To be fair, this is one of the few non-profits that benefits most people and that is actually used day-to-day by the majority of people with an internet connection.
But at least they're (mostly) honest? They take up some time, but they're clear about what's happening. The only "deceptive" practice they have is the two-for-one matching grants, which I'm dubious about whether they exist or not.
That sort of matching is real, but usually just a psychological trick to encourage people to donate more.
A foundation or rich person says "hey NPR we wanna give you $10 million" and NPR says "what if instead you match every donation we get dollar for dollar up to $10 million?". That way, they can encourage smaller donors while still getting the original $10 million.
The deceptive part is when they tell you they need your money today "to defend Wikipedia's independence" when in actual reality they need money today so they can increase their annual budget by $42 million (that's the increase from 2020/21 to 2021/22).
The donation matches are typically not grants, but rather _other donors_ playing those games (surely in collaboration with NPR's development dept). They definitely exist.
I agree with this. I'm on "the left", but I don't need a media outlet confirming my biases or stroking my ego. I was originally drawn to NPR precisely because it seemed like a relatively neutral news source (still discernibly left-of-center, but not aggressively so) and because it frequently exposed me to other perspectives; however, it seems to have been dragged into the swamp of "activist journalism" just like everyone else.
NPR and PBS both are among the most accurate/neutral according to a media study. [1] I honestly worry that we're having a political disparity in truth that's pushing a choice between politically neutral and factually accurate.
I mean... you can put anything you want on the internet. I looked up their "methodology" and it's sort of just whatever they think a source/article is. Not really rigorous.
And anyways, they put the WashPo right of NYT? That hasn't been true since ol Jeff B took over.
Since some are complaining about the Ad Fontes methodology, here it is:
"Ad Fontes administers an internal political bias test to analysts, asking them to rank their left-to-right position on about 20 policy positions. That information allows the company to attempt to create ideological balance by including one centrist, one left-leaning and one right-leaning analyst on each review panel. The panels review at least three articles for each source, but they may review as many as 30 for particularly prominent outlets, like The Washington Post, Otero said. More on their methodology, including how they choose which articles to review to create a bias rating, can be found here on the Ad Fontes website."
It's not hard to be "most accurate/neutral" when comparing against every batshit blog and podcast, which is what your source does. In fact, NPR and PBS are clustered among the mainstream news sources, which only supports my "NPR is in the swamp with everyone else" claim. That said, I don't put much stock in JPGs that look like something a high schooler put together with PowerPoint 20 years ago.
The loss of Car Talk and the changes to A Prairie Home Companion all but eliminated my weekend listening. Wait, Wait... is OK but I usually don't tune in without the other stuff to draw me. The other new comedy show (with Coulton and Eisenberg[?], I forget the name of it) isn't very good. Maybe they'll find their footing, but it's been years at this point, and it's still not good. On the Media is really good, but plays at a time when I'm almost never driving, so I rarely catch it.
Their weekday news shows are too corporate-friendly and consist mostly of the same horse-race and monday-morning-quarterbacking campaign strategy garbage that everything else does, when the US is in national political campaign mode, which is like 60+% of the time now. The best US and international coverage on the whole damn station is when they just re-broadcast the BBC.
[EDIT] Oh and there's the huge amount of time they spend either advertising or promoting other NPR shows or podcasts. God damn, it's so much. It's at least as much time as "commercial" radio devotes to that kind of thing. Donate? You fucking play corporate ads! All the time!
Hasn't had a new episode in almost ten years, sadly, and likely will not have a revival as Tom passed away. Apparently radio distribution was slated to stop at the beginning of last month
In other news, NPR pledge drives are so annoying.