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Love it or hate it, truckers say they can’t stop listening to public radio

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Re: Love it or hate it, truckers say they can’t stop listening to public radio

#261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot of sources generally treated as liberal have swerved in their coverage over the last ~year, since Trump began to look credible. I'd argue that stretch is non-representative compared to, say, 2014, but I'd also argue you can still see a distinctive outlook when they do cover those topics. A source like Vox covers urban/coastal issues from the 'inside', treating first-hand sources as credible and writing…

You hit the nail on the head - and nothing really turns off a viewership than being "taught" about yourself. 90% of conservative talk radio is "teaching" about how liberals think.

Yes, that's a much more succinct way of putting it! A source feels biased to me any time it's talking to one side, but 'teaching' about another side - no matter how the mechanisms of that bias vary.

Re: Love it or hate it, truckers say they can’t stop listening to public radio

#262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You hit the nail on the head - and nothing really turns off a viewership than being "taught" about yourself. 90% of conservative talk radio is "teaching" about how liberals think.

Yes, that's a much more succinct way of putting it! A source feels biased to me any time it's talking to one side, but 'teaching' about another side - no matter how the mechanisms of that bias vary.

Polsplaining has a nice ring to it!

Re: Love it or hate it, truckers say they can’t stop listening to public radio

#263
post #228

I love NPR. My wife makes fun of me because sometimes I sit in the car with the battery / radio on after I park just to hear a story finish. New Hampshire Public radio has a lot of local news and features too, which I can't hear anywhere else. I'm sure other markets are the same. You can get it on Alexa too because most of the shows are also podcasts which is also great. I've also heard a lot from my conservative fri…

If I ever had to move a lot of Make America Great Again merchandise, I would license clips from "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me." I have two main difficulties with NPR. First, as a baby boomer, I wonder whether my generation will let go. WAMU still plays old Car Talk shows on Saturday morning, a couple of years after one of the brothers died. Garrison Keillor did, finally, let go, but it took him a while. Second, so much…

Ask Me Another is a newish humorous public radio quiz show hosted by Gen. Xer Ophira Eisenberg with Jonathan Colton (also Gen. X).

My impression is public radio quiz shows don't depend on a college education but reward the accumulation of knowledge and attention paid to current events. The college-educated are more likely to to appreciate those rewards. I'm sure there's also the occasional joke or comment that assumes a shared experience found in college but I expect that's rare enough to not completely put off someone who can't relate to that experience (sometimes they'll say it knowingly, making a joke out of assuming everyone has the same background, especially whiteness).

http://www.wnyc.org/shows/ask-me-another

Re: Love it or hate it, truckers say they can’t stop listening to public radio

#264

my dad is a fox news republican, a few years back we were driving for 5 hours and were listening to npr. he was basically waiting for the overt liberal bias, but instead we listened to a bunch of fascinating stories and interesting shows about a variety of topics. I read somewhere that npr isn't liberally biased, but their fan base is mostly liberal, because liberals tend to prefer news that has no bias. It's also no…

>because liberals tend to prefer news that has no bias You have to be joking. Have you heard of the Huffington Post or MSNBC? Even NPR is heavily biased at the editorial level. Most of the stories are intentionally selected to represent downtrodden folks, rust belt workers/farmers that realize they are closet Democrats, etc. The individual stories will be true but the representation of reality portrayed by the overar…

It's clear that NPR has bias in its choice of reporting, but every other political radio station has a clearly stated allegiance more than they have a simple bias.

The difference is stark -"oh boy this story is here for the lefties" versus a guy screaming into the mic that we have to fight the bastard liberals before they throw us to the sharks.

It's not close to perfect but it's at least news.

Re: Love it or hate it, truckers say they can’t stop listening to public radio

#265

my dad is a fox news republican, a few years back we were driving for 5 hours and were listening to npr. he was basically waiting for the overt liberal bias, but instead we listened to a bunch of fascinating stories and interesting shows about a variety of topics. I read somewhere that npr isn't liberally biased, but their fan base is mostly liberal, because liberals tend to prefer news that has no bias. It's also no…

>because liberals tend to prefer news that has no bias Hmmm, I think your liberal bias may be showing.

Im not sure what you'd call it when liberals listen to... Slightly biased news, and conservatives listen to people with clearly expressed political allegiances who refer to conservatives as "us", liberals as "them", and talk about how to politically defeat the other side.

Just because bias is hard to separate out, doesn't mean everyone's behavior and preferences are equivalent mirror images of each other.

You could find someone yelling about defeating conservatives on YouTube but that viewership is going to be lower than NPR... thus liberals prefer the less-biased sources...

Re: Love it or hate it, truckers say they can’t stop listening to public radio

#266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I consider myself to be a "bleeding heart libertarian". I'm against the drug war, believe in a strong separation of church an state, live and let live, etc. But I don't mind paying taxes for the government to help people help themselves and to help people who can't help themselves.

I still mind paying taxes and always will--anyone who doesn't is a doormat. It's just that I also no that a certain amount of expropriation is going to happen no matter what. I still don't support in collectivism or collectivist solutions, though. I think those things are the big lie told to people--that no other system can do what government does. The US government is mainly involved in theft from the middle class v…

> I still mind paying taxes and always will

Fair enough.

> anyone who doesn't is a doormat.

Don't be ridiculous. Can you really not imagine any other reason for a rational person to approve of government programs, at least in principle?

Re: Love it or hate it, truckers say they can’t stop listening to public radio

#267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>because liberals tend to prefer news that has no bias Hmmm, I think your liberal bias may be showing.

Im not sure what you'd call it when liberals listen to... Slightly biased news, and conservatives listen to people with clearly expressed political allegiances who refer to conservatives as "us", liberals as "them", and talk about how to politically defeat the other side. Just because bias is hard to separate out, doesn't mean everyone's behavior and preferences are equivalent mirror images of each other. You could f…

Each side of the political spectrum has a spectrum of biased news. For example, Huffington Post and The Young Turks are liberal news sources which are very partisan. The Economist is a fiscally conservative magazine which is less partisan, Uncommon Knowledge is an interview show with a conservative viewpoint, but also an educated and intellectual viewpoint.

If you're a liberal minded person, your exposure to conservative sources of news is likely excerpts of their most grievous offenses. Hence, the liberal bias suggests that conservatives get all their news from Tucker Carlson making funny faces at people, or Alex Jones identifying gay amphibians. The result is the belief that liberals are reasonable intellectuals and conservatives stupid fools.

Re: Love it or hate it, truckers say they can’t stop listening to public radio

#268
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My biggest complaint isn't that NPR is too liberal, only that it is very surface-thought in its discussion of topics. Too often a story will raise what seem to be obvious and interesting (but maybe difficult) questions and the journalist or interviewer will just move on. Tom Ashbrook ( On Point ) does this especially egregiously. Some of his simplistic (or biased) "So what you're saying is..." moments make me cring…

You should both check out WNYC'S "On The Media." It's NPR style, but every interview you hear is a 40-60-120 minute interview that's been boiled down to 8-10 min for the show. It's truly bespoke radio in that way, so they get to cover the issues at the core of something. It's my favorite show week to week.

In GA, we've got Political Rewind, which is similar and also fantastic.

It's also a simple formula: find an expert in the field who's also a halfway decent host, then invite guests who work in the professional and balance their biases against each other.

Re: Love it or hate it, truckers say they can’t stop listening to public radio

#269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Government debt is a burden on the next generation - in that light, some consider it immoral.

Cool, so let's pull out of all wars and use that money to repay the debt. Win/win, right?

I'm fine with that and not policing the world. Money wasted.

Re: Love it or hate it, truckers say they can’t stop listening to public radio

#270

my dad is a fox news republican, a few years back we were driving for 5 hours and were listening to npr. he was basically waiting for the overt liberal bias, but instead we listened to a bunch of fascinating stories and interesting shows about a variety of topics. I read somewhere that npr isn't liberally biased, but their fan base is mostly liberal, because liberals tend to prefer news that has no bias. It's also no…

> I read somewhere that npr isn't liberally biased, but their fan base is mostly liberal, because liberals tend to prefer news that has no bias. You don't need to "read somewhere" about whether a news source is biased. You just need to read news across a spectrum of sources. And you will realize that NPR definitely has a liberal bias if you have enough breadth in your sources. I'm a far-left liberal but I'm not afrai…

Your argument rests on the fault assumption that in a 'wide range of media', the median publication is unbiased and things that are more left-wing than it are biased and things more right-wing than it are biased in the other direction.

That's just not based in reality. In reality, almost all mainstream media is incredibly biased towards the status quo.

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