In Totally Tilted NPR Hour on Defunding, ONE Caller Says It's 'Terrible, Partisan, Hacky'

Whenever PBS or NPR air a discussion on defunding PBS and NPR, it's always a tremendously one-sided chat. On June 24, the NPR talk show 1A -- produced out of WAMU-FM in Washington, DC -- aired an hour on the topic "How the loss of public media funding could affect America’s underserved communities." Host Jenn White proclaimed that if federal funding was stopped, Native American and African-American stations would be hardest hit.

All the guests were pro-"public media," and almost every caller and emailer was as well. They allowed one single conservative viewpoint, for about 75 words: "Hi, this is Kendra from Florida. And, you know, I really do lament the loss of funding for public radio especially in, like you say, Native American communities. But the only people you have to blame for that are the people at places like NPR. The programming is terrible. It's partisan. It's hacky. It's, you know, people have been warning you guys for a very long time that you need to be more balanced in your coverage, and you have steadfastly refused." 

Bingo.

This was immediately rebutted by another caller: "Hi, this is Erin Timbers. I'm calling from Fort Wayne, Indiana. I'm a secondary education English teacher at a local high school. And I frequently use NPR stories and podcasts in my classroom to provide students with one bangle of a story, one bangle of a position, and I often use NPR as an example of unbiased news."