By John H. Rice

PBS and NPR made the Southeast Missourian's Opinion page last week. On Nov. 6 there was an editorial headlined "PBS looking for pledge-drive alternatives." The next day the page featured Mona Charen's column under the headline "NPR serves up biased reporting." Please let me comment on both.

I have no objection to the management of PBS looking into fund-raising alternatives, as reported in the editorial. I do take exception to the characterization of PBS pledge drives as "on-air begging."

I am a daily listener to KRCU and a supporting member. KRCU just completed its fall membership drive. During the course of the membership drive, I did not hear anything close to "begging" on the air. What I heard were positive, enthusiastic and rational endorsements of the station's "high-quality programming" (as the editorial put it) by local businesses and members of the community.

Charen's allegation that NPR is "consistently leftist" is more problematic. To make her case, she cites two NPR news stories in the last 17 years to which she objects. She focuses her criticism on NPR's current coverage of the Middle East. She appeals to statistical information provided by (in her words) "a watchdog group called Camera." She presumes the reader shares her trust in Camera's methodology and interpretations.

Charen does not suggest Camera may have a political bias of its own. Nor does she concede her own views are shaped by a political bias. Yet many of us who have read her column over the years find her bias to be self-evident. It may be said without malice that much of this country's public discourse appears leftist to someone as far right on the political spectrum as Charen.

I have been a consistent listener to NPR for the past decade. My view is not supported by anyone's statistics or interpretation, so take it for what it's worth. I find NPR's news coverage to be evenhanded. More importantly, I find it to be much more in-depth than the brand of headline news offered by commercial broadcasters and free of the kind of politically biased commentary that inhabits so much of the fare in commercial radio and television programming.

My own bias is not political. My bias is for quality. NPR and KRCU provide that to our community. They do not have to beg for our support. Their merits are self-evident.

John H. Rice is a Jackson resident.