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NPR Ombudsman weighs in on hot topic

by on August 5th, 2011

You may have heard the recent report on Morning Edition from Alix Spiegel, “Can Therapy Help Change Sexual Orientation?” It drew a lot of heat from listeners around the country. You can count me in this large group that had serious objections to the structure and balance of the story. Apparently the NPR Ombudsman thinks there were weaknesses in the piece, and even the producer conceded problems with it, as did the acting VP for News at NPR.

Did you hear it when it aired? Did it sound at all problematic? Having read the Ombudsman piece, do you agree with the critique?

Interested in your responses.

2 Comments on “NPR Ombudsman weighs in on hot topic”

  1. Pete Klein says:
    August 5, 2011 at 4:04 pm

    Ellen,
    To me the story is a perfect example to two problems in the news business.
    1 – Always trying to be politically correct and
    2 – Let’s hear from both sides of the story.
    Yes, there usually are two sides.
    But to answer your question and explain, I didn’t find the story problematic because it had no influence whatsoever on my views of the subject. It has been floating around for years. Its always been about one side saying gay is a horrible sin and the other side saying gay is okay and natural. So no new ground was broken.
    Those who believe it is a sin want to save gays from eternal damnation and this is the problem. Essentially what we have here is federal money going to promote a religious viewpoint. Please note the word “Conversion” in the therapy process.
    This was not addressed if I remember the story correctly.

  2. Ellen Rocco says:
    August 7, 2011 at 11:14 am

    Posting on behalf of Naomi from Eugene, Oregon:

    I tried to comment on the All In blog about the Ombudsman’s story on conversion therapy, but I don’t think my comment posted. In a nutshell, I thought it was a badly done story mainly because it relied on soft, emotional interviews rather than social science research. News outlets typically base their stories on physical sciences and recent findings in medicine in actual research, but when it comes to social sciences it seems that the research basis is irrelevant. It certainly was for the Ombudsmanin this story.

    The research on reparative therapy (I’m drawing from a systematic review conducted in 2008) is that it is all so badly done (e.g. there was no comparison control group to see if the treatment was effective or not) that no one should say that this therapy is helpful because it has not been proven and really has never been tested.

    A much more interesting issue in my opinion is that the studies of reparative therapy are all done with White, wealthy, male Christians. Why the Ombudsman wished to promote the concerns of an already privileged social group is a question worth pursuing.

    Those are my thoughts. It was a poorly done story for NPR’s Morning Edition, although it would have been really good for Fox News.

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