I was surprised this morning to hear NARAL (the National Abortion Rights Action League) listed among the sponsors of NPR’s “Morning Edition.”

It’s not news that NPR swings left, but taking money from a very left-wing advocacy organization puts them in a compromising position. It presents the appearance of being buy-able, even if there is no actual change in NPR’s behavior.

I would argue the same if they took money from the National Rifle Association.

There is a difference here, I think, between commercial media accepting money from advertisers and NPR’s relationship with sponsors. In the former, the advertiser pays their money and gets a 30 second spot or a page, and all parties — the media, the advertiser, and the consumer — understand the transaction. ‘Sponsorship’ is fuzzier.

But what exactly is NARAL trying to do with NPR? People donate money to advocacy groups expecting that it will be spent trying to achieve the outcome they want, whether it be abortion rights or the right to bear arms. When an advocacy group gives money to NPR to sponsor programming, one has to assume that they are doing so in the expectation that it will advance their cause. Otherwise they are wasting their contributor’s money.

NPR says that funding never influences their editorial product. But it sounds like a relationship where the girl thinks they’re just friends, but the guy wants something more (Billy Crystal in “When Harry Met Sally”: “No man can be friends with a woman that he finds attractive. He always wants to have sex with her.”).

In this case, NPR says NARAL just believes in the mission of public radio. Sure they do. NPR should be prepared to break off the ‘friendship’ when NARAL gets a little too grabby.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 18th, 2005 at 11:27 pm by A Senior Administration Official and is filed under Brilliant, but uncategorizable. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.