>The government doesn't have any editorial control of NPR.

Yeah, it's not like the government literally put their own guy as NPRs CEO: https://www.usagm.gov/who-we-are/management-team/john-lansin...

NPR hired him away from the USAGM; "selected by NPR's corporate board". https://www.npr.org/2019/09/05/758047287/npr-names-veteran-m...

"Russia Today hired its CEO, Ivan Muchosranov, away from Russian People's Propaganda Bureau; selected by RT's independent corporate board"

xD

Yeah, no. https://medium.com/dfrlab/question-that-rts-military-mission...

> RT’s parent company, TV-Novosti, is registered as a state-owned Autonomous Non-commercial Organization (ANO) with the Russian Ministry of Justice. According to TV-Novosti’s official filings with the Ministry, it is almost entirely funded by the state budget, with the exact figure ranging annually between 99.5% and 99.9%.

So if it was instead registered as a private company, with, say, Medvedev as CEO, it would be fine?

That would depend entirely on the specific details, including that 99% funding number. If you wanna allege specifics about NPR beyond "they once hired someone who used to work for the government", go for it.

So here's where we disagree: to me, any institution led by Medvedev won't be independent; funding formalities don't matter at all.

Also, once again: there's a fundamental difference between "used to work" and "was a CEO".

I'd be very skeptical of Medvedev, yes. The burden of proof for his independence would be... high.

Do I think Lansing is anything comparable? No.

He who pays the piper calls the tune.

True but it does lean heavily in one political direction. If it is receiving any federal funding then it should be pushed to neutrality, and remove the one-sidedness of their news programing.

I think NPR would be very upset if the government required political neutrality as part of its funding.

NPR seems plenty neutral to me. Neutral is not defined as the midpoint between our two main US political parties (as your username would suggest you know).

I always hear more than one side to each story, when they're long enough, and a good mix of brief stories about either side, positive and negative.

I am a regular listener to at least Morning Edition and All Things Considered, and I can assure you their reporting is very biased to the Left.

The credulous reporting of politically left ideas, policies, and positions on news stories without even strawman explanations of competing ideas is very frequent.

I listen to podcasts for long form, fair discussions of issues, but NPR used to (seemed to?) hew to an objective ideal of reporting, and the new crew happily crusades for their team/goals.

Or maybe your perception of what is actually neutral is too skewed by American political extremism. It seems any source that isn’t ranting about trans folk and teachers being groomers or that the 2020 election was stolen is somehow “left leaning” to many people in this country.

When Trump threatened to cut their funding because they weren't friendly enough to him, their funding increased from donations quite a bit. They're making content their listeners want.