NPR and gay marriage
NPR ombudsman Edward Schumacher-Matos reviewed all of NPR’s shows in the eight days after Joe Biden said he was “comfortable” with gay marriage and found “the coverage did indeed skew in favor of giving air time to the side that favors marriage equality.”
On its main news shows over that time, NPR aired 38 reports about the gay marriage debate. Every story included at least an acknowledgement of both sides of the issue, but a tally found 34 interviews with supporters of gay marriage versus 22 opposed and five uncommitted. The supporters, in other words, had a 3-2 edge over the opponents. Fourteen academics endorsed neither side, but provided analysis of polls and political trends.
The ombudsman says those numbers numbers “suggest to me that in the future more opposition voices have to be brought into the coverage of an issue on which Americans are divided. The same would not be true for an issue about which there is no longer much debate: abolishing slavery, for example.”
* Eight days of same-sex marriage coverage (NPR.org)
While the analysis cites the number of people speaking for and against gay marriage, how much actual air time did each point of view get? Is it possible that, even though there were fewer voices against gay marriage, they received more time to present their views?
rich, what do you think? Do you really believe that the “anti” group received more time to present their views?
I mean, really. Have you ever listened to NPR.
I’m a gay man. I support gay marriage, but I don’t take seriously the notion that NPR can report objectively on this issue. (or many other “culture war” issues).
If NPR existed in the late 50s/early 60s, I wonder whether its ombud would have tallied up the airtime given to segregationists and John Birchers. You know, that “side.”
You know what? It’s time to get rid of all these blowhard, trivial ombudsmen. All of them.
What Dan Mitchell said. NPR has become master of the false equivalency.
Richard, I did not say that, at all. They do too much of that kind of thing, but so do many, many other mainstream news outlets. And unlike them, NPR is much more vulnerable to the “bias” screamers because of the pittance of government money the network indirectly receives. Because of that, NPR feels (wrongly, I think, because I know they’re not pushing a political agenda) that they have to be overcareful and “balanced.” But because of their position, I give them more of a pass on that stuff than I give to overcareful, “balanced” for-profit news organizations.
…and by the way, an assessment by the NPR ombud hinting that NPR wasn’t perfectly balanced on this story isn’t evidence of “false equivalency” by NPR. If anything, it’s just the opposite.
I wasn’t commenting on NPR in my earlier post, but on a single instance of NPR’s *ombud* breaking down the coverage of this story as if on a spreadsheet decide how “balanced” it was.
Wow. Just wow.
Wait, wait. I have consulted with the Special Prosecutor’s Office at the High Vatican Council On Accepted Journalism standards and says that the NPR ombudsman was correct in his ruling. Indeed, he expressed his desire to hire said ombudsman for his own office. It seems there’s a bit of a tempest brewing over a Roman blogger who penned the phrase below without allowing a counter response:
“Eppur’ si muove.”