A large article in The Nation assesses NPR and finds it guilty of excessively safe and stodgy journalism. Garrison Keillor discusses his wide-ranging tastes in radio programs: "Once, on the Merritt Parkway heading for New York, I came upon The American Atheist Hour, the sheer tedium of which was wildly entertaining — there's nobody so humorless as a devout atheist."

In the Wall Street Journal, Jacob Laksin of the conservative Center for the Study of Popular Culture argues that NPR's On the Media is "in thrall to left-wing politics."

If Newt Gingrich had succeeded in privatizing public broadcasting, PBS wouldn't be in the situation it's in today, writes Jonathan Chait in today's Los Angeles Times. "The only reason PBS has to have GOP partisans scrubbing it of any faint signs of residual liberalism is that it has to answer to the federal government."