Hi MJ,
I regularly listen to Podcastle and Pseudopod, and after listening to a politically biased story on Pseudopod, I am not convinced that the whole of Escape Artist is completely politically one sided. We will probably never hear a story published by them that covers the other side of the scale or somewhere in between. This is very obviously a publisher who wishes to push their values, beliefs and opinions on those that listen. Hmm, sounds like a certain political group, doesn't it?
This story obviously blames the American people for simply being American and defending their values.
I don't believe it is fair to warn me about getting kicked off this forum simply for pointing out the injustice and unfair balance of this publication. I'm trying to have an open discussion about your issues and how to fix them to keep readers, but I get told I'm "warned." From all of the stories I have read so far on this podcast, I have never come across a story that has the opposite political opinion as this one. That is what I'm saying. It is clearly unbalanced.
Is that obvious? It's not obvious to me. One of the core American values defined in the Constitution is freedom of speech. That applies to the characters in the story who are American, that applies to the author of the story who is American, and although the ownership of Escape Artists as a whole is not currently based in the US, much of the staff is and I'd venture to guess that a large portion of their distribution is to the US.
Authors expressing their opinions through prose, editors expressing their opinions through story selection, and you expressing your opinion about what you think about stories on this forum are all forms of freedom of speech. I'm not sure exactly which political group you are hinting toward it being like for using a publishing platform to express freedom of speech. But expressing only a subset of political opinions does not make one opposed to freedom of speech. Quite the opposite. Freedom of speech does not demand that an individual or a company show all possible opinions on any particular subject--what freedom would that be, if you were required to express all opinions with no leaning toward one opinion or another? You clearly would not do that yourself, and neither is Escape Artists or any of their podcasts required to.
Every fiction publication shows bias. There is no way to avoid it, nor would I want them to. We can argue about whether news outlets can ever be completely unbiased, and that could be a long and interesting discussion for an entirely different thread, but Escape Artists is not a news outlet. Fiction is biased. It is generally written from a point of view, the characters express their opinions, the theme implies other opinions. Editors express their bias in the choice of the stories that they pick. i.e. Baen Books has a bias toward conservative opinions and military SF, and the readers of Baen Books love them for it, and seek them out for that specific reason. Tor Books has its own bias, and DAW, and Clarkesworld, and every other publication. This is by design and it's what makes a publication unique and interesting. Podcastle has had a feminist bias since it's inception, and they've built the audience that they've built by continuing that tradition. If they suddenly reversed that stance and became anti-feminist, then that's what would lose them audience, by betraying the expectations of the audience they've already built. I'm not saying that they should exclude conservative authors, nor to exclude all conservative viewpoints, but I'm also not saying that they should include stories that don't speak to them for whatever reason, (and they don't have to explain those reasons).
So, yes, I'd argue that this fiction publication is biased, because all fiction publications are biased. If a publication set out to be completely absolutely neutral, I don't think they'd gain much of a following, but in any case "absolute neutrality" is a bias of its own.
MJ, if you wan't a story about the proud American man defeating the evil ISIS threat in disguise as an illegal immigrant, go write it. We don't often see stories like that submitted to our publications, and when we do, they're generally not of the quality we seek here on the Escape Artists podcasts.
If it's written, and written well, and works well in audio, we'd probably run it. But we can't simply "show how terrible illegal immigration is" if it's not submitted to us as a well-crafted story.
I run my own publication, and I tend to agree, I haven't seen anything with that particular bias that was compelling and well-written.
Even if there is, if it got published, the publication of it would be its own bias. So, it wouldn't really resolve any complaint about a publication being unbiased.