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I've been able to listen to NPR in the past because I knew what to expect. Their coverage itself didn't strike me as grossly slanted -- rather, it was what they CHOSE to cover that was slanted. And that's even worse. It allows them to point to journalistic standards in their reporting while laughing off claims of bias.

The reality is that story selection is the message.
If the story is always the 2000-year-old Bible, the message tends to be conservative; if the story is always "what went wrong yesterday," the message tends to be anticonservative. It follows that wherever there is story selection there will be a political perspective, strong or weak.
The genius of the First Amendment is to take the issue of story selection out of the hands of the government--we-the-people select the genre of entertainment/edification we`choose to pay attention to. Of course, the extent to which we-the-people are aware of the perspective embedded in has a significant political effect, and you can be affected by my decision to follow a different story than you do, and to elect someone for whom you yourself would not vote. But only your powers of persuasion legitimately stand between me and that decision.
You are allowed under the First Amendment not only to speak but to print your opinions in your effort to persuade me. But you are not supposed to get the government to pay your printing costs or pay the salary of your preacher--no matter how "objective" you claim to be. Remember, you are at most in possession of a fraction of the truth, and other people's opinions have equal standing before the law with your own.
All unexceptionable, seemingly--but in fact what I have just said is highly controversial. It implies, first, that no newspaper can be officially credited by the government as any sort of arbiter of what is "objective"--the high ground in any argument. --when in constitutional principle you have the right to be a journalist, arguably in fact are a journalist if you post regularly to this (national, even international) web site.
The least of the problems this creates is the fact that "press conferences" and other special accomodations reporters from a finite sampling of the journalists in the country are discriminatory towards we-the-people who do not have the "title of nobility" of journalist. Worse is the "protection of sources" principle which says that you can and should resist the proper application of the law to a criminal investigation if you have that title of nobility, "objective journalist."
Worse yet, nearly all of we-the-people are censored from transmitting in the government-defined, specially formatted communication channels known as "broadcasting." Only those with the "title of nobility" of broadcast licensee have the right to transmit and, in that venue, the rest of us have the right to shut up and listen.
Worst of all, the judges of the country--even the Supreme Court justices, save one only, by historical accident--are under the sway of the flattery and derision of the "objective journalist."
The fundamental corruption lies in official respect for the conceit that someone who is self-critical enough to accept that his/her viewpoint has a name--"conservative," for example--has less rather than more intellectual integrity than the person who "rejects all labels" for himself. And, thereby, presumes to be above criticism.

End NPR subsidy: Windfall can replace federal funding
The Union Leader, Manchester, NH | November 7, 2003 | editorial