Political Bias Complaints Dominate Ombudsman Inbox

"Bias" was the label most applied to emails that came in to the Ombudsman Office in March (we try to label the vast majority of emails by concern).

Complaints about what listeners hear as bias are as old as NPR, of course, and the history could occupy several columns. All of my predecessors have addressed the topic (see here, and here and here, for just some examples). The complaints tend to repeat: My office heard via Twitter last week about the "only" in this headline: "Only 98,000 New Jobs Were Created In March, Labor Department Says"; I'd note that the same complaint arrived in 2012 about the Obama-era headline "Just 96,000 Jobs Added To Payrolls."

Still, it's no surprise that the number of emails about the topic have soared in recent months, along with the increased political polarization of the country.