Whenever NPR's Talk of the Nation dips into the topic of immigration, the national call-in show's telephone board lights up like a Christmas tree.

Immigration is an especially hot-button topic. So it's not surprising that when NPR began running a funding credit on Nov. 10 for the Department of Homeland Security's E-Verify program, my office heard from listeners and a few concerned public radio station managers.

They all questioned NPR's judgment in running the credit about the federal computer program that employers use voluntarily to check the legal status of new hires. At the least, some said, it is not a good fit for NPR. Some suggested NPR is endorsing E-Verify.

First, it's helpful to explain funding credits. Since NPR is a non-commercial network, it accepts money for what's called "underwriting." Local public radio stations do the same. The 10-second underwriting credits, which appear at various points in NPR programming, come from foundations, banks, auto companies, other businesses, and federal agencies.

Here's the text that is generating controversy: "'Support for NPR comes from NPR stations, and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), offering E-Verify, confirming the legal working status of new hires. At DHS dot gov slash E-Verify."

E-Verify runs a free electronic database system for employers to scan 450 million Social Security and 60 million DHS records to confirm if new hires are eligible to work. Two states -- Arizona and Mississippi -- have made E-Verify mandatory for employers, as has the federal government for its new hires. Beginning Jan. 15, federal government contractors will be disqualified from competing for new contracts if they do not use E-Verify.

"In very basic terms, the goal of E-Verify is to assist employers in maintaining a legal workforce and to protect jobs for authorized U.S. workers," said Bill Wright, with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service. According to his agency's statistics, 96.1 percent of employees are confirmed as "work authorized" instantly or within 24 hours.

Some listeners say the program is far from benign. In fact, the program is the subject of lawsuits, court cases and Congressional investigation. "E-Verify is an extremely problematic program," writes Mary Hopkins."Big Brother aside, it 'verifies employment eligibility' against a filthy database, is ridden with delays and errors, and has caused a great deal of trouble for a lot of innocent people, including US citizens."

"The E-Verify system was being promoted to target illegal immigrants," wrote Richard Imm. "This program is error-filled, and is yet one more racist intrusion of the Bush administration into the business world and the private lives of all job-seekers. I recently became a Sustaining Member of my local NPR station (WNMU-FM) -- was this a mistake?"

Then this from general manager Matt Martin of public radio station KALW, in San Francisco: "Given the political uses to which DHS has been put and the fact that listeners want to be assured that NPR (and by extension, KALW) can be depended on for independent critical coverage of this and other government agencies, the credit may not belong in a news program."

DHS is in the midst of a two-month marketing campaign to promote E-Verify. "We are picking NPR because of its national reach," Wright said. "NPR has morning shows, reaches a lot of commuters out there. It's a trusted network and has a wide following and reaches a lot of demographics across the country." E-Verify funding credits also are carried on Latino USA, a show that NPR distributes but does not produce.

But there are problems with E-Verify, according to a May 2008 Government Accountability Office study, which found the service is vulnerable to employer fraud and misuse and noted that it can't ferret out stolen documents.

Another problem concerns the database's accuracy, said Tyler Moran, employment policy director for the National Immigration Law Center, a group that promotes legal rights for immigrants. "The error rate disproportionately affects foreign-born workers and that includes naturalized citizens and legal immigrants," she said. "It's often because of their names." Moran wrote a paper last month on how E-Verify has hurt legal workers.

So, should NPR run these funding credits? NPR has accepted underwriting from the government for 20 years, said John King, operations manager for sponsorship.

"In addition to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting," he said, "we've accepted underwriting from the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Postal Service, the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Humanities." None, though, has generated anywhere near as much controversy as the E-Verify credit.

NPR has strict guidelines about funding it will accept. Those guidelines indicate a funding credit must be 10 seconds and cannot contain price information, an explicit inducement to buy or a call to action. For example, a spot could not say, "Stop by our showroom to see a model." A credit can name a program or a store and tell listeners how to get more information. "Learn more about" is not considered a call to action but rather a way to provide listeners information, according to NPR's legal office.

E-Verify's Wright admits the service has some minor flaws. And certainly it has detractors in Congress and among groups advocating for immigrants. Even so, the E-Verify credit does not violate NPR's guidelines. Just because some listeners might not like the funder, or even the program it promotes, that is not a strong enough reason for NPR to reject an underwriter.

Accepting underwriting is not the same as approving the message, NPR managers said.

"The underwriting credit does not advocate a position about immigration," said Blake Truitt, senior vice president of National Public Media, NPR's sponsorship subsidiary. "The credit describes a DHS service."

But there is another potentially more serious concern. Will NPR do stories about E-Verify in hopes of keeping the funding coming? Or will DHS be able to influence NPR's coverage since it's helping keep NPR afloat?

The answer to such questions is no because of what's known in the news business as an impenetrable firewall between NPR news and the underwriting department. NPR reporters pay no attention to the funders, and the funders have no influence over what is covered, said managing editor Brian Duffy.

But the perception of a conflict can exist. Sean Collins, executive producer of Latino USA, is concerned about this since his show reports in-depth on immigration issues.

"There's a perception of a conflict when you hear reporting and then you hear a funding credit that's from a particular point of view and you realize the program was funded in part by that government organization or entity," said Collins. "It just makes you a little queasy. I don't think we do a good enough job of reiterating the concept of a firewall. It really does exist."

It's possible that NPR's immigration correspondent Jennifer Ludden will cover E-Verify, as she has in the past.

"Having this funding credit on air would have no bearing on how I handled future stories," said Ludden. "I certainly would have no idea if this particular credit would air in the same show or segment as one of my pieces. More to the point, I would have no problem continuing to report on the program's shortcomings, and the controversy over it."

But in any future reporting on E-Verify, Duffy says that NPR will need to also mention at the same time that E-Verify is a sponsor. "If Jennifer Ludden does a story on it for NPR, we should clearly disclose that E-Verify is something that NPR is receiving underwriting for," said Duffy. "We want to be as transparent as possible. We have no secrets."

Another concern -- one that involves all funding credits -- is that at many local public radio stations funding credits are read on-air by the same announcers who give the local news. This blurs what should be a clear distinction between news and underwriting.

In my view, local stations, and NPR, should take whatever steps necessary to make sure that listeners don't associate underwriting with legitimate news reporting.

NPR will continue running the E-Verify credit until Feb. 9.

END

Continue reading "Should NPR Run Funding Credits from the Department of Homeland Security?" >

Why do your programs consistently refer to Obama as "black," when he is the son of a black man and a white woman? He could just as easily be referred to as white. Why refer to his skin color at all? If you are referring to more than skin color, what is it? Is this a formal policy?

The All Things Considered series on race never defined what the editors meant by the term. I sent emails asking for some, but never got a reply. As a result, I think the most important question was left unanswered. The science of genetics offers no basis for the notion of race, so why persist with this term without giving a definition? Please give me a real answer.
--Forrest Furman

Dear Mr. Furman:
NPR identifies Sen. Barack Obama as black because that is how the president-elect identifies himself. There probably isn't a man or woman in America who does not know that Obama had a white mother and a black father. NPR respects how anyone wants to identify themselves in a case like this. As an example on a more simple identification, Gov. Sarah Palin prefers to be called Ms. Palin in second reference of the New York Times which uses honorifics-- not Mrs. Palin. That is her choice.

I listened closely to the series on the role of race in the presidential campaign and All Things Considered defined race in this case as looking at how black and whites get along, interact and view one another. One way to think about racism is that it's the result of not knowing people different from you. You can see an evolution in how people's thinking evolved about race in NPR's York (Pa.) project that explored race during the presidential election.

As for why NPR refers to Obama's skin color, it is unavoidable in the society we live in.

###
WHY did you put on the piece with David Duke? A better use of our time would have been for him to answer one question and then for you to tell us we could listen to the rest of the interview on your website. Yes, the piece was, as you warned us, offensive. WHAT do we learn from listening to him interrupting and disrespecting you, disrespecting us listeners, spouting his vitriol? Sheila O'Flaherty

David Duke is a former Louisiana state lawmaker, grand wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and onetime presidential aspirant. I think it's critical for an informed electorate to hear all kinds of voices-- even voices that you don't agree with, and many don't agree with David Duke. I found the interview fascinating and noticed how tough Michel Martin was on him. Whether we like it or not, there are individuals and groups that will not like Sen. Obama as president. We need to hear from them rather than ignore them.

When I posed listener concerns to Michel, she replied: "I wrote about it on my blog and in the comment thread. If you have additional questions after that I am happy to answer them. But it seems obvious enough. Two separate groups of white supremacists have been arrested for trying to kill Obama and we consider one of our mandates to talk TO people rather than about them. Duke is the most famous (white) racist in the country, so it seemed appropriate to call him the week after the second assassination plot was made public. We had a conversation about the psychology of racism earlier in the week as well."

Here are some comments from listeners:

I do think we should listen to people who disagree with us ... Thanks for bringing us both sides of issues we may be uncomfortable with...

--LaShanta Harris (LRH)

I vehemently disagree with your decision to give this type of person any outlet to share his racist and hateful views.

--Chris Valentine (cval)

What do you think? --ACS

The election is over. But NPR's audience is still registering its frustration over NPR's presidential coverage. In an experiment, I will be conducting my first online chat about media bias in the election. I encourage participants to read the previous post on bias. The 30-minute chat will begin at 1 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 11.

I would like to encourage people to post questions ahead of time. See you then. ACS

Every day emails, phone calls and letters flood my office. They say basically the same thing about the presidential campaign but each comes from a partisan political perspective.

NPR is biased.

Too much coverage, one side says, is aimed at NPR's obvious goal of getting Sen. Barack Obama elected. "You cover Obama's campaign endlessly," wrote Javad Sarvestani of Los Angeles. "And when you do devote time to John McCain you seem to aim your coverage more at undermining his candidacy than reporting on it."

The other side says that NPR is purposely ignoring Obama and instead only doing stories that reflect well on McCain. "Recently, I have heard several interviews with people who support Senator McCain and I can't remember when, if ever, I have heard a positive interview or report on Senator Obama and the excitement his candidacy has generated," wrote James Summers. "I expect the commercial networks to obfuscate most of the time. I expect more from NPR."

Between June 9 and Oct. 19, 2008 my office received 282 emails specifically accusing NPR of favoring Obama and 252 emails accusing NPR of favoring McCain. Hundreds more insist the network is either too conservative or too liberal in general, and the writers allege specific bias with particular stories.

The volume and frustration from those who claim NPR is biased have troubled me since I became Ombudsman a year ago. Is there a way for me, as an independent voice for the public, to determine if NPR is biased? Instead of getting an answer, I got a lesson in how passionate NPR listeners can be.

The Ombudsman's office decided to study all stories and interviews about the presidential campaign airing on Morning Edition, All Things Considered (ATC) and the corresponding morning and evening weekend shows. We studied 429 campaign stories that aired between Aug. 1 and Sept. 30, a period that covered the two political conventions and the first weeks that followed.

We put each story into one of three categories: It focused primarily on Obama (or his running mate Joe Biden), or on McCain (or his running mate Sarah Palin), or about equally between the two. Our study focused on news coverage in the major shows and did not include commentaries, special convention coverage or newscasts. Click here for PDF with charts.

We found that, overall, NPR shows ran more stories about, and devoted more air time to, McCain and Palin than Obama and Biden.

During August and September, Morning Edition and its weekend equivalents aired 96 stories totaling 6 hours and 5 minutes about McCain-Palin. All Things Considered carried 72 stories in 4 hours and 47 minutes. Overall, these NPR shows focused on the McCain-Palin ticket in a total of 168 stories that covered 10 hours and 52 minutes.

On Obama and Biden, Morning Edition ran 74 stories in 5 hours and 1 minute and ATC ran 72 stories in 4 hours and 6 minutes, for a total of 146 stories that covered 9 hours and 7 minutes.

Of the 429 stories studied, 115 focused about equally on both candidates.

Overall, McCain and Palin got nearly two more hours of air time on NPR than Obama-Biden.

So, do these statistics mean that NPR is biased toward McCain? Or, as I suspect, did McCain's unexpected choice of a little-known running mate mean that NPR journalists spent a lot of time filling in the blanks in a way that was not needed for six-term senator Joe Biden?

"Obviously Palin became the new main focus of the campaign beginning the weekend before the Republican convention and dominating the news for several weeks thereafter," said Ron Elving, senior Washington editor who's in charge of NPR's political coverage.

"I think it's apparent that this coverage was more analytical than promotional, and that Palin was far more of a new subject than Joe Biden or by that stage of the campaign, Obama himself," he continued. "But for this period of time, taking into account all the show elements in addition to the reported pieces, it's not surprising that Republican ticket stories were more common than Democratic."

Elving noted that last winter Obama and Mike Huckabee, who won the Republican Iowa caucus, received more coverage than other candidates because they were new faces.

Palin certainly was a new face. Our study showed that 95 of the 168 stories that NPR did on the Republican ticket focused on Palin. She received 6 hours and 21 minutes of coverage during the two-month period examined -- more time than was devoted to McCain.

It also needs to be said that counting the number of stories or minutes does not necessarily give a complete picture of how a broadcast network covers political candidates. For one thing, a 2-minute piece with riveting tape could pack more of a punch than an 8-minute piece that seems to drone on. Also, story length says nothing about content, and the overall impression it leaves listeners. A piece focusing on negative aspects of a candidate or his campaign obviously can give listeners one impression, while an upbeat piece has the opposite impact.

(A Pew Research Center campaign coverage study last week indicates that across the media McCain got a lot of coverage but 60 percent of it was negative, while Obama's coverage was 29 percent negative. It should be noted that Obama, and later McCain, received negative coverage as each began to drop in the polls.)

While our study is not a scientific one, it provides an illuminating snapshot of NPR's coverage during a two-month period.

But when it comes to core political beliefs, even scientific research may do little to persuade many complaining listeners that NPR isn't biased. It's just the nature of who we are as human beings and our passionate attachment to our core political beliefs.

Philo Wasburn, a Purdue University sociology professor who just co-wrote a book on media bias, knows this well. He told me that research going back to the 1960s shows how difficult, if not impossible, it is to change people's central core beliefs.

"When people are really committed to some ideological position, especially with politics, even if you present them with empirical evidence that supports the opposite of what they believe, they will reject it," said Wasburn. "Core beliefs are very, very resistant to change."

People also are often resistant to accepting statements or information that goes against core beliefs. While it may be inconceivable to Democrats that Palin is qualified to run the country, for example, it is undoubtedly inconceivable to her Republican supporters that Obama is qualified to be president.

Perceptions of bias typically arise when a listener disagrees with something said about a presidential candidate, explains Wasburn. So when listeners hear something they disagree with in, say a perfectly balanced piece about either Obama or McCain, they reflexively decide NPR is biased.

And they often complain to me. But I'm coming to believe that there is little I could say or any evidence I present that would alter either side's perceptions of bias.

"What they are really annoyed about is that something was said about McCain or Obama that they didn't like," said Wasburn. "The person calling in and annoyed with NPR most likely doesn't have scientific evidence. They are annoyed by something said or by some guest. It doesn't matter that their perception is not true. So soldier on. You are not going to change any minds."

Timothy Groseclose is a political science professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who also studies media bias. He and another professor published a study in 2005 that concluded that 18 of the 20 major media outlets studied (including NPR) were left of center, as compared to the average U.S. voter. Only Fox News' Special Report with Brit Hume and The Washington Times scored to the right of the average U.S. voter. (Results are on P. 22 of PDF.)

"By our estimate, NPR hardly differs from the average mainstream news outlet," said Groseclose. "It had the same scores as Time, Newsweek and was slightly less liberal than the Washington Post and well to the right of the New York Times and CBS Evening News. One of the surprising findings is that NPR is not as left as everyone says it is."

Groseclose and co-author Jeffrey Milyo, a University of Missouri economist, published their results in the respected Quarterly Journal of Economics. They took no outside research money to avoid any perceptions of bias. They made sure half their researchers had supported a Democratic presidential candidate and the other half a Republican. Their study was scientific and their methods transparent, so the methods could be tested or duplicated by others.

NPR got a score of 66.3, with 50 being centrist and 100 being most liberal. The Wall Street Journal's news pages (not the well-known conservative editorial pages) got an 85.1 and The New York Times and CBS each got a 73.7.
Although this study shows that NPR is relatively less biased that some other major news organizations, I doubt it will sway those who are convinced that NPR is liberal and pro-Obama -- or those who have the opposite impression that NPR is siding with McCain.

The results didn't sway liberal bloggers either.

"Just Google my name and you will find all kinds of left-wing blogs saying why my study used the worst method ever," said Groseclose. "Now, if I had found that most media outlets have a conservative bias, those same blogs would have said, 'Here's the best method ever and here's a study by a respected scholar.' They don't say that because they don't like the results."

As we near the end of an emotional presidential campaign, it is worthwhile for all of us to inspect our core political beliefs and ask if something we heard on NPR (or any other news media outlet, for that matter) is truly biased or just doesn't jibe with what we believe or what we want to hear.

"Hardly anyone's personal world view or value system is entirely neutral when it comes to questions of public life," said Elving. "But professional journalists take it upon themselves to present what they report with as much neutrality as possible. That is how we are trained."

And while that's an article of faith in the profession, it is another statement that people with strong views -- in this case about the news media -- may not want to hear or accept.
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Chantal de la Rionda, Ahnalese Rushmann and Holley Simmons contributed to this report.