I ask because I'm not sure it's possible to be politically neutral, well before asking whether it's desirable. Everybody has a political opinion on almost everything. Even if you're only reporting what has happened, you will find people questioning why you're looking at these things, and not others.
NPR absolutely has political influence, but is it disproportionate? I don't think so. Is it unbalanced? I don't think so. I think we've just spent 6 years beating each other up over extremes, pushing every envelope, that we struggle to recognise neutral coverage.
I know you didn't write the head comment, but I think we need to regain trust in neutrality. Perhaps reinstate some laws to redress balance in things calling themselves "news"... I know I don't know, but what I know is NPR seems like one of the goodies.
"Who does it better" is not the right question here since the problem is not related to other actors being "better" but to NPR (and PBS) not fulfilling the mandate of being politically neutral. Commercial actors do not have that mandate since they are not publicly funded, they can be (and most certainly are) as partisan as they wish.
As to the supposed difficulty of being neutral I'll just state that it is actually quite easy, all you have to do is make sure that your programming represents the political diversity of the region or country. Given the near 50/50 split between those who align themselves with the GOP and those who prefer the DNC it would be simply a matter of having half the programming made by "progressives", half by "conservatives". Both groups should have essentially the same amount of influence on what gets put on the air. There should not be room for shenanigans like having a station master from party A who does his best to put all programming which aligns more with party B in the nightshift. Throw in a few Libertarian/Green Party/etc. people in the newsroom to give them a proportional voice and you're well on your way to political neutrality.
Maybe you're confusing being politically neutral with being politically centric? They're not the same. It just means that the net average political stance ends up as a weighted average of the current political spectrum.
I think your method has a lot of complexity under the hood. For example, you need a republican and a democrat to co-host a show. Does the republican need to be pro trump? Does the democrat need to be anti trump? Do you think a Liz Cheney and AOC hosted show would be politically neutral? You seem to have this idea of what a "textbook" conservative/liberal is, and I think that sort of binary representation is harmful to political discourse at large. You'll find democrats care more about government spending than some republicans. You'll find anti gun republicans, and pro gun democrats. Who represents each side? How do you make sure all viewpoints are represented (green and libertarian)?
This is the curse of dimensionality: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_dimensionality. the more complex the subject the less likely it is for someone to actually be able to represent the "Average" of everything.
There can be shows which are co-hosted by people from different points on the political spectrum but that is not the only way. Take the news, there are generally several episodes per day. Have those hosted by different "factions" and let the viewers make up their minds on who has it right. The same goes for opinion-related programming, divide this over the political spectrum according to the relative representation in the targeted region. There is no need to delve deep into whether the DNC should be represented by those who support "The Squad" or those who follow the more traditional faction, leave that to the parties themselves. I'd expect those parties to favour voices which they deem to be palatable to the majority of the viewership and as such will tend to shy away from the extremes. The GOP most likely won't want to have Trumpists representing them, the DNC probably won't go for Squad-supporters.
> You seem to have this idea of what a "textbook" conservative/liberal is, and I think that sort of binary representation is harmful to political discourse at large.
Nope, I have no such illusions. That aside, the way the American republic is set up - with winner-takes-all elections on the national level - does tend to create a dichotomy since voting for "fringe" parties is effectively useless other than to send a signal. This means the choice goes between the GOP and DNC candidates, a binary choice. Some people will vote DNC for some, GOP for other posts but this does not change the fact that the choice is rather limited.
There will be debate between the different "parties" and factions on such a station. This is a feature, not a bug. Let them debate out in the open, let them voice their views on developments for anyone who wants to hear or see. It might not be a 100% accurate representation of the political views of the region but it is far better than the propaganda channels which the media is rife with.
