They practice the worst type of disinformation. Correct most of the time but when it really counts they publish incorrect propaganda (eg wmds in Iraq).
Breitbart has an interesting theory on this:
Present your bias, and admit your publication has a world view, because even NPR has a world view.
Nobody is unbiased, so stop trying to be unbiased, and present how you see it. Then, a real reader will go to multiple "view points" and gather their own opinion.
But this isn’t novel; anyone who’s read a few different newspapers in the same week (a “real reader”, in your words) can easily get a feel for differences in editorial ‘bias’/agenda between news organizations.
The problem is that being a “real reader” has a time and attention cost, and it’s relatively boring compared to picking a circle of political reality stars, and gorging on “hot takes” and outrage.
+1. I do wish NPR is fully publicly funded and gets some degree of medium term immunity from the current legislative and executive branch (media as a fourth branch of government / res publica?).
Now it's just a mouth piece for rich donors but has 'public' in its name for marketing.