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News organizations have a right to adopt whatever editorial positions they want, but NPR receives a chunk of its budget from the federal government, and more importantly wields the imprimatur of being an essential public resource, which anchors its other fundraising efforts.
It is true of NPR, and it is true of all broadcast licensees.
All of broadcast journalism is illegitimate because journalism as we have always known it actually makes no substantive effort at objectivity. They put on a show of it, but in the real world the very first thing you must do to attempt objectivity is to declare up front all the reasons you know of that you might not be objective. Journalism does in fact have interests other than the public interest; it is only necessary to allude to the fact that bad news - such as a war, for example - makes "great copy" and is good for journalism. So the interests of journalism and the public interest are not inherently aligned.
Yet journalism as we know it consists of multiple outlets (including NPR, The New York Times, and so forth which are unified by their interest in the credulity of the public for all of journalism. Journalists do not compete on "objectivity," instead they are in full "go along and get along" mode. That is the natural result of their dependence on wire services as news sources; they all have the same sources and they all need the public to trust those sources.
It is worth pondering Adam Smith's perspective on that:

The wisest and most cautious of us all frequently gives credit to stories which he himself is afterwards both ashamed and astonished that he could possibly think of believing . . .
It is acquired wisdom and experience only that teach incredulity, and they very seldom teach it enough.

Credulousness in the public is inimical to the public interest.
So journalism as such has interests different than the public interest - and yet no journalism outlet ever declares any reason why it might not be objective. To the contrary, all journalists claim that all journalists are objective - and that is the very opposite of declaring its interests. So journalism makes no effort to attempt actual objectivity, relying instead on journalism's unified propaganda power to prevent the public from actually thinking about the limits of the credibility of its information.

Remember that, Benjamin Franklin put it, "Half the truth is often a great lie." It is not necessary for a journalist to actually lie in order to mislead the public. There is no justice in having the government license, let alone own, broadcast journalism outlets. It is blatantly unconstitutional.
Why Broadcast Journalism is Unnecessary and Illegitimate
The Right to Know
Journalism and Objectivity

The behavior of journalism is explained by Adam Smith - partly in Wealth of Nations, and partly in Theory of Moral Sentiments. The applicable quote from the latter is
The natural disposition is always to believe. It is acquired wisdom and experience only that teach incredulity, and they very seldom teach it enough. The wisest and most cautious of us all frequently gives credit to stories which he himself is afterwards both ashamed and astonished that he could possibly think of believing.
The man whom we believe is necessarily, in the things concerning which we believe him, our leader and director, and we look up to him with a certain degree of esteem and respect.
That is the default assumption and perspective of the journalist, about the public at large. The public, journalists believe in their gut, is a bunch of boobs to be impressed and led by their betters. Namely, them:
But as from admiring other people we come to wish to be admired ourselves; so from being led and directed by other people we learn to wish to become ourselves leaders and directors. - Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments
Journalists employ rank sophistry to position themselves as our betters; they engage in Monday morning quarterbacking on a grand scale to insinuate that anyone other than the specialists in a field could do a better job than the specialists in that field, if only they were as well-intentioned as the journalist is. Nobody would trust their own liver to the ministrations of a journalist in the operating room, but the journalist seeks to promote his own reputation above that of the surgeon by claiming that doctors do unnecessary operations to pad their own wallets. And if that sounds like something a “liberal” politician such as Obama might say, well - in Karl Marx’s formulation - that is no accident, comrades. Journalism, and socialism, is nothing but cheap talk (believing and acting on cheap talk is, however, very expensive).
Journalists use claims of their own (or, what is the same thing, each others’) objectivity to precisely the same purpose and intent that the ancient Sophists used their claims of superior wisdom. If the Sophist is wise, or if the journalist is objective, the person who is not a Sophist or a journalist would seem to have no standing to question them. And appearances are what journalists are all about. In reality it is unwise for anyone to assume his own wisdom, and it is not objective of anyone to assume her own objectivity.
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary. - Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations (Book I, Ch 10)
It is said that “This problem, when solved, will be simple.” And so it is with the question as to why modern journalists never engage in ideological competition, as journalists of earlier times notoriously did. The answer is the telegraph - the telegraph and the wire services, notably the AP. For the AP is nothing other than a virtual meeting of all the major journalism outlets in America.
Adam Smith is correct - a meeting of “competitive” journalists which has been in continuous operation since before the Civil War, and which is not about “merriment or diversion” but precisely about business, could not have failed to produce “a conspiracy against the public.” A conspiracy which is not content merely to systematically omit mention of certain salient facts, but which will actually lie in furtherance of its own interest and against the public interest.