It's brand advertising itself, precisely to give the impression of 'being funded by listeners like you.' NPR has navigated trust far better than average for the media. A quick search shows some 54% trust in them, contrasted against 28% for the media at large.
When media runs non-stop pharmaceutical ads you obviously question their motivation when reporting on pharmaceutical adjacent topics, which are almost invariably neutral to positive. Yet when NPR runs non-stop Walmart articles [1], often in a neutral to positive fashion, most are unaware that they've received millions of dollars from the Waltons.
And FWIW those millions the Waltons have given aren't that much relative to their overall funding, but if you saw an equivalent amount of annual advertising from the Waltons on NPR, you'd certainly be looking at those articles from a different perspective than somebody who's unaware of said funding.
>It's brand advertising itself...
It's interesting that this is the label you give for that behavior. A more optimistic take is this is just journalistic ethics. I guess it all depends on how much you trust NPR, but like you said "some 54% trust in them, contrasted against 28% for the media at large". The nature of your description suggests you might be in the 46% and almost certainly in that 72%.
I agree. When I listen to NPR, I don’t ever get the feeling that they’re trying to sell me something from Walmart, prop up Walmart’s stock, get the Walton family out of a bind, or chase some special interest specific to their family.
NPR, PBS, PRI, unaffiliated local stations, media not owned by large companies, etc. may not push conservative talking points, but they offer a sometimes differ point of view that is interesting or worth exploring. How terrible is that?
When I listen to NPR, I know what their angle will be regarding almost every topic that comes up. I used to listen to them frequently, but they're too ideological, something that people that agree with them often fail to see. There used to be more nuance 30 years ago, the discussions smarter. It's now boring because it's predictable.
I disagree with you but damn I don't get the downvotes. Every news org has an angle, and that angle often (but not always) follows revenue. I like to believe that NPR's angle follows the revenue they generate from their listeners. All that said, I don't listen to them either and only occasionally read the site. The best public radio news comes from the local reporters anyway.
I didn't downvote, but if I did downvote, I might do it because: middle ground is a fallacy. Or, rather, middle ground being more correct than extremes is a fallacy.
The idea that, on every issue, there are two extremes and the "right" answer is somewhere in the middle is just sort of made up. It makes a lot of sense, though.
If I say China is 1 mile away from the US and you say it's 1 billion miles away, then the answer is probably somewhere in the middle. It makes sense. Except, the middle is not constant. The middle is constantly moving. What was middle 10 years ago is no longer so. What was middle in Confucius' time is no longer so.
If you take a look at history, you'll notice the people in the middle are almost always wrong. The 3/5ths compromise is the perfect example of this middle ground fallacy. Well... that turned out to be wrong, very wrong.
It's possible NPR hasn't changed their positioning at all, but rather, the window has shifted and now what was previously middling is now "extreme". But they could have been right all along. It happens sometimes. There were people around during the 3/5ths compromise who wanted no slavery at all. They were right!
Then the honest, fair option is to not fund NPR. And not Fox or anyone else using taxpayer money.
PBS doesn't do any talking points. It's honestly just news and if they have a talking head on, they usually have an opposing talking head. Its a breath of fresh air to just get the actual news.
> Yet when NPR runs non-stop Walmart articles [1], often in a neutral to positive fashion [...] Among the top results in your link are: "Pasta meals from Trader Joe's and Walmart may be linked to a deadly listeria outbreak", "Walmart recalls frozen shrimp over potential radioactive contamination", and "A man accused of stabbing 11 people at a Walmart is in Michigan authorities' custody".
I think that’s every just about every news station that’s trying to actually publish news and not full-time pushing some political talking points?
Think about how many Walmarts there are and the representation of people going to Walmart (hint: mostly the bottom 99% of wealth), what concerns they would have, what trouble they would get into. Do you think the Walton family is also the culprit in all crime or world news that is reported? They must be really busy controlling the world if so.
To be fair, that is neutral to positive coverage of Walmart.
The actual truth is much worse.
> Yet when NPR runs non-stop Walmart articles [1], often in a neutral to positive fashion, most are unaware that they've received millions of dollars from the Waltons.
The link your provided has 14 articles written in 2025. Topics covered: listeria outbreak, tariffs raising prices, radioactive shrimp, a stabbing at a store, and a shooting at a store.
Maybe two of the articles could be viewed as mildly positive towards the Walmart corporation, though they are basically just saying that the tariffs weren't impacting prices to the level that many people thought they were, and they were backed up with real-world data. I appreciate you providing an illustrative link to back up your post, but it doesn't really seem to agree with your point.
Doesn't
> And FWIW those millions the Waltons have given aren't that much relative to their overall funding
Contradict
> precisely to give the impression of 'being funded by listeners like you.'
Here you have one of the biggest companies in the country and one of the richest families and while they do donate they are still only a sliver?
Isn't that what we would want, or are there better models you can suggest?
Their finances are publicly available. [1] Like always in these things it's somewhat obfuscated, but it's likely that viewer contributions are part of the "Contributions of cash and other financial assets" line which was about $40 million. By contrast their revenue from "corporate sponsorships" is $101 million.
In general I don't think impartial centralized media/reporting is possible in the modern era where any source of influence becomes immediately targeted by countless moneyed interests. And it's not like a comic book thing where some guy with slicked hair comes in, drops off a few bags of money and a list of talking points. Rather it's probably more akin to politics where extremely charismatic smooth talkers come in, present their heavily polished point of view, treat you like a king, and then leave a few bags of money on their way out as a no-strings-attached charitable donation to do with as you see fit.
For a slight tangent, I remember when AOC first took office, quite doe eyed, she posted: "Our “bipartisan” Congressional orientation is cohosted by a corporate lobbyist group. Other members have quietly expressed to me their concern that this wasn’t told to us in advance. Lobbyists are here. Goldman Sachs is here. Where‘s labor? Activists? Frontline community leaders?" [2] Those sort of critiques, which I was extremely impressed by at first, somehow disappeared pretty quickly from her. In lieu of that she started doing things like showing up at the $35,000/ticket Meta Gala with a gown emblazoned with "Tax the rich" worth thousands of dollars. I'm positive that in her mind she's still the exact same grass roots outsider fighting against a corrupt system.
Humans are very good at cognitive dissonance and it really ruins any centralized system.
[1] - https://media.npr.org/documents/about/statements/fy2024/Nati...
[2] - https://x.com/AOC/status/1070764827533078529
But contributions don't go to npr they go to the individual member stations? They then buy some of their programming from NPR and supplement that with local stuff.
I could see how NPR at the National level would do the big stuff with corporate sponsorships.