[karaterobot]

Well, for any future archaeologists reading this, please know that This American Life was a great show that was made for a specific audience, by a specific set of creators, and it absolutely did not represent the breadth of life in America at the turn of the 21st century. This was a common mistake: thinking a rather small niche was universal because it's what you see. It led to a lot of surprises.

[j_bum]

Just to push to have you expand your counterpoint, what other views of American life would you want to see that they haven’t covered?

[timr]

I'm not on the political right, but it's plain that they don't give it equal time.

I don't expect the audience cares very much about this, though, which is sort of to OPs implied point. We've reached a place where each side of the political spectrum is not only happily ignorant of the other side's good points, but in fact, fearful of even having the discussion. If you go too far afield from the party line, you will be punished, and public radio (along with non-public radio, cable, broadcast news, and most other forms of legacy media) is a shrinking market, unwilling to alienate the core audience.

(The shorthand term for this is "audience capture", and IMO, This American Life has a death grip on a very particular sort of audience, which even if you set partisan politics aside, is representative only of itself.)

[BeetleB]

> I'm not on the political right, but it's plain that they don't give it equal time.

OP said it's a "slice", not a "statistically accurate representation". I think his intent was to say "They cover everything", not "They cover everything in due proportion".

And, BTW, I've yet to find any show (news or entertainment) that is even close to being statistically accurate representation of society. Such shows will not survive - not enough people will listen.

[timr]

See my reply to the sibling comment. I don't know what a "statistically accurate representation of society" would be, nor do I hold that up as my standard here.

> Such shows will not survive - not enough people will listen.

Well yes, exactly. TAL has an editorial voice, it's clear what that voice is (even if it's difficult to describe in conventional political terms), but it's not inaccurate to say that the voice is left of center. Moreover, it must be, because that is the market for the show.

[j_bum]

This is a good counterpoint that I hadn’t considered, honestly.

That even if a show is apolitical (or mostly apolitical like TAL), it will inherently have some political bias because the creators are inherently biased.

This will create a “niche” for the show, whether it’s intentional or not. Thanks for expanding my perspective on this.

Reminds me of a recent quote from a scientist interviewed by the NYT, who said that science is inherently political, because the system and people it’s built on are political.

[throwawayqqq11]

Its not just about the creators bias. Any communication needs to be interpreted by sender and reciever and when that interpretation differs, communication starts to fail.

Recievers of such messages might see it as political when you speak about covid/masks, climate change, etc. no matter how hard you try to be unbiased. Unfortunately, anything can be a political symbol and you can either choose to accept their bias and avoid the symbol to stay "apolitical" or accept the "niche" you have been put into.

"99% of climatologist agree on ... yet, joining us, guru shananda, opposing it with equal air time" is a noble but net-negative attempt to address that bias.

[timr]

> That even if a show is apolitical (or mostly apolitical like TAL), it will inherently have some political bias because the creators are inherently biased.

I agree, but I'd extend with one other observation: a show can be rigorously unbiased in its coverage of any particular topic, but extremely biased in the decision of what to cover. The "editorial whitespace" is almost invisible, but perhaps more important than what gets covered. If you never cover the good points of the other side, its easier to make them look like uneducated extremists.

For example, while writing one of the other comments on this thread I wondered what a "TAL for conservatives" would look like, and it started to become interesting. While I'm sure that a great many people on the right would initially react harshly to the stereotypical affectations of TAL (tinkly emo music, emotional narratives, soft speech, etc.), you could easily imagine a show where you borrowed this style, and applied it to stories about families losing their multi-generation business to overregulation, bureaucratic interactions with big government, veterans affairs, etc. It could even be quite powerful, because there's clearly a human story that drives all forms of political belief.

TAL touches on some of this, but I bet there's more than enough content to fill a TAL-sized niche on the right.

[teaearlgraycold]

I love hearing good points from opponents. I live on this earth to learn and those are some of the better learning moments.

[spondylosaurus]

They do talk to conservatives a lot though. Many recent episodes interviewed Trump voters and sent reporters to Republican rallies to hear those "good points" from the source...

[timr]

Yeah, I didn't say they never cover them. They do it -- to their credit -- and I'd even go so far as to say that they're one of the more balanced programs on public radio.

But they're still far from actually balanced. As a frequent listener, I'd characterize their overall coverage of conservatives as "a bemused, curious foreign tourist".

[watwut]

Balanced does not mean nor should mean "actively making them look better and hiding ugly parts".

[timr]

No, it means "balanced". You shouldn't hide the ugly parts, but you should report on the good arguments of the opposition -- as well as the ugly parts of your own team. Both the left and the right have good arguments and bad arguments, and if you don't believe that, you're misinformed.

Partisans would much rather that they only hear about the ugly parts of the opposition, and never hear about the ugly parts of their own tribe.

[ethbr1]

To be fair, it's getting more difficult to find erudite, well-spoken enunciation of mainstream conservative views these days.

Mostly because the people who would be able to do that have "chosen" to retire.

[stevenwoo]

The spouses of MAGA husbands sounded like abuse victims or hostages in that one episode.

[watwut]

Meh, what was actually missing in media was accurate representation of political right goals.

Their good points are repeated all the time and their bad ppints are sanewashed. Their really bad points are ignored and you are called names when you accursately deacribe them. Until actually get their way at which point we blame the democrats for not opposing them strongly enough or for being supposed cause of backslash.

But, media and shows are afraid to show conservatives truthfully or in truly critical way.

[cryzinger]

I think TAL is pretty good about this, particularly when it comes to showing the actual fallout from various policies being implemented. And it's not strictly partisan (one of the stories I linked to in my writeup is about sex workers who were harmed by SESTA-FOSTA, which had plenty of Democratic support) or strictly negative, but obviously a lot of... serious and controversial policies have been implemented in the past few years so those get a fair bit of airtime.

In any case I think the "going and talking to real people" storytelling method is hard to beat. Just a couple weeks ago they did some stories about the immediate impacts of USAID cuts. And their episode about the "remain in Mexico" policy for asylum-seekers won the first-ever Pulitzer prize for radio reporting!

[stevenwoo]

Different program but on same network, Planet Money often covers economics from the perspective of neoliberalism or establishment in short digestible episodes.