Not even close from my outsider perspective.
I... don't know. When the topic comes up there sure are a lot of us NPR listeners who are in rather a love-hate relationship with it, leaning toward "hate". Half the time I'm listening I'm shaking my head at how very self-parody-like NPR they're being or yelling at them to stop doing such shitty coverage. Like, the best news on my local station, far and away, is when they rebroadcast BBC content. If I could tune into actual BBC stations when driving, I'd probably listen to that a lot more than NPR. These days especially, NPR's only got a very-few programs I'd bother to save from a fire, as it were, or that I even might go out of my way to listen to when not in the car.
It's just that there's not a lot of better news/commentary/talk programming on the radio dial.
I'm old enough to remember finding good-quality content on NPR, but I now look toward podcasts in the special interest I'm looking for to find good-quality audio-streamed information.
I actually think NPR has been captured by their audience in the same way MSNBC and Fox News has been. They know member donations are their biggest funding source, so they largely tell their audience what they want to hear.
Put another way, I don't think pure editorial independence exists. Everyone knows where their bread is being buttered.