your graduating classes will dwindle. Unless, of course, the few staying (who are somehow immune to the local radio stations) have a lot more kids. Don’t know why this rather commonplace observation hits a nerve with you, but who knows?
I’m glad there is a steady influx of new residents despite the lack lucrative careers and opportunities for intellectual and artistic growth. O’Neill must have exceptional beauty to attract so many with so few opportunities.
November 1st, 2010 | 11:17 pm
The day that I am allowed to take a portion of my yearly income taxes that go towards unnecessary nuclear warheads, expensive strategic defense star wars programs, subsidies for heartland farms, and bridges to nowhere, and use that to make an even larger donation to my local NPR affiliate than I already do is the day that I take seriously all those who say that they shouldn’t be forced to pay for something they don’t appreciate and want.
November 1st, 2010 | 11:23 pm
Peter L wishes: “If only there were a conservative news outlet that ignored the entertainment news and presented in-depth reporting like NPR.”
There isn’t. And there won’t be in the near future. It’s not in the nature of the modern conservative movement to practice that kind of conservatism.
November 2nd, 2010 | 12:18 am
For those who believe that the absence of NPR will simply invite private players to provide the same service, look at television. A&E and Bravo started out with programs dedicated to the arts and history. But, there was no money in it. Now, their hits shows are Dog the Bounty Hunter and the “Real Wives” franchise. Most major “news” networks are shutting down their overseas bureaus, and newspapers increasingly rely upon wire services like AP to cover stories in far flung places.
As for the idea that NPR caters to elites, most of the cab-drivers in Chicago, overwhelmingly foreign-born who do not speak English as a first language, listen to NPR in their cabs. For the driver from New Delhi, Warsaw, or Kingston – NPR is the only station they can listen to that keeps them connected to the world they came from.
November 2nd, 2010 | 1:38 am
Russell:
Aye, there’s the rub. As a card-carrying liberal, I would be happy for my tax dollars to fund a conservative-leaning NPR. I’d even listen to it. The problem is, the populist nature of today’s right makes the kind of high-level intellectualism and culture which NPR exemplifies so out of fashion that it couldn’t happen in modern America.
All media has bias, so anyone who claims they’d be okay with NPR’s federal funding if it carried no bias are either living in a fantasy land or baldly disingenuous.
To go further, everything associated with our tax dollars show political bias: subsidies for roads could be going to rails, for example. This makes the roads example presented above not so far-fetched. (“Everyone uses roads” is not an argument against — in a world where roads were subsidized secondarily, popular habits would be likewise altered.) Even not funding something carries political bias.
NPR is not like MSNBC or Fox, which is what the market will get you (trash!). Bias will exist, no matter what. Harping on that is missing the point. In-depth discussion and cultural exposure help make our society better. Period. Were there a conservative slant to NPR, I would feel the same way.
Having this alternative available to the kids growing up in O’Neill is invaluable. Even if you aren’t a listener, you benefit from others (including and especially young people) having the higher level of discourse provided by public radio as an alternative to the superficial trash (both liberal and conservative) that the market dictates we want/need. Besides, if you’re growing up in a small conservative town, isn’t it a good thing to be exposed to (thoughtfully presented) alternative ways of viewing the world? Having your views challenged is not the same as being brainwashed. Heaven forbid we take the time to listen to others who have ideas different from our own.
Again, I’d welcome a conservative NPR. I just don’t think the conservative culture is conducive to such a thing at the moment. Maybe one of the kids from O’Neill will grow up (inspired by liberal-slanted NPR) and change that.
November 2nd, 2010 | 10:59 am
Greg-
You make an excellent argument! The idea that anything, really, in life can be unbiased is disingenuous. Everything that humans do contains some bias. Even the (gasp!) supreme court justices each have innate biases. If we defunded everything with a bias we couldn’t function as a society.
Mike Linton,
I’m not sure what the point of your comment was. If it was to prove that rural Americans can be just as arrogant as they accuse “easterners” of being, great job! Mission accomplished. As a rural American from WI, I spent several years in a large eastern city going to graduate school. I was also so proud to talk about my rural heritage, and my colleagues and others that I met were usually full of questions–they wanted to learn about what it is like to grow up in “fly-over” country. They were, by and large, not arrogant at all. I’m sure there are clueless “easterners” who think we are all hicks in the midwest, but I didn’t meet any in all the years I lived there.
November 2nd, 2010 | 3:08 pm
[...] Will on November 2, 2010 The League’s own Matthew Schmitz has a nice post on rural radio at First Thoughts. Related posts…One more reason to ban privatized prisonsJuan Williams should not have lost his [...]
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