I think NPR is correct since freestyle means any stroke. Do you really think he's just going to do front crawl for 5-6 months, 8 hours a day? I'm sure he'll do some breaststroke and backstroke as well.

Generally, at least in competitive swimming, "freestyle" is synonymous with "front crawl." Technically, you can swim using any stroke you want during a freestyle event, but hardly anybody does since the front crawl is both the fastest and most efficient.

I would go even further to say that after years of competitive swimming, I literally never heard it called "front crawl" by anyone. Every coach, swimmer, heat sheet, swimming record, etc...says freestyle.

NPR calling freestyle "front crawl" would be like referring to Tuberculosis research as "the consumption."

Except that for pretty much everyone, especially everyone involved with swimming, they are synonymous.