Ombudsman's Report: January 30, 2004
Highlights
- 8,129 e-mails related to NPR and public radio since November 2003.
- Concern about NPR’s Middle East coverage has diminished, but still a concern for many listeners.
- Still some concern about the Terry Gross-Bill O’Reilly interview from October.
- E-mails of congratulation re: the Kroc bequest.
- High level of interest in NPR's political coverage.
- From January 1st, all e-mails on NPR's political coverage are assessed as coming from the left or the right.
- Since January 1st, 2,157 e-mails from listeners who find NPR’s political coverage too conservative.
- Since January 1st, 130 e-mails from listeners who find NPR's political coverage too liberal.
- Increased attention to NPR's political coverage from blog sites such as FAIR, mediawhoresonline.com and commondreams.org.
E-mail by subject
| Ombudsman's Web site column | 743 |
| Accuracy | 5 |
| Bias | 5 |
| Gross/O'Reilly | 164 |
| Day To Day | 20 |
| General inquiries (tapes, transcripts, etc.) | 361 |
| Internet Hoaxes | 2 |
| Ombudsman's inquiries | 9 |
| Ideas/Suggestions/Commentaries | 167 |
| Kroc Bequest | 185 |
| Ethics Guide | 78 |
| Legal | 32 |
| Middle East coverage | 752 |
| NPR/hosts/program comments | 2,145 |
| Online | 112 |
| Politics (Nov-Dec) | 853 |
 Too conservative |
2,144 |
| Too liberal |
130 |
| Station issues | 130 |
| Underwriting/funding/pledge drives | 79 |
| Total | 8,129 |
Jeffrey Dvorkin
Office of the Ombudsman
January 30, 2004
