In a March 12 NewsBusters post, Noel Sheppard freaks about over NPR “On the Media” host Brooke Gladstone saying she “couldn’t find a metric” to apply to the question of whether NPR has a left-wing bias:
Maybe that’s part of the problem – these so-called journalists don’t know how to determine bias in reporting.
How about first taking a look at a week’s worth of programming and simply adding up the number of real conservative and liberal guests as well as Republican and Democrat guests? The qualifier “real” means that folks like New York Times columnist David Brooks and former CNN contributor Kathleen Parker don’t count because they are by no means conservative.
Um, doesn’t Sheppard work for — and isn’t NewsBusters a division of — the Media Research Center, who stated mission is to uncover alleged media bias?
Has the MRC ever done what Sheppard advocates — count the number of conservative and liberal guests in a given week of NPR news programming? We’re not aware of it, and if Sheppard isn’t aware of it either, chances are it has not happened.
And if the MRC has not done such a simple thing, doesn’t it mean that the MRC doesn’t want to because it would not be to its political advantage to do so? As we’ve detailed, the MRC typically exempts cable news from its analyses of news coverage, presumably to avoid having to apply its bias standards to Fox News.Sheppard has asked a very simple question — one he would be better off directing to his employer.