I’m in favor National Public Radio (NPR) losing its federal funding.

It’s not for the reasons you may think. I am not a tea-party conservative railing against NPR’s supposed liberal tilt. To the contrary, I am solidly planted on the left side of the fence. Still, when all is said and done, I believe NPR will be better off if it frees itself from the shackles of its federal support.

NPR states that “While NPR does not receive any direct federal funding, it does receive a small number of competitive grants from CPB and federal agencies like the Department of Education and the Department of Commerce. This funding amounts to approximately 2% of NPR’s overall revenues.”

According to other information on NPR’s website, NPR’s total revenue for 2010 was around $180,000,000. Two percent of this amounts $3.6 million. This is nothing to sneeze at. But there’s a cost to accepting this money, a cost that I believe is untenable in the current political climate.

The cost is that it pressures NPR into potentially ill-advised decisions in an attempt to appear politically neutral. In the end, this attempt too often works against the very goal it seeks. They wind up distorting news coverage rather than maintaining a balance.

Attempting to appease the right is a lose-lose battle in any case. No matter what NPR does (short of putting Glenn Beck in charge of programming), conservatives will maintain their belief that NPR favors progressives. Meanwhile, progressives are nearly equally disgruntled that NPR isn’t as liberal as its critics complain. “If only it were so,” they lament.

The problem is that “balanced” coverage does not equate to always giving both sides of a debate equal time and consideration. Rather, it means that you do your best not to let personal biases influence what you cover and how you cover it.

If one side of debate consistently presents false arguments while the other stays closer to the truth, the media should make this clear. You aren’t being “fair” to your listeners by giving both sides equal time (such as by interviewing both a Republican and a Democratic senator) with little or no challenge to what they are saying. In other words, when someone makes a claim that Barack Obama is not really a U.S. citizen, assuming you decide to cover this lunacy at all, you don’t just say “Thank you, and now for an opposing view…” You challenge the lunacy. You offer a critical assessment, based on the facts.

To be clear, I like NPR. It is the only radio or TV news media that I consistently listen to. And they do often follow exactly what I recommend. But not as much as I believe they should. Or would, if they were not worried about public perception, political fallout, accusations of bias and potential loss of federal funding.

Of course, to be fair, I believe you should do this for both sides of the political spectrum. However, there is reason to believe that this will cast conservatives in a negative light more often than progressives. As pointed out in a Mother Jones article:

“It all raises the question: Do left and right differ in any meaningful way when it comes to biases in processing information, or are we all equally susceptible? There are some clear differences. Science denial today is considerably more prominent on the political right—once you survey climate and related environmental issues, anti-evolutionism, attacks on reproductive health science by the Christian right, and stem-cell and biomedical matters. More tellingly, anti-vaccine positions are virtually nonexistent among Democratic officeholders today—whereas anti-climate-science views are becoming monolithic among Republican elected officials.”

If this means that a media outlet will be critical of Republicans more often than Democrats, so be it. This is not being biased. It’s being honest.

Actually, as I’ve already indicated, even if NPR offered such critical analyses equally for Republicans and Democrats, it would still be accused of bias by conservatives. That’s because conservatives apparently view even the slightest challenge, however reasonable, as an attack on their entire political viewpoint. A crystal clear example of this came up in a recent segement of NPR’s On the Media that asked “Does NPR have a liberal bias?”

During the show, an interview of Intel CEO Paul Ortellini by NPR’s Michele Norris was raised by a conservative spokesperson. In the interview, Otellini proposed a tax holiday for any company that built a new factory in the U.S. Norris replied, “Can this country afford that right now?” This was taken as proof (as also cited in other conservative media, such as a newsbusters.org article) of NPR’s “liberal bias.”

Say what? Ms. Norris was simply asking a question that anyone who potentially had the slightest disagreement with the CEO’s proposal would have asked. This is what journalists do. It’s called doing their job. Mr. Ortellini was given an opportunity to respond — fully and with respect. What’s wrong with that? [As an aside, how many times has Bill O’Reilly interrupted, cut off, yelled out and insulted someone on his show whom he disagreed with? If you’re looking for bias, why not start there?] The presumption is that Ms. Norris would have asked a similar question if she later interviewed someone who claimed the solution to our economic problems was to radically raise taxes on all U.S. corporations. Her response would likely be along the lines of: “Can the country afford that right now? Might it not lead to more corporations leaving the U.S. to go overseas?” This would not represent a conservative bias — just as the question asked to Mr. Ortellini did not represent a liberal bias.

I can only assume that people weaned on Fox News have come to believe that the only way for a media outlet to appear “balanced” is to never challenge positions conservatives support while always attacking the ones they oppose. Although not as extreme, MSNBC viewers can be guilty of the same transgressions for liberal positions. Maybe in cable news’ universe, that’s how things work. But that’s not a yardstick worth picking up. In such an Orwellian universe, fairness becomes evidence of bias.

Ira Glass made some of these same points in his defense of NPR. But the question remains, what should NPR do beyond making a spirited defense? If the choice ever comes down to sacrificing sound principles of journalism in order to maintain federal funding, then it’s time to abandon federal funding. Perhaps we’re not quite at this point yet. By why push it? Unless NPR could not survive without the federal funding, it is time to seriously consider whether it’s worth keeping. I vote no.

Whenever I hear a claim of “fact,” or any sort of debatable assertion, my first caution is to “consider the source.” I’m not alone here. This is something we all do, at least to some extent. When we know that a claim has a self-serving bias, we add the appropriate measure of salt.

The veracity of Bob’s assertion that “Brenda is a selfish two-timing bitch” should obviously be tempered by the knowledge that Brenda just yesterday dumped Bob as her boyfriend.

Searching for a good plumber, you may happen to catch Joyce’s tweet that “Peter’s Plumbing is the best in town.” However, your faith in her recommendation will be sharply diminished if you discover that Peter is Joyce’s brother-in-law and that she gets a commission for all referrals.

And so it goes. You should always consider the source before passing judgement.

This is one huge reason why the current rules regarding political advertising desperately need to be fixed. With the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling, corporations are not only free to spend almost unlimited amounts of money on attack ads, they can do so without revealing who paid for the ad. In other words, citizens have lost their critical ability to “consider the source.” This is especially critical when you consider that the majoity of these ads have been rated as “untrue” by organizations such as factcheck.org.

What can be done about this?

For one thing, we can push for new legislation and rulings that requires greater transparency regarding political advertisements. As noted in today’s San Francisco Chronicle, one such ruling by the state’s Fair Political Practices Commission will accomplish this.

Unfortunately, it does not take effect until after this year’s election — and it only affects California.

Fortunately, there’s something effective YOU can do right now — whatever the rules may be. You can refuse to believe, be influenced by, or pay any attention to political ads — especially attack ads. This is not as difficult as it may sound. But it will take a bit of discipline. Personally, I have decided to stop listening to all news programs on television until after the election — from local news to ABC News to CNN and beyond. By doing so, I not only miss all the accompanying ads, I also avoid any discussion of the ads that might crop up during the program itself. For other programming, I use my DVR to record shows, so I can skip over any ads that show up there. Despite all this, an occasional ad still slips through — which I do my best to ignore.

If we all did this, political ads on television would become worthless. If politicians wanted our attention, they’d have to change their way of doing business. I’m too much of a realist to believe that we’ll see this happen any time soon. But I’m willing to start the ball rolling. How about you?

What a great time to be a Congressional Democrat! Buoyed by President Obama’s immense popularity, Senators and Representatives are expected to ride the President’s coat tails to victories this November. By the time it’s all over, Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress should be even greater than they are today.

How did we get here? Democrats in Congress deserve much of the credit themselves, for the passage of several significant pieces of legislation even in the face of Republican opposition. But the ultimate credit belongs to the President, who has successfully navigated the Party through the difficult waters of the past two years.

Economy

Let’s start at the bottom: the economy. Yes, the economy is still in trouble (even though we just learned that the recession officially ended in June 2009). Unemployment is still far too high.

Still, Obama gets credit for saving our economy from a far worse near-certain disaster. Thanks to the President’s “financial stimulus package,” the situation today is far better than it would have otherwise been. At least that’s the consensus among economists, both progressive and conservative. If anything, their most common criticism has been that the stimulus did not go far enough.

Even the government “bail-out” of Chrysler and General Motors, which met with very mixed reviews at the time, now looks very smart — as these companies are out of bankruptcy and well on the road to recovery. And the taxpayers are expected to recoup their investment.

As if that was not enough, Obama led the way to the passage of the most significant financial reform legislation in decades. Among other things, it establishes a Consumer Protection Agency — which should allow the government to better serve as a consumer advocate against corporations. It also limits many of the recent excesses of banks, providing tighter controls of derivative sales and credit card fees. Overall, this is a huge win for the average American.

It doesn’t stop there. The Senate recently passed a long-stalled measure “to aid small businesses with tax breaks and expanded credit, a victory for President Obama after the bill was stalled for months by Republican opposition.” (NYT)

On a related front, President Obama continues his efforts to eliminate tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans.

Health Care

Probably the best place to look for the reasons behind Obama’s popularity is health care reform. Thanks to the passage of this landmark legislation, Americans can no longer be denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions or because of a change in their employment. Plus, millions of Americans who have never been able to afford insurance will now be covered. This is something that has been sought by Presidents, both Democrat and Republican, for more than a century. It took Obama to finally achieve this success. And he did so despite nearly universal opposition from a Republican party that was determined to do everything possible to undermine its passage.

Foreign Policy

While foreign policy has not been at the forefront of this year’s election debates, it’s worth noting that Obama has done admirably well here.

Fulfilling a campaign promise, he has pulled all combat troops out of Iraq — winding down a war that the public has long since wanted to see end.

Afghanistan remains a more difficult problem. Still, Obama has followed through on his campaign pledge to increase troop levels there as part of an overall strategy to stabilize — and ultimately improve — the position there. In his firing of General Stanley McChrystal and replacing him with General David Patraeus, Obama handled an awkward situation with the sort of leadership that even drew praise from Republicans.

Finally, he has rekindled hopes for a peace settlement in the Mideast by getting both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to meet for negotiations earlier this month.

Supreme Court

In less than two years in office, President Obama has successfully navigated the potentially treacherous political waters of Supreme Court nominations to have not just one but two nominees appointed to the bench. He did this despite the fact that both nominees, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, carried the potential “political liabilities” of being women and from minority ethnic backgrounds — and (yet again) faced almost universal Republican opposition.

Republicans

Not all of the expected success of Democrats this fall is due to the achievements of Obama and the Democratic Party. They have been helped by the failure of Republicans. While neither political party is winning much praise right now, national polls consistently show that Republicans are even less popular than Democrats. They continue to be hurt by their reputation as the “party of no” — intent on blocking anything that Democrats attempt to do, yet offering no alternative vision of their own. And the far right’s views on social issues — such as abortion, gay marriage, religion in schools, and immigration — remain outside of the mainstream.

Obviously, not everything that Obama has done has met with overwhelming approval. Voters remain especially angry about the economy, as they see deficits rising and unemployment not going down. But voters are wise enough to know that Obama’s policies are not the primary causes of these problems. More to the point, Obama is doing much to improve matters. In contrast, Republicans represent a return to the policies that led us down this road in the first place. In the end, this is why Obama and the Democrats will emerge as the big winners come election night this November.

This column was written in an alternate universe. While all the achievements cited here are factually true, it is only in the alternate universe that these achievements have translated into popularity and political success for Obama and the Democrats. In the “real” universe, the situation is quite different.

Unfortunately, for all Americans, we do not live in this alternate universe.