I know people love to talk about bias in the news — and I agree, the major cable news channels definitely have their biases. CNN skews liberal; Fox skews conservative. That much I’ll agree with.

My disagreement is about NPR … I vehemently DO NOT agree that NPR is inherently liberal, even though I know the more conservative amongst us love to claim so. I once got an extremely conservative (ex-)boyfriend a one-year membership to KERA, Dallas’s local NPR station, as a Christmas present … to his outward vocal displeasure. However, in private and under the cloak of anonymity, he’ll tell you that KERA is a fantastic service for the well informed among us. I believe to my core that NPR is one of the very few remaining news outlets that genuinely attempts to be neutral, that optimistically reaches for objectivity. The Downing Street memo was virtually unmentioned by mainstream media, but NPR devoted an hour (”the most annoying hour in radio” — on the Diane Rehm show) to it. Regardless of the veracity of the Downing Street memo, didn’t it deserve mention? Not to mention analysis? Apparently, that kind of objective, critical coverage earns NPR the label of liberalism.

Alright, I know liberals listen to NPR more than conservatives. But I also know that liberals, as a group, seem (to me) to worry themselves more with international issues that simply don’t get covered by mainstream media. The Republican agenda in Washington right now is focused on a few primary concerns: confirming conservative judges; passing controversial Social Security reforms; and then I just read this today about the fact that America’s skewing right on abortion again (erg).

My point is that there’s not a lot of room in the Republican agenda for worry about what’s happening outside our borders. Unless, of course, it involves spending billions of dollars in Iraq — they, they’re all too happy to fast-track any request coming out of the White House.

I detest the fact that Americans seem all too apathetic about our world — or, hell, our country. I also believe that the ignorant populace is what results in bad candidates, not bad elected officeholders. When only the rich and the passionate are involved in primaries, we get polarizing, ineffective leaders on the ballot. I hate that.

As you suggest, Matt, I do purposefully seek out opinions of those who disagree with me — more so, even, than I listen to those who think along my lines. I fundamentally believe that if you can listen (and I mean REALLY listen) to your philosophical opponents and still come away believing what you did before, you’re in good shape. It’s the people who avoid cognitive dissonance by ignoring all opinions other than ones like their own who frighten me. But then, that’s why I’ve always avoided (sorry if this offends you) Baptist churches. I just cannot respect people who don’t think for themselves.

Unfortunately, that’s the vast majority of America today … and that’s why I fear that someday, the few of us who do care may have NO outlet for news that’s not proud to be biased. For me, NPR’s one of the few left.

How’d we get here? I’d say by choice. Back in the days of Walter Cronkite (one of my heroes, btw), people had only three choices in nightly news programs, and they listened to those news shows daily. Nowadays, we can opt out of major news by flipping to another of our hundreds of channels; the nightly news is no longer a must-see TV offering. Is this inherently bad? I dunno. I’m all for choice. It’s just sad to acknowledge that, when given a choice, most people don’t care to know what’s going on.

We’ve made it easy in this country to ignore what’s happening in our world, and that’s the real shame, I think.