FAIR recently released another one of their always useful studies, this time on NPR. Are they liberal? Conservative?

Elite sources dominated NPR�s guest-list. These sources�including government officials, professional experts and corporate representatives�accounted for 64 percent of all sources.

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…At least 83 percent of journalists appearing on NPR in June 2003 were employed by commercial U.S. media outlets, many at outlets famous for influencing news- room agendas throughout the country (16 from the New York Times alone, and another seven from the Washington Post). Only five sources came from independent news outlets like the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and the National Catholic Reporter.

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Despite the commonness of such claims, little evidence has ever been presented for a left bias at NPR, and FAIR�s latest study gives it no support. Looking at partisan sources�including government officials, party officials, campaign workers and consultants�Republicans outnumbered Democrats by more than 3 to 2 (61 percent to 38 percent). A majority of Republican sources when the GOP controls the White House and Congress may not be surprising, but Republicans held a similar though slightly smaller edge (57 percent to 42 percent) in 1993, when Clinton was president and Democrats controlled both houses of Congress. And a lively race for the Democratic presidential nomination was beginning to heat up at the time of the 2003 study.

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FAIR classified each think tank by ideological orientation as either centrist, right of center or left of center. Representatives of think tanks to the right of center outnumbered those to the left of center by more than four to one: 62 appearances to 15. Centrist think tanks provided sources for 56 appearances.

NPR has a pretty good response:

FAIR refers to The Brookings Institution as a “centrist” think tank. This is, in my opinion, a trickily subjective adjective. Many would consider Brookings to be a solidly liberal organization whose scholars and pundits are frequently heard on NPR.

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Other think tanks whose experts are interviewed on NPR do not lend themselves to easy categorization. The Council on Foreign Relations has both conservatives and liberals. So does the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

My study showed that NPR interviewed 33 think-tank experts and only four came from explicitly conservative think tanks. Three came from think tanks that have a liberal reputation — although they don’t describe themselves as such. Most of the experts and other interviewees in this study don’t easily lend themselves to a handy political label or shorthand.

Since we don’t have FAIR’s characterizations, it’s hard to really say on the think-tank thing, but NPR has a valid argument. This, however, is what kind of bothered me:

Second, the FAIR study looks only at the experts. My study also looked at who else was being interviewed. It found that NPR has interviewed far more academics than think-tank pundits. While the Academy is hardly immune from ideology, it does, in my opinion, show that NPR is not relying completely on the usual Washington, D.C. suspects. Many critics on the right often point to Daniel Schorr as NPR’s “liberal commentator in residence.” Dan would dispute that description and FAIR never mentions him at all.

Now, here’s what FAIR said:

FAIR�s study recorded every on-air source quoted in June 2003 on four National Public Radio news shows: All Things Considered, Morning Edition, Weekend Edition Saturday and Week-end Edition Sunday. Each source was classified by occupation, gender, nationality and partisan affiliation. Altogether, the study counted 2,334 quoted sources, featured in 804 stories.

Seems to conflict. FAIR says they recorded EVERY source, NPR says just the “experts,” though it’s not really clear what they mean.