Radio for only some of the nation’s public

NPR has made a lot of its listeners mad.

Apparently, at the end of February, the NPR program “Morning Edition” took the unusual move of airing four consecutive days of interviews with conservative thinkers in a segment they dubbed “Conversations with Conservatives.”

Sounds reasonable. Too bad it’s “unusual” to be reasonable. But look at what happened…

According to NPR ombudsman Alicia Shepard, more than 60 angry e-mails and phone calls arrived at the network, calling the programming “shameful” and a “lovefest with radical, right-wing nuts.” There were only a few, she said, that praised the series as “refreshing” and “articulate,” among other things.

Thank goodness for those few open minds.

And here is the main point. The NPR audience would not have gotten so exercised against this scant few hours that NPR devoted to a conservative viewpoint if that audience hadn’t become assured by past programming that they wouldn’t be accosted by those views inimical to leftist group think.

NPR may have seemed surprised by the negative response to their foray to the right, but no one who has heard the constantly left leaning content of NPR should be. After all, when one creates an audience based on programming that is just so, one should not be surprised when programming that deviates from that past record upsets the regulars.

Here’s what I think the main point is. People tend to gravitate toward the media that reflects their own views either completely, or most reliably. And media tend to push an agenda that reflects a largely liberal worldview, which they don’t think is biased. They think that’s just the way it is or should be in the world. We would advance the cultural mindset and political performance level in this nation if we call things what they are, know what we believe and why, and look for civilized debate that exchanges ideas backed by reason.

That would change everything. Can we actually do this? Yes, we can.

In fact, we can make today Day One.