I’m a consumer of public broadcasting. I’m currently subscribing to Passport, PBS’s streaming app, so I can catch up on all the Ken Burns documentaries. And I used to enjoy NPR news and other programming: the longform, in depth reporting on a range of topics, the absence of talking head shouting matches, and a Prairie Home Companion before Garrison Keillor retired, especially his “News from Lake Wobegon” monologues. Admittedly, my taste is probably conditioned by my Swedish upbringing with subdued news reporting and other programming limited to two public TV and three public radio channels (it has long since changed to a more American model with cable and, more recently, streaming, but the public channels remain).
I’ve known for a long time that NPR journalists, like their Swedish counterparts, are overwhelmingly left-leaning1, as is their audience. A 2019 Pew survey found that those who rely on NPR as their main political news source are 87% democrat or leaning democrat. But NPR definitely added a perspective that I appreciated. And being a critical news consumer, I was always on my guard. My antennas were up in search of the rest of the story—identifying the explicit or implicit biases behind the polished façade, the omissions, the questions not asked, the views not represented, the guests not invited.