Letters to the Editor
cabdriver
Published Letters: 304 Editor's Choice: 6
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the "center-left" Brookings Institute
[Read the article: Cokie Roberts speaks out on the war on behalf of the American people]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Yeah, the Brookings Institute, whose chief mouthpiece regarding all matters Iraqi has differences with the neocons that can best be termed "inconsequential", gets a lot of minutes on NPR broadcasts:
"...NPR often calls on think tanks for comments. But NPR does not lean on the so-called conservative think tanks as many in the audience seem to think.
Here's the tally sheet for the number of times think tank experts were interviewed to date on NPR in 2005:
American Enterprise - 59
Brookings Institute - 102
Cato Institute - 29
Center for Strategic and Intl. Studies - 39
Heritage Foundation - 20
Hoover Institute - 69
Lexington Institute - 9
Manhattan Institute - 53
There are of course, other think tanks, but these seem to be the ones whose experts are heard most often on NPR. Brookings and CSIS are seen by many in Washington, D.C., as being center to center-left. The others in the above list tend to lean to the right. So NPR has interviewed more think tankers on the right than on the left.
The score to date: Right 239, Left 141. [sic]
There may be other experts who are interviewed on NPR who present a liberal perspective. But they tend to be based in universities and colleges and are not part of the think tank culture. That seems to be where most conservative thinking on the issues of the day can be most easily found. Journalism in general -- including NPR -- has become overly reliant on the easily obtained offerings of the think tanks.
And if, as John Hendren says, most news organizations resist labeling think tanks, why should NPR be any different? In my opinion, given the fractious times we live in, more information is probably better than less. Putting experts in some sort of context will go a long way to allaying the suspicions of many listeners who seem convinced that NPR is trying to portray experts as neutral when in fact, they aren't..."
http://tinyurl.com/4np78t
Needless to say, the amount of newscast minutes devoted to the pronouncements of think-tanks ranging across that vast spectrum between Brookings to the American Enterprise Institute far exceeds that given to "emeritus scholar liberal" Daniel Schorr's op-eds- notwithstanding the insinuations of people like "Elephantman", who are seemingly unable to parse an argument that isn't entered around celebrity name-checking.
Pointed questioning of the views emanating from the eminences of such respected establishments is apparently considered an impermissible breach of politeness during the newscasts, and hence off-limits for NPR reporters.
(One saving grace of NPR is that think-talk flacks of all sorts are at least vulnerable to having their spurious claims pointed out in interview and call-in shows. Not the newscasts, however.)
The same courtesy is extended to NPR's frequent guest op-eds, such as this one by Ken Adelman, which aired in September of 2002:
http://tinyurl.com/3ncywp (click my signature for text and audio link)
Presumably that op-ed- which aired with no criticism or related framing surrounding it- doesn't count for Elephantman as "NPR commentary", since it isn't by Daniel Schorr. It did, however, air during the same prime-time news slot.