NPR: Still Bending Over Backward

[Commentary] National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition” did a report last week on therapy to turn gay people straight, inspired by the work of Rep. Michele Bachmann’s (R-MN) husband. The story rested on interviews with two gay men who had been through the therapy; one who felt it caused “emotional and psychological damage" and the other—a conservative Christian—who was able to convert to heterosexuality (though NPR did not report the latter fellow also founded an organization that attempts to help others change their sexual orientation from homosexuality to heterosexuality as well).

The story was a perfect mixture of journalistic “balance,” where unfortunately none existed in real life. NPR reporter Alix Spiegel and her editor Anne Gudenkauf explained themselves to NPR Ombudsman Edward Schumacher-Matos by insisting that “As journalists, it is our job to feature the experiences of people all across the spectrum—political, religious, and, yes, sexual—and to allow their experiences and views to be fully enough shared so that they can be understood.”They neglected, they said, to distinguish between the majority and minority experiences in this case because they believed NPR listeners “are well informed about (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) issues and thus would not need to have this spelled out at the start of the story.” They admitted this was a mistake. They also tried to walk back their imputation of a “raging" debate among psychologists, explaining, "We did not mean by this to suggest that the two sides are even in numbers. We did mean to suggest that the proponents on both sides feel strongly about the disagreement."

What is really going on here? Why would NPR, home to so many liberals and, one presumes, quite a few gay people, bend over so far backward to offer credibility to something associated with conservative efforts to discriminate against and persecute gay people? Alas, it’s a familiar syndrome. Journalists have been so cowed by conservative attempts to “work the refs” that they end up writing reports that raise the question of whether President Obama might be a Muslim or whether global warming is a conspiracy of a power-hungry mad scientist.