The Real Bias at NPR: Story Selection

Concern about media bias — specifically politically liberal bias — has moved center stage thanks to the cri de coeur by National Public Radio’s Uri Berliner in the Free Press. The network’s business editor, who resigned in the aftermath of his speaking truth to power, wrote that “politics intruded” on a wide variety of coverage, from Covid to “Russiagate,” connecting what he regards as the network’s movement to the Left to the fact that he could identify exactly zero registered Republicans in its D.C. newsroom.

As concerning as the treatment of specific topics may be, however, criticism of NPR should not be understood to be a problem of political bias. As anyone who has been involved in daily journalism — I once served as the assignment editor for a nightly public-television news program — the decisions involve more than specific personalities. The key to understanding media bias, including that of NPR, is what the sociologist Herbert J. Gans studied in his landmark 1980 book Deciding What’s News: story selection.

About the Author

Howard Husock

Howard Husock is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of The Projects: A New History of Public Housing.

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Concern about media bias — specifically politically liberal bias — has moved center stage thanks to the cri de coeur by National Public Radio’s Uri Berliner in the Free Press. The network’s business editor, who resigned in the aftermath of his speaking truth to power, wrote that “politics intruded” on a wide variety of coverage, from Covid to “Russiagate,” connecting what he regards as the network’s movement to the Left to the fact that he could identify exactly zero registered Republicans in its D.C. newsroom.

As concerning as the treatment of specific topics may be, however, criticism of NPR should not be understood to be a problem of political bias. As anyone who has been involved in daily journalism — I once served as the assignment editor for a nightly public-television news program — the decisions involve more than specific personalities. The key to understanding media bias, including that of NPR, is what the sociologist Herbert J. Gans studied in his landmark 1980 book Deciding What’s News: story selection.