Is NPR still unbiased programming

[Miya]

Ok so perhaps this is more of a rant but I wanted to put it out to everyone.

I've been listening to the NPR programs pretty much since I came to this country and most people seem to hold this organization is high esteem. I myself feel it covers much more detail than eyecandy CNN (though really pales in comparison to BBC and Al Jazeera).

Yesterday I heard this program about being able to extract natural gas from shale rock and how that will ease the dependence on foreign oil. At first I thought well that's a good thing. Then it turned when they were saying that water was needed to blast the shale apart to extract the gas and I started thinking about the fact that water is a pretty precious commodity and worldwide there is a great shortage of drinkable water so this point rather bugged me that these companies would use our water just to extract this natural gas and sell it back to us. OK..first irritation covered.

A while after the program finishes NPR starts with their "supported in part by" section (their advertising which I thought went against their charter but anyway) and I hear them say that funding is provided by the American Natural Gas Alliance and another flag went off. Now to me to putting the two together is making me think the news story (and NPR by default) was just a big advertisement for this association under the guise of "news." Does this bother anyone else? I mean if they do this kind of thing (and I just happened to be listening to hear both things) how many other "news" stories like this do they do while being funded by an entity with interest in getting more attention?

Sorry for the rant but it really bothered me.

[Miya]

Oh and an aside note. I realize many people may not have interest in this but having a background in mech. engineering I tend to pay attention to issues like this. Now I work at corporate intercultural communication but have in the past actually refused a project where I felt morally opposed to the business practices of the company involved.

[WildChild]

I've noticed this too with NPR and PBS, there is more of a blurp at the beginning or end that is like advertising and they aren't always "unbiased" programs but perhaps the assumptions is a more eurdite audience that will sort through it?

My state went through the oil shale controversy in the 70s (we've got mountains of it) when a group of Texas oil men wanted to start extracting it from the Rockies and there are a lot of problems. The waste is of greater volume than in situ rock, it takes a lot of water which we are in especially short supply of in the west and unless they have come up with some markedly different technology, it takes more energy to extract than it produces. That's just a sliver of the picture. What really raised hackels here, as I recall, was one of the "benefits" they tried to sell us, that yes, they would tear down entire mountains and then they would fill in some canyons between with the waste and give us some nice flat building land!
NOT!

[LanaBear]

To be honest, I don't think there is ANY unbiased news programming anymore. It's sad really.

And the great peak oil discussion... Unfortunately there are a lot of uninformed people regarding this topic and everyone has their own expert opinion as to where an abundance of oil is at, how to get at it that isn't going to cost more than the product itself and when exactly will we as a world "peak". A lot of people think it is an unlimited commodity.

[rcoreyus]

I agree that there really aren't unbiased news sources - just need to collect information from various sources and then apply your own bias.

Energy policy is always going to require trade-offs. Fossil fuel will produce CO2 and global warming issues. Nuclear has weapons proliferation issues. Fusion will be very expensive (if it ever works). Solar is expensive and dirty to fabricate. Wind requires dedicating very large land areas to energy production. Tidal will damage coastal ecosystems. Hydro power drowns large land areas. We just need to choose between evils.

FWIW, I prefer large scale nuclear, with the military used to prevent fissionable materials from being stolen.

[Miya]

I agree that there's probably few if any unbiased sources but NPR acts like they are and seem very deceptive about their practice of "partners." At least with CNN BBC and Al Jazeera you know for certain they are funded by their advertisers and partially subsidized by their governments.

As far as energy sources and availability goes, it's reasonably clear that if humanity continues on its present course of population increase, we WILL eventually run out of fossil fuels. Unfortunately as recoreyus said there has to be a trade-off somewhere.

Even with cars that run on hydrogen fuel cells only producing water vapor, the problem is that preparing the hydrogen for fuel is is terribly detrimental in the pollution it produces. They just don't mention that part that often.

[LanaBear]

As far as energy sources and availability goes, it's reasonably clear that if humanity continues on its present course of population increase, we WILL eventually run out of fossil fuels. Unfortunately as recoreyus said there has to be a trade-off somewhere.

Even with cars that run on hydrogen fuel cells only producing water vapor, the problem is that preparing the hydrogen for fuel is is terribly detrimental in the pollution it produces. They just don't mention that part that often.

Completely agree. You have people like Matt Savinar who are trying to get the point across by scaring the jeepers out of people, which turn a lot of people off and cause them to turn a deaf ear. Good lord, have you seen End of Suburbia? But then you have the people, most politicians, not wanting to scare, but fail to inform as well.

LOL - hydrogen fuel cell. Yeah, to the consumer it's all great. They don't know that they are just moving the emissions up stream so to speak.

[WildChild]

Rcoryus is right that everything has it's down side. We have weigh the costs and options and look at the whole picture and what will be most workable in one area isn't at all in another. I don't like the idea of any thing that requres military protection to be viable.

We need to work more on zero or positive energy building to cut demand while maintaining quality of life.

I like Mother Jones as a news source. It's interesting to read papers from different parts of the world, you do get a very different picture.

[sourpuss]

A few years back npr was doing a lot of scathing stories on Walmart....then suddenly, like over night, the stories became more 'balanced' (to put it nicely) more, like fluff. And what do you know, at the very same time Walmart became a sponsor of npr.
I've listened to npr religiously for over a decade and I will continue to but I was very disheartened by their willingness to roll over for sponsorship. But at the same time I do realize that they are free radio and need the funds to survive. So it's a catch-22 sometimes.

I still think they are the most neutral and in-depth of any US news source.

[rcoreyus]

Hydrogen = Coal. It is just a way to distract the environmentalists without fixing the real problem.