Bias at NPR: RGF’s own story
Recently a long-time NPR executive made waves with his story of how NPR “lost its way” ideologically. Of course, while media outlets can choose to be liberal, conservative, or as centrist as possible, we know NPR receives federal funding. One of the local NPR stations KUNM is housed at University of New Mexico while KANW is owned by Albuquerque Public Schools. KSFR (Santa Fe’s NPR station) is housed at Santa Fe Community College.
RGF is philosophically opposed to federal, state, or local tax dollars being used to fund media outlets, but we also believe that over the years their left-wing bent as grown more pronounced. RGF used to do a great deal with KUNM, sometimes KSFR would request interviews, and we’ve appeared in public forums at KANW.
KUNM had a weekly call-in show for years (maybe they still do) in which RGF would often serve as the “token” conservative voice among 2-3 other panelists (and moderator). Here’s one of those which discussed “net neutrality.” But for a time at KUNM RGF had the opportunity to do brief commentaries on issues we were working on. We discussed: capital outlay, corporate welfare, and the federal government’s finances.
Sadly, KUNM hasn’t called us in years and while we have had an opportunity to do election night coverage for KSFR in Santa Fe, we haven’t heard from them in awhile for a news story either. Again, we don’t NEED to have public media call on us, but they ARE taxpayer-supported and should be balanced in their reporting. The recent story about NPR highlights the leftward drift we’ve seen in New Mexico.