Если уж даже в очень сдержанной, вежливой статье Good, Gray NPR сказано

The vox populi became the voice of the best professionals." Some of those professionals--Nina Totenberg, Cokie Roberts and Linda Wertheimer--had close ties to the Washington establishment. ... Reed Irvine of Accuracy in Media admitted that he felt NPR aired less objectionable material in the 1990s than it did in the 1980s [objectionable for whom? - vs] ... To compensate for diminishing federal support, NPR has been forced to rely on corporations and foundations. In 2002, the last year for which data are easily accessible, NPR accepted $250,000 or more from each of the following corporate "underwriters": Procter & Gamble, Sodexho, Microsoft, Saab, Citibank and the Liberty Mutual Insurance Company. Wal-Mart became an underwriter in 2004. Both NPR and Wal-Mart refuse to disclose the dollar amount. A public radio system that is substantially dependent on corporations will not, in all likelihood, produce a new generation of I.F. Stones, Jessica Mitfords and Sy Hershes to investigate chicanery in corporate America.
...
Bruce Drake, the vice president of news and information, and Barbara Rehm, managing editor. Before coming to NPR, Drake worked at the New York Daily News for twenty-one years. Rehm is a ten-year veteran of the Daily News, after which she spent four years in the early 1990s at Voice of America. Staffers describe them as bureaucrats who possess a narrow political and cultural imagination. For years Drake has opposed the creation of an investigative unit, and NPR is currently without one.

...

"A sterling parable for the new, mature NPR" was James Ledbetter's ironic description of the Abu-Jamal fiasco in his book Made Possible By...).

В общем, длинновато я процитировал, но эту статью всю надо читать ... как центральную "Правду" - подробно и между строк.

See also The Middle Mind by Curtis White and National Starbucks Radio by [yhs] ...

and yes, aldaily goes the same middlerbrow way before our eyes.

Still, even after all this is taken into the account, what would you listen to, you idiot, if there's no docile NPR and God-like WQXR? 1010WINS?  ¶ 9:21 PM