Enlarge Screengrab submitted by Tom Hendricks.

A sponsorship banner for Of Monsters and Men's new album appeared on an NPR Music page about the band.

Screengrab submitted by Tom Hendricks.

A sponsorship banner for Of Monsters and Men's new album appeared on an NPR Music page about the band.

NPR is an increasingly powerful cultural force in books, films and music nationwide—a role that is focusing more attention on the ethics of its coverage, too. The question that pops up among listeners is whether there is a conflict of interest with the online sponsorship ads that are placed in NPR.org by record labels, film distributors and book publishers.

The banners placed by the companies feature their film, book or album—not the company—and run in NPR's cultural Web pages. On rare occasions, the banners even run cheek-to-jowl with a review of the same film, book or album.

What gives? Like some listeners, I, too, have been jarred by seeing such apparent twinning. I recently wrote at length about the ethics of corporate sponsorship in general. I found that the NPR firewall between sponsors and the news to be so firm that it was not necessary for reporters and hosts to make a public disclaimer every time a sponsor was mentioned in a story. I did allow for exceptions, however, if the relationship looked too close.

Among the few exceptions I had in mind were those cheek-by-jowl sponsorships, especially on the music Web pages. In early March, a sponsorship banner for Esperanza Spalding's album "Radio Music Society" appeared on the same page as NPR's "Exclusive First Listen" of the same album. A few weeks later, the same thing happened with the band Of Monsters and Men.

Former foreign editor John Felton conducts quarterly reviews of NPR's Israeli-Palestinian coverage. His 2012 first quarter report is now available online.

Felton reviewed 71 radio segments and 46 Web-only reports for accuracy, variety of voices, fairness, and balance. In general, Felton found that the coverage of the region was consistently accurate, but noted that—as usual—listeners heard more Israeli voices than Palestinian ones. "The scarcity of Palestinian voices reflects the ongoing lack of coverage of the West Bank and Gaza, certainly in relation to Israel," he wrote.

NPR devoted 41 of the radio segments to coverage of Iran's nuclear program. Felton found that NPR presented a broad range of views on the topic, although listeners heard directly from an Iranian official only once. The majority of reports used caution and reflected sensitivity to the subject. Felton praised Talk of the Nation specifically for airing "the most comprehensive coverage" with seven conversations about Iran's nuclear program.

However, Felton did find two instances of imprecision, including a March 7 interview with Israeli ambassador Michael Oren. All Things Considered host Robert Siegel should have more directly challenged Oren's false claim that "the Iranian regime is openly saying it wants these [nuclear] weapons to wipe Israel off the map." He also suggested that NPR should provide a more adequate history of diplomacy over Iran's nuclear ambitions, noting that this conversation has been happening for more than a decade.

I encourage you to read the complete review. Quarterly reviews going back to 2008 are also available online.

John Felton prepares the quarterly evaluations. He has covered international affairs and U.S. foreign policy for more than 30 years. His most recent book, The Contemporary Middle East: A Documentary History, was published by CQ Press in 2007. A former foreign affairs reporter for Congressional Quarterly and foreign editor at NPR, he has been a freelance writer and editor since 1995.

Minority hiring is a sensitive issue. Since posting my column last night on race and ethnicity at NPR, I have been able to get more numbers on NPR's staffing that I am posting separately here, while updating the original column so that it is whole. What I find, contrary to criticisms that moved me to look, is that NPR is doing at least OK, and arguably very well.

Blacks, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans and Hawaiian Islanders—or "people of color"—make up 23 percent of NPR's newsroom. This means reporters, editors, producers and managers, according to NPR's Human resources Department. This compares to just 7 percent for radio in general, according to a survey by the Radio Television Digital News Association and Hofstra University. The television news industry average approaches that of NPR at a rounded off 20 percent. Daily newspapers fall far behind at 13 percent, according to a survey by the American Society of News Editors.

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When NPR announced the hiring of Gary Knell as CEO in October, Joel Dreyfuss of The Root, an African-American oriented website, published an open letter challenging Knell and NPR to work harder to diversify its staff and programming. Dreyfuss said he wanted NPR to be "a reflection of the America I live in," which, of course, is part of public radio's mission.

Dreyfuss's demand has been a running one for decades among some racial and ethnic minority advocates and listeners. Discrimination lawsuits, messy firings and various diversity attempts helped fuel the attention. So, over recent months, I have been building my own notes in an attempt to measure just how good a job NPR is doing now. What I find so far is that, racially and ethnically, NPR is not doing badly, and is getting better.

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My recent post about acknowledgment of sponsors in news reports provoked hundreds of responses and a lively debate on the blog and on Facebook. Some made me squirm and go back to read what I wrote. Almost all the responses were sharp and smart, as one would expect from NPR readers and listeners. So, I thought I might summarize some of the main objections and try to answer them here.

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NPR's "oddly informative" quiz show Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me is intended to entertain, not offend. But more than 100 listeners contacted NPR to complain that a series of jokes about Pope Benedict XVI Saturday crossed the line, even for comedy.

This exchange on the show caused the greatest offense:

ROY BLOUNT (Guest): It's a real celebrity, one of the biggest celebrities in the world. I happen to know the answer to this. It is the pope.

PETER SAGAL (Host): It is Pope Benedict XVI, yes. Italian perfumer Silvana Casoli creates perfumes for both Madonna and Sting. So it seemed natural that she would be the one chosen to create a fragrance for another famous gay icon.

Many listeners mistakenly thought that Sagal called the pope gay. As Susan Irons from Monaca, PA wrote: "Gentlemen, I have been a faithful listener to your show for years because I absolutely love it! I am VERY disappointed, therefore, to have just heard Pope Benedict XVI referred to as a 'gay.' I have turned off my radio."

It is easy not to hear every word when listening to the radio, especially in Wait, Wait's repartee. But a re-hearing and a reading of the transcript above show that Sagal jokingly called the pope a "gay icon", and not gay himself. He likened the pope to Madonna and Sting—neither of whom is gay to my knowledge.

But some listeners didn't like "gay icon" either. The extended back and forth on air with writer Roy Blount imagined Pope Benedict VXI as a blue jean or perfume model. Is this so disrespectful as to be offensive?

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When host Audie Cornish drank a bottle of 5-Hour Energy on All Things Considered, several listeners were not entertained. Cornish's act and the interview that followed were a conflict of interest and violated NPR's new ethics code, they said. The company that makes the drink, Living Essentials, is an NPR corporate sponsor.

"I have heard their name in underwriting spots for at least the last month and again this morning," wrote Steve Tadd of Cherry Hill, NJ. "The ATC story had no disclaimer about the NPR sponsorship. I thought the story was unworthy of airing and a shill."

"It was a 5-minute infomercial," wrote Linda Mattson, of San Carlos, CA. "Not a single item indicating any critical thinking skills were displayed. Perhaps you might have looked into the potential health risks of mega vitamins."

Ms. Mattson makes a good point, and that is doubly unfortunate because it undermines the argument I am about to make next about my real concern: sponsorship and conflict of interest. The segment did not need to acknowledge that Living Essentials is a sponsor. Hardly any story on a company that is a sponsor should.

The new ethics handbook does indeed require such disclosure, but the handbook—though not yet a month old—should be revised. I am happy to say that that revision is now under way.

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NPR's new Ethics Handbook expands on the meaning of fairness and balance in journalism.

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NPR's new Ethics Handbook expands on the meaning of fairness and balance in journalism.

Over the coming days and weeks, I will be doing a series of posts related to the new NPR Ethics Handbook. But let me introduce you to it first, if you haven't seen news articles on the handbook.

I have made a permanent home for a copy of the handbook on the Ombudsman blog, but here it is, too: http://ethics.npr.org/

The handbook was unveiled last month after a more than year-long revision process that involved not just the newsroom, but almost all employees of NPR. The new handbook is more thorough than the former News Code of Ethics, which was originally drafted in 2003 and revised periodically. The new handbook also incorporates the former Social Media Guide.

An excerpt from the handbook overview captures the culling process:

Much of what's reflected here derives from ethical guidance and case studies expressed in other places throughout the organization, such as our visual journalism guidelines and the years of columns from our ombudsmen. As we gathered this material, we also held many conversations with our colleagues to inform our work, and did our best to articulate some of the unwritten processes and rules of thumb that emerged from those.

Our hunt brought us to a treasure trove of ethical guidance laid out in hundreds of memos from NPR editors, producers and supervisors over the years, some overlapping, many buried in archives, but most still wonderfully relevant to the questions we face day after day.

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We are in a politically polarized age of alternative realities: biases often count more than facts. So when NPR does a story about a politically sensitive topic, even the smallest error or omission is taken by one group or another as proof of NPR's own bias.

This is the case of two recent stories about Catholics, contraceptives and government policy. Social conservatives in the blogosphere were right in catching NPR mistakes in the citing of a public opinion poll by Planned Parenthood and of a study by the Guttmacher Institute, both on contraception and Catholics.

I don't find "liberal bias," as some critics charged. But I did find unacceptably loose citing of polls, aggravated by repeating an error in a Guttmacher press release. Both organizations are known for their service and research, but because they also advocate, reporters need to be as rigorous in reporting about their studies as with any other.

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Political activist and former presidential candidate Ralph Nader talks with labor leaders at a rally Washington, D.C., on Nov. 3, 2011.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty

Political activist and former presidential candidate Ralph Nader talks with labor leaders at a rally Washington, D.C., on Nov. 3, 2011.

In a Weekend Edition segment about Ralph Nader and his search for a reasonably priced airplane ticket, Scott Simon said he was surprised that a screen didn't pop up on the airline's computer saying, "GIVE RALPH NADER WHATEVER HE WANTS AND SAVE US ALL A LOT OF TROUBLE." After all, Nader is known for his persistence and successful consumer advocacy. All cars now have seatbelts thanks to Nader and his 1965 book Unsafe at Any Speed.

Nader, a five-time presidential candidate, has been calling me in recent months to hold my feet to the fire, and so I went to meet with him.

While the political right has been beating the drum for years that NPR is too liberal, Nader says that is not the true picture at all. He says that it is progressives on the political left, like him, who are being excluded from NPR's airwaves.

"Progressive voices are not heard on NPR with the frequency of voices representing more corporatist and conservative opinion," Nader said. "And progressive voices should not be confused with liberal voices and lumped into the same category for any frequency analysis."

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Edith and Archie Bunker's chairs on display in the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.

tara_siuk/Flickr

Edith and Archie Bunker's chairs on display in the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.

In 1971, Fred Ferretti wrote an article for The New York Times about a new CBS sitcom called "All in the Family." He asked his readers, "Are racism and bigotry funny?" His conclusion: No.

"What is lacking is taste," he wrote. But the American viewing public apparently disagreed.

The show, featuring Carroll O'Connor as the bigoted Archie Bunker, aired until 1979, winning numerous Emmys and Golden Globe awards. It is such a cornerstone of American culture that today you can visit Archie and Edith Bunker's chairs at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. As the museum's website puts it, "Their battlegrounds were the very issues dividing American society—ethnic prejudice, women's liberation, and racism. The show's humor revealed the limits of Archie's bigotry, as well as the self-righteousness of his children."

But after a recent Fresh Air segment, several NPR listeners raised the same question as that Times reporter back in 1971.

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Panelists testify Thursday before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing.

AP/Carolyn Kaster

Panelists testify Thursday before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing.

The all-male witness panel at Thursday's House hearing on President Obama's contraception insurance mandate inspired Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, a Democrat from New York, to ask "Where are the women?" A photo of the lineup quickly circulated the Internet—appearing on Twitter and Facebook feeds and landing on women's rights advocacy blogs.

Maloney's question—"Where are the women?"—is a familiar one in our office. As the debate around contraceptive coverage continues, several listeners have written with the same concerns about NPR's coverage.

The All Things Considered segment, "Week in Politics," on Feb. 10 drew the most concern. The weekly segment regularly features Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne and New York Times columnist David Brooks. The two columnists discuss the political wave of the week and, between Dionne's traditionally liberal perspective and Brooks' conservative-leaning views, listeners generally can find something they agree with, including even a compromise.

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A woman flashes the V for 'victory' sign with her fingers painted in the colors of the former Syrian flag during a protest against the Syrian regime outside Damascus' embassy in Kuwait City on Feb. 5, 2012.

In the world of Twitter and social media, Andy Carvin has become a legend of sorts. I don't want to sound too much like a publicist for NPR, but the role of this NPR digital strategist as, effectively, Twitter Central throughout the Arab Spring—for the Arabs themselves in the uprisings—has won him numerous accolades. The Washington Post called him a "a one-man Twitter news bureau." The New York Times said he was "a personal news wire about Egypt."

As of today, Carvin has 62,450 Twitter followers. He told The Post last year that he tweets 7 days a week and up to 16 hours a day, sometimes more, from his laptop and phone in Washington, D.C.

His role in covering protests and unrest in the Middle East began in 2010 when he used Twitter contacts in Tunisia to crowd-source coverage of the revolution. He went on to repeat the formula in each successive country of unrest, using the same style of crowd-sourcing to debunk myths, share pertinent information, and create a written record of revolutions in real-time.

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Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney in Sparks, Nevada.

Emmanuel Dunand/Getty Images

Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney in Sparks, Nevada.

Is Mitt Romney being treated unfairly in the coverage of the taxes he pays?

Hardly.

Some might find it rich even to raise the question, but many NPR listeners have, and it is journalistically and intellectually a valid question.

According to tax returns that Romney released last week under pressure from opponents in the Republican presidential primaries, he paid what appears to be a low rate for 2010 of 13.9 percent in federal taxes on adjusted gross income of $21.7 million. His campaign also released his estimated income for 2011 and projected that the average rate over the two years would come to a slightly higher 14.5 percent. That is an uncertain number, however, and is still extraordinarily low by the standards of the nation's progressive income tax scheme. In that scheme, the wealthy supposedly pay the highest rates.

But many listeners wrote to complain that reports on Romney's tax returns by Tamara Keith on Morning Edition and All Things Considered were, if not biased against the wealthy, at least ill-informed and lacking the context that explains how he came to have the low rates. More than half of Romney's income comes from investments, which Congress purposefully taxes at a low rate. They do so on the grounds that this will encourage more investment, as well as compensate for what arguably is double taxation on some investment income. Keith's reports noted that most of Romney's income was taxed low because it came from investments, but some listeners and conservative advocacy groups felt that she and most of the mainstream media failed to explain the justification.

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Yesterday I was invited on air to comment on the state of political journalism for WMRA's Virginia Insight, a call-in show broadcast out of Harrisonburg, VA. Host Tom Graham and a few callers quizzed me on the ethics of political reporting and media bias. Below, you'll find the audio and a few excerpts from my interview.