I’m a bigger fan of NPR than the by-laws allow. Or I should say that I’m a bigger fan Morning Edition and All Things Considered than one might expect. There’s a great deal of drek on “public radio” which isn’t “NPR” per se but is often labled as such. Pacifica, for example, is little more than a audio bulletin board for the whackier segments of the campus left.

Anyway, I often hear stuff I think reveals a certain liberal tilt, but it’s usually balanced by the fact there’s good reporting and — usually — a good faith effort to get it right. This morning’s piece by Richard Reynolds on the Canadian elections was just plain awful. In fact, it was so bad it sounded as if Reynolds works full time for the CBC. Conservatives and/or their ideas were described as “radical” over and over again. While discussing the Conservatives’ lead in the polls Reynolds described Stephen Harper, the leader of the conservatives, as “smug” — not confident, not self-assured, not even over-confident but “smug.” But when he played a clip from Harper to back up the characterization, Harper hardly came across as smug. Smug is a revealing word. I think it’s usually used by the side that loses to describe how the side that wins is acting. And that’s certainly how it seemed Reynolds was using it.