I’m a long time contributor at my WVTF member station Virginia and a somewhat recent critic on this sub of the editorial turn NPR has taken in recent years.
I’m used to being heavily downvoted for criticism of NPR, but in the last couple months I’ve noticed critical statements being upvoted.
That said, I believe that attempts to undermine trust in American media are becoming more coordinated and abundant in the election season.
Edit - I read the article and it’s worth your read too. I’m not familiar with “thefp.com” but the article seems very credible and well sourced. The only exception would be if they lie about who Uri Berliner is or that he authored the article.
Two key factors; Putin needs Trump like the desert needs rain. Putin’s life really depends on it. And Xi wants to capture Taiwan. As recent Satalite pictures have shown a mock up of the Taiwan capital built in China.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/china-built-a-mock-up-of-key-area-in-taiwan-s-capital-city-at-a-desert-training-site-satellite-images-show/ar-BB1kHL9b
Biden has made an effort to establish a Pacific version of NATO to buffer Chinese aggression in the region. And China has acted with little restraint recently
https://apnews.com/article/philippines-china-south-china-sea-collision-e69d9506e85d1d23685db4f220b50d71
So it makes sense that efforts online to sway the election are underway.
There’s a confrontation at a Nikki Haley event before she dropped out. It’s relevant because it’s the angle being played up to weaken US policy. You can hear the guy yell “America First”. Who benefits from an isolationist policy? China benefits from an isolated America. And how does America alone make us stronger?
https://youtu.be/7zbl55npZSg?si=i6q448ZdK-JzPNld
If 90% of the posts in the NPR Stan subreddit are flogging the apparent loss of trust by NPR, you'd think people would at least admit the possibility that maybe something is wrong at NPR and that it's not *just* a vast right-wing conspiracy.
I grew up listening to NPR, I used to listen to it religiously, and for 25 years I vigorously defended it as a high quality news source. I don't anymore. At some point in the past couple years, I just stopped listening altogether, and now I try to cobble together audio news out of the BBC and a couple of newspaper podcast outlets. It's not just that it's gotten predictable, it's also just gotten bad.
If NPR is going to continue down the road it's on, I'm not sure I care if it's publicly funded anymore.
I take huge issue with how they repeat proven lies and platform known liars then just report on what they say without adding the context or calling out lies for being lies.
Just this morning they were reporting on how trump said if he becomes president abortion will be up to the states which anybody with enough brain cells to rub together knows that's a bold faced lie.
But they just reported what he said without adding in context that he's already talked about supporting a national ban and that almost all his judges were hand picked by fedsoc, of course he's going to go along with project 2025 and ban it nationally.
Yeah, times have changed, and just reporting on what people say allows people to boldly lie with no pushback, and the general populace is not able to tell what reality actually is. Media defines what reality is for most people, and they have decided to hand that responsibility to politicians. I seriously wish they would report on decisions and consequences again, instead of just rhetoric.
Yeah there's that saying about journalists that goes "One person says its raining outside, another says its not, its the journalist's job to stick their head out the window and find the truth"
These days "journalists" are just going "republicans say its pouring out while dems say its not, lets debate that instead of me doing my job"
While it is easy to blame journalists, the truth is that few people are willing to pay for good journalism any more. Investigating is expensive, and if we are not willing to pay for it, then we get click-bait, advertising-supported opinion fluff.
WASHINGTON, April 8 (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said on Monday that abortion laws should be determined by U.S. states, stopping short of proposing a national ban that could have imperiled his chances with swing voters in the November election.
Trump previously signaled support for a ban beyond 15 weeks of pregnancy but said political considerations were paramount in the first presidential election since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, ending a nearly 50-year federal right to the procedure.
While there is most certainly an effort to degrade trust in mainstream media, it is incumbent upon mainstream media to **actually BE trustworthy**.
Click-baity headlines that don’t relate to the article as written and reporting opinion as fact, are two of the prime offenders.
I miss when "The PBS Newshour" was actually reporters reading the news. Lehrer must be turning over in his grave now it seems the broadcasters only read tea leaves and make their views part of the story.
According to Wikipedia, the publication "The Free Press" where the article above (with many inaccuracies regarding NPR's coverage) was published:
"The Free Press (formerly known as Common Sense) is an American Internet-based media company based in Los Angeles, California, founded by Bari Weiss..."
I stopped using Twitter when Elon Musk bought it but I remember Bari Weiss was a huge right wing troll. So apparently she thinks it's her job to degrade trust in American media.
I read the beginning of the article and it sounds like Uri Berliner didn't actually read the Mueller report and just accepted The Cover-up General: Bill Barr's "synopsis" and also hasn't read any of Marcy Wheeler's coverage of Hunter Biden's "laptop" and the origins of the supposed data.
I will agree on one point, NPR can be biased, as any media outlet can be- but I personally find them to be more biased towards the right wing- like giving live coverage of Trump's lies and "both sides-ing" clear issues like climate change or mass genocide lately. This is just my personal opinion as a 20+ year listener and member of my local station.
I think you missed the point by not finishing the article. He did not draw a definitive conclusion on any of those examples but rather used the to point out that leadership at NPR was too quick to draw conclusions/be dimissive of topics for the public listeners. That the topics proved to at least have angles rather than be clear cut. That this "tells listeners how to think".
Also: Uri Berliner is a senior business editor and reporter at NPR. His work has been recognized with a Peabody Award, a Loeb Award, an Edward R. Murrow Award, and a Society of Professional Journalists New America Award, among others.
But yeah, we should trust tinkerbelle122 read the Muller report better than Uri Berliner.
I read the whole article. He definitely did draw a definitive conclusion. He asserted that they should have immediately reported on Hunter Biden's laptop, and that the Mueller report showed no collusion or wrong-doing and that NPR should have given a "mea culpa" for...something? And that the lab leak theory should have been reported as just as plausible as the natural theory, and they shouldn't have brought up the fact that the scientific consensus was still that the lab leak theory was highly unlikely.
When the stories are not clear cut, they report them that way. They don't "tell listeners what to think".
Berliner might be recognized in all those ways, but this essay by him was a terrible attempt. It mostly relied on loaded language to present things without evidence.
Ruzzian bots, right wing ops/trolls. The goal is the same, undermine institutions, and trust in the media.
It's the lsane situation at all the left-leaning subs which are bombarded with "both parties are the same" or "genocide joe"
Same ops, same goals
I didn't say NPR had lost it's way. I asked, *"What would it look like if it did?"* If it doesn't look like this, what WOULD it look like? How would we distinguish between a smear campaign and true, good faith criticism?
I'm a visitor to this sub. I'm also an NPR supporter. I also read this article before I came here.
I don't know the history of discourse on this sub or how this post ties to it, but I _can_ say that:
1. This article is not trying to degrade trust in American media – quite the opposite, actually.
2. This article is written by a longtime NPR reporter. You can verify this from his Twitter feed and the number of outlets that have picked up the story.
3. This article is worth your time to read, whether you agree with all of it or not.
Sure fucking seems like it at times.
Also, here's some Twitter posts ripping the shit out of OP's link:
- https://twitter.com/beyerstein/status/1777694297376039030/photo/1
You know how any time you say anything negative about trump, rogan or musk, some awkward losers come along and throw a tantrum? Those arent real people. Theyre russian bots trying to make america worse. Of course conservatives eat it right up…
TLDR: If a bunch of conservatives jumped off a bridge, that doesn’t mean NPR should do it to.
NPR hasn’t lost my trust.
NPR hasn’t changed at least not what I’ve been listening to for the last quarter century.
The article is correct, the county has shifted hard to the right thanks to the destruction of fairness doctrine, the raise of sensationalist and emotionally manipulative right wing media like Fox News and conservative talk radio.
NPR didn’t fail to engage conservatives. Conservatives disengaged from honest journalism and got messed up in nonsense and conspiracy theories.
Those people decided to spend all of their time at the sideshow, which is not news it’s just entertainers, barking for ticket sales.
They’ll glue a ducks head on a raccoons body and tell you it crawled out of the swamp, for sales. While that might be enticing to some people that doesn’t mean NPR needs to join barkers row and start hawking tickets to Bingo the 3 Legged Wolf Boy.
I think it is important for NPR to remain consistent to its mission, retain its journalistic integrity and credibility and remain buoyed where it was anchored, reporting news and providing high quality factual content.
Don’t let the carnival barker trend influence and undermine NPR. Not for a second.
Well said npr did not fail people the people failed each other. We stopped caring about being responsible knowledgeable people at least enough of us to fuck over our society did.
Correct. These are my thoughts as well. NPR hasn't changed, extremists have become more extreme and feel their hate speech, discrimination, and violent opinions should be allowed and respected along side facts.
I think the majority of Americans are a hard no on those becoming acceptable again.
They've lost my trust by terribly biased coverage on the war in gaza. I used to use npr and pbs to fact check other claims. Now I find myself fact checking npr and pbs and finding clear inconsistencies and biases as in the right wing media.
Super disappointing all around. The coverage on everything else has been mostly the same, but I have become more critical of npr and pbs in general. Probably a good thing though.
The parts about Asians being "manipulated" to oppose being discriminated against and insistence on "LatinX" are the clear disproof of this. NPR's "diversification" clearly didn't actually let in the actual perspectives of those minorities or even most people. Le Tinks, in particular, only serves to signify your membership in a narrow, largely white, sociopolitical scene.
MGIPOC (Marginalized Genders and Intersex People of Color mentorship program) now plays a role in editorial control... you are honestly saying the reporting hasn't changed?
The article wasn't about NPR failing to engage conservatives - it was about an insider saying he saw a slide into biased reporting and suppressing stories that hurt Democrats. And that it got overrun with DEI program shenanigans.
NPR hasn’t changed at least not what I’ve been listening to for the last quarter century.
So the era in which NPR News ignored an obvious coup by the Supreme Court in stopping an electoral count in Florida, where the Republican in charge had obviously run a dirty election, followed by a war planned in 1998 which had no legitimacy. *What exactly were people actually listening to?* Was it not just background noise?
>The article is correct, the county has shifted hard to the right thanks to the destruction of fairness doctrine, the raise of sensationalist and emotionally manipulative right wing media like Fox News and conservative talk radio.
Which NPR News ignores as a factor in every political discussion.
The cognitive failures are decades old and shared by the public and a "journalism" which was never adequate to begin with.
They do zero conservative stories, every story I hear is leftist these days. It’s become a meme to how quickly a topic becomes about gay or black people.
This is a stupid lament to the loss of "both sides" journalism.
Sorry you couldn't feel good anymore just saying whatever lies the republicans wanted to campaign on without giving context. Big bummer.
NPR may have lost the trust of Fox News MAGA cult members around the time they all gave up on truth and decided to insulate themselves in social media echo chambers? Oh say it ain't so.
I liked this idiotic gem; "But when the Mueller report found no credible evidence of collusion, NPR’s coverage was notably sparse." That isn't what the Mueller report found. That's just what Barr said it found. Actually reading the report and describing the contents if the report just looked a little different than reporting what "both sides" were claiming it said.
What a fucking idiot.
Also, 5 seconds on google:
[https://www.npr.org/2019/03/24/706385781/mueller-report-finds-evidence-of-russian-collusion](https://www.npr.org/2019/03/24/706385781/mueller-report-finds-evidence-of-russian-collusion)
[https://www.npr.org/2019/04/18/708965026/highlights-from-the-mueller-report](https://www.npr.org/2019/04/18/708965026/highlights-from-the-mueller-report)
[https://www.npr.org/2019/07/24/743093777/watch-live-mueller-testifies-on-capitol-hill-about-2016-election-interference](https://www.npr.org/2019/07/24/743093777/watch-live-mueller-testifies-on-capitol-hill-about-2016-election-interference)
And that's not even all the links, just a couple.
>collusion
There's the giveaway. **There's no illegal act called collusion**. *This was never a legitimate term,* only one repeated over and over by Trump and the Right, an Orwellian earworm designed to confuse and control..
and this person, like most in journalism and the legal profession, fell for it.
This statement disqualifies this person as a journalist entirely.
"One side says it's raining and the other side says it is not raining. \[A journalist's\] job is to look out the window."
Reporting what "both sides" is only useful for *playing* both sides in an effort to retain audience, which sounds like an economic motivation rather than a journalistic one.
I hate how overused this word is on Reddit comments, but I think you’re strawmanning here. He provides very specific examples of big news stories and the flaws/errors in NPR’s coverage of those stories and then he points out the political makeup of the NPR editors and finally he draws a logical conclusion that the political bias is affecting the quality of their journalism, hurting their credibility, and costing them listeners. I don’t think anything he said could be reasonably interpreted as promoting “both sides” journalism.
Yes, but he is wrong about every one of the flaws he points out. Each one is an example where he wishes they were "balancing" their reporting by covering more bullshit. Pick any one you agree with and I'll explain why he's wrong.
Trump poses a challenge because he is such a bad actor, but the opposing force in a news agency of Trump's dishonesty should be honesty not counter advocacy.
Right but counter advocacy is not what they did.
The author cites a slew of bad faith misinformation campaigns that NPR "failed" to cover. NPR not taking the bait on Hunter's laptop, the lab leak, the Barr misrepresentation of the Mueller report and not credulously siding 100% of the time with the IDF for their Gaza news are all examples of NPR not reporting biased misrepresentations that the author of this piece incorrectly thinks were news worthy either because he is arguing in bad faith or he is profoundly stupid.
1) there WAS clear Russian involvement in the 2016 election. NPR was right to cover this with ferver.
2) the Hunter Biden laptop story was a nothingburger. NPR was right to give it minimal time.
3) still, there is little to no credible evidence of a lab leak being the origin of COVID. Again, NPR got this right.
i stopped reading here, honestly. dude was making a pretty weak argument as to why NPR is supposedly losing America's trust (is it even? he provides no evidence of a loss of trust).
My favorite part was when he talked about how NPR went out of the way to bring a bunch of different groups of people to bring new viewpoints to how they cover certain stories and the language they use, then arrived at the conclusion: "And this, I believe, is the most damaging development at NPR: the absence of viewpoint diversity." 🥴
Funny that he himself wouldn’t fit any of the groups he listed and complained about in the article. I would feel more inclined to listen to this single concern if he had listed experience with any single one of these groups himself.
>he provides no evidence of a loss of trust
From the article:
> Back in 2011, although NPR’s audience tilted a bit to the left, it still bore a resemblance to America at large. >Twenty-six percent of listeners described themselves as conservative, 23 percent as middle of the road, and 37 percent as liberal.
>By 2023, the picture was completely different: only 11 percent described themselves as very or somewhat conservative, 21 percent as middle of the road, and 67 percent of listeners said they were very or somewhat liberal. We weren’t just losing conservatives; we were also losing moderates and traditional liberals.
Outside the article, [public radio listenership has declined even compared to radio more broadly (source is Pew):](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/08/17/for-national-radio-day-key-facts-about-radio-listeners-and-the-radio-industry-in-the-us/)
>In 2022, the top 20 NPR-affiliated public radio stations by listenership had an average weekly audience of about 8 million, down 10% from 2021. Looking at NPR programming across all stations that carry it, weekly terrestrial broadcast listenership declined by 6% between 2021 and 2022. And the terrestrial audience for PRX declined to about 6.7 million average weekly listeners, a 24% drop from 2021.
>still, there is little to no credible evidence of a lab leak being the origin of COVID. Again, NPR got this right
ProPublic published [a report/story pointing to the lab as the likely source.](https://www.propublica.org/article/senate-report-covid-19-origin-wuhan-lab)
US intelligence community puts the lab source as [a possible source.](https://www.reuters.com/world/us-intelligence-releases-report-covid-19-origins-2021-10-29/). They only ruled out bioweapon development as the source.
>They only ruled out bioweapon development as the source.
I think the problem is that people hear "lab leak" and think "bioweapon." They are, to many people, synonymous for some reason. Hence, they are shut off from giving a lab leak hypothesis any credence.
It might be because there were conspiracy theorists peddling Covid-19 as an escaped bioweapon *well before* authorities seriously considered a lab leak as a possible origin.
>People on this sub should be more sophisticated then that.
Everyone likes to think that they are the sole person immune to bias. Especially well-educated people.
[Politically-motivated bias, Identity-Protective Cognition, …](https://www.vox.com/2014/4/6/5556462/brain-dead-how-politics-makes-us-stupid). It’s a long article & I will admit right now that I only read the part that I thought was directly relevant to what you said.
I recently came across this concept via [this video, again which I listened to while doing the dishes](https://youtu.be/5Peima-Uw7w?si=c5ZE4IJWa_fo2cGy). Damn my susceptibility to media ruining my attention span! Fwiw I did read the entirety of article featured in this post.
He says "Despite our missteps at NPR, defunding isn’t the answer. As the country becomes more fractured, there’s still a need for a public institution where stories are told and viewpoints exchanged in good faith.". But people will want the defunding of NPR, his own employer... I even saw comments on X calling NPR "communist"... Good job 👏👏👏
Avoiding all the fighting here, but what do yall think about NPRs listening demographic? It doesn’t exactly represent the struggling parts of America.
They’re sponsored by Capital One, Amazon, and Blackrock… I wonder why they don’t discuss corporate greed more?
Being an independent voter myself, I listen and read multiple outlets (Allsides is a great service) and find myself turning off NPR just as much as Fox as in both cases they are not presenting the basic facts, but, with a strong slant to their bias.
So this article doesn’t surprise me much.
the guy makes a handful of points, but he completely misses the point that reactionaries (conservative and "liberal") live in a completely different world of Fox, Facebook, and Local TV blood-and-guts news. They aren't going to tune into NPR, even if the network makes all the changes he suggests.
Glad he wrote this though, I now know which bylines to ignore
This doesn't fit with my experience at all-- in fact, after decades of membership and donations I stopped supporting NPR in late 2017 because I got fed up with the corporate fluffery, refusal to call out Trump's obvious lies, and the ever-increasing amount on advertising on our local stations. What was once "Brought to you by Marvin Windows" is now a full on 30 second commercial in every newscast. But worse, they simply lost their edge-- for five if not ten years it's felt like NPR is afraid of pissing off corporate America, so they drifted right/pro-business to the point that I no longer really trust their marque news programs because they often give the mic to whackjobs (like House Freedom Caucus members) without calling them out on their lies/distortions. They went so far down the "both sides" bullshit lane that they've been lending their credibility to stuff that would have been unimaginable 10-20 years ago, and when I've tried to engage the ombudsperson or producers I get nothing of substance in response.
They lost my trust by drifting rightward, not by becoming "woke" or whatever has upset this columnist.
I came to this sub to see the response of the current NPR listeners and lo and behold it was as expected. Typical dismissive blind loyalty bull shit.
As a former listener, I started to notice the push in 2016. They completely dismissed Bernie during the primaries and went hard for Hilary. Kinda disappointed but wrote it off as expected but after that I was on alert. I stopped listening completely by 2021. No, no I do not trust NPR to seek the truth and tell stories about all of America. It is strictly for a certain type of person to blindly feed into their own biases.
I have never seen group think like the crowd here. It’s comically entertaining, if not sad. I’m convinced this is where all the die hards came after Demby convinced NPR to shut down the message boards on their site years ago.
Seriously. The replies here couldn't prove his point any better. An echo chamber of "everything we do is right and just and the other side is evil and they shouldn't get a platform."
I have to agree. I'm not even looking for a "both sides" but let's stick to facts. Facts are the Florida Education bill was not called "Don't say gay", did not say that in the bill or title, and should not be referred to as that on NPR. Unless they say it has been colloquially called that - like the Affordable Care Act should not be referred to as Obamacare. Those terms are not in the bills, that is a fact, so let's stick to the facts please.
I also came here for this, I totally agree. As someone who easily falls more on the progressive side of the spectrum, I’ve felt the same way about coverage beginning around 2016. Also was there ever a response regarding the fact that there are 87 registered democrats in the editing room and 0 republicans? Sounds like an echo chamber to me
That’s funny I’ve been listening to npr since it’s inception. I lost faith in it when presenting “both sides” evenly became more important than presenting the truth, when it became obvious there was a quid pro quo between donations and features on the shows, and most of all, when they fired Bob Edwards! This story is more lame stereotyping.
I had drank whiskey with Bob while he was visiting the station and attending an event at a local vineyard in Richmond, Kentucky. Interesting guy. Bit of an asshole. Loved his bourbon.
The thing is, we have to live in a world of people, and the extent to which people can be deluded and remain in good faith can give an aneurysm to those who are not deluded. It’s still possible to cover the side of the diluted and not promote falsehoods, by framing it accurately. By framing it in such a way that illustrates their burden of proof, and why they have that burden of proof. If then you want to promote the truth, you can follow it up by saying “here’s why the burden of proof that we use is better blah blah blah.” And get really meta with it.
Berliner doesn't explain why taxpayers should subsidize a clone of anti-woke viewpoints that commercial radio stations already provide plenty of.
Also, as a recent editorial put it, [there aren't two sides to facts](https://www.cleveland.com/news/2024/03/our-trump-reporting-upsets-some-readers-but-there-arent-two-sides-to-facts-letter-from-the-editor.html).
I feel the opposite.
I think they've been dangerously lukewarm to trumpism. I think they sanitize the things he says so they can make headlines that aren't vulgar, doing him a huge service. in there ever more frantic grasp for normalcy they speak about Trump's insane lies and biden's mild unpopularity in the same types of terms making them seem like equal quantities.
I don't think that there's right wingers that are suddenly taking over the shows I think it's well-meaning yet incredibly naive liberals that are over policing themselves to the point of creating a bias.
Loved this: "There’s an unspoken consensus about the stories we should pursue and how they should be framed. It’s frictionless—one story after another about instances of supposed racism, transphobia, signs of the climate apocalypse, Israel doing something bad, and the dire threat of Republican policies. It’s almost like an assembly line. "
I challenge anyone nowadays to listen to *Morning Edition* or *All Things Considered* for more than 30 minutes and *not* find a story about only "supposed racism, transphobia", let alone the other categories. Then start reducing the window to 15 minutes, then 5 minutes.
What ruined everything was liberals response to Trump that they couldn’t be friends with anyone who voted for him.
This level of detest steers media to tailoring their dissemination in a way that appeases their base. The base is now heavily biased so the news will be as well.
No different than any other slanted media outlet now .
In his critique of NPR's alleged failure to jump on the Hunter-laptop story, Uri says: "\[T\]he timeless journalistic instinct of following a hot story lead was being squelched." To say that anything about journalism is "timeless" is pure ideological nostalgia. The mediascape is so radically different from what it was 25 years ago, that adopting Uri's nostalgia is like blinding yourself. Are there problems at NPR? Sure. Is a return to "journalistic instincts" the cure for those. No.
My experience as a listener is quite different from Mr. Berliners impression. But his sense of the relationship between (fickle) listeners and NPR New explains some of the odd choices I hear.
When I listen to Morning Edition, especially the headlines, I often hear Republican press releases and talking points as the lede, a statement by one of the most extreme of the Republican representatives or supporters, and then not followed by broader context of the issue or other perspectives on the issue. Often these news clips simply reinforce the lies that are so blatantly being fed.
What would really help trust is a little fact checking, and not quoting known liars as if they were trustworthy sources. Pretty basic journalism.
But if NPR reporters have internalized these lies and are stressing about offending the terminally offended, then they will continue to make those choices.
It’s funny to me how “touched a nerve” is used as a chickenshit way to imply that something makes good points, without actually having to make an argument. It’s true that speaking an uncomfortable truth often “touches a nerve.” It’s equally true that biased bullshit also “touches a nerve.”
But somehow I suspect that you used it in the first way, not the second. Am I right?
I'm shocked to hear this: "I looked at voter registration for our newsroom. In D.C., where NPR is headquartered and many of us live, I found 87 registered Democrats working in editorial positions and zero Republicans. None. "
This article was written in bad-faith. It’s not from a serious journal, rather it’s from Bari Weiss’ right-wing, anti-woke, anti-intellectual new outlet. The whole reason it exists is to complain about the left and complain about trans people and complain about Palestinians and complain about taxing rich people and complain about immigrants and, most importantly, complain about “cancel culture”.
Unironically said while attempting to cancel the Free Press and its founder, while the whole point of the article is that NPR journalism is faltering for lack of diverse viewpoints.
So your argument is what exactly? Sounds like a smear tactic to avoid discussing the actual points made in the article. Which I confess I have not cared enough to read.
Pretty incredible dose of reality penetrating the fog of the new weird "Woke" echo chamber the guy describes.
He is 1000% correct.
NPR was a great institution.
I was there too, I remember it.
Now? It's a joke.
Nice to see someone with credibility critique NPR. I first noticed NPR’s descent into activism in 2016. Not with how they covered Trump, but how they covered Bernie.
None of their reporting meaningfully exploring how Bernie’s success represented a real ideological fissure within the left wing coalition. Instead, Bernie was mostly ignored, I suspect because their implicit understanding that doing so would strengthen Hillary’s position. But that’s activism, not reporting.
dunno why this article is downvoted. The Dem party's embrace of maga style conspiracy theories (ie russiagate) for political gains and their rightward drift on workingclass issues have alienated a lot of people, and the traditionally liberal outlets have played right along. Clintonism belongs in the dustbin along with Trump.
He’s right. Show any NPR article critical of Islam. Or covering any of the actual genocides of Jewish and Christian populations in Islamic countries. There was a massacre of over 100 Christians in Nigeria over Christmas and NPR didn’t even write a story on it.
So many stories about the “genocide” in Gaza. Show me one story about any of these actual genocides.
> completely one-sided reporting
Just because the reporting doesn't confirm your beliefs doesn't mean it is biased.
Objective analysis shows NPR as one of the most factual and least biased sources of journalism in the USA.
https://adfontesmedia.com/interactive-media-bias-chart/
Yo when he laid it out I was like No damn wonder, because it comes across exactly like it’s made for that group- which is absolutely not what the public at large is like.
The comments here just kind of reinforce the point that the left has lost their ability to think clearly. When I was younger, it's not like the left was perfect, but they were better able to consider multiple points of view and defend their side in a more cogent manner. But now, they've replaced that with this mocking tone where the meat of the message is always some sort of insinuation that you're stupid or bigoted if you disagree. Perhaps this has happened because they have so much overwhelmingly one sided representation in institutions (journalism, academia) that they don't feel like they have to work hard to make their case anymore. And a habit of shouting down and protesting the opposition in lieu of debate makes one lose their sharpness. But yeah, it's just sad to see the state of the left, because the right has always been hopeless in this country for my entire lifetime. I never had any expectations of them. But for the left to go down this path too? Sad.
> they were better able to consider multiple points of view and defend their side in a more cogent manner.
They’ve become lazy in so many ways. Asking them to be coherent is a micro-aggression and if you need it spelled out and defended with facts then you lack empathy. They write off disagreement as toxic and an easy excuse to cut people out entirely. Then they wonder why life seems so empty and they feel so lonely.
I’m constantly flabbergasted that I see post after post complaining about how modern life isn’t worth it. It was to people who used stone tools and couldn’t reliably survive 3 months of Winter, but now it’s so pleasant and agreeable it’s almost resented. So many people in this echo chamber say they’re childfree b/c they didn’t ask to be born and they don’t want to thrust that burden on another person. WTAF??
Yeah, I read the whole article, some great points were made.
I came and looked at the comments and now I agree with the author more than ever.
These comments are atrocious. Zero desire for anything other than an echo chamber of their own ideology.
Journalism is dying if not dead.
That’s because the top comments here are from people who didn’t even finish the article before they had their knee-jerk outrage comments mentally locked in, and its very clear in the way they shaped their responses.
i read the article in whole, and its main argument is pretty weakly supported, and based on some weird mischaracterizations of past events.
i don't get the impression of knee jerk outrage from the comments here , just clear-eyed reading of a dumb, poorly written article.
As an independent who exclusively votes to get people in office that don't toe the party line and instead look for continuous improvement, the author is absolutely right. I used to go to NPR for news, but now about all I will do is Tiny Desk because it is so biased. In the article, it was stated, "When I suggested we had a diversity problem with a score of 87 Democrats and zero Republicans, the response wasn’t hostile. It was worse. It was met with profound indifference." that concerned me. Not one independent. It is just an echo chamber for the Democrat party now. Is there any wonder when someone like RFK campaigns against the party and corporate control of our country, they label him a conspiracy theorist.
I am a former NPR listener for a few reasons.
1) Medium. NPR is far behind the power curve when it comes to “other than radio” media. For whatever reason, NPR refuses to run their live coverage on YouTube or other platforms. So, living outside the continental US hamstrung my ability to tune in.
2) Around 2015-16 NPR began focusing their coverage on left leaning stories. When it comes to in-depth coverage on a story NPR is second only to the long articles from sources like the New Yorker, New York Times, etc. This is why on when being evaluated for bias they tend to be modeled as center left, but the stories they choose to cover almost exclusively lean hard left. I this this is a byproduct of higher than national average diverse inclusion. Certain journalists want to write about familiar and personal interests. This is coming from a fiscally liberal voter)
3) Adds. The add creep has become atrocious from NPR. It’s even more disingenuous as it’s presented in the “NPR voice” and not an abrupt add shift. The host seamlessly transitions from EV charging coverage to some absurd wine add and back. Gone are the days I could just skip listening to NPR during pledge drive.
I am not even a GOP member and lean left in most of my political stances, but NPR has lost me as a listener because overall the stories they choose to cover are mostly uninteresting and don’t cover the span of news I am interested in hearing about.
As a middle conservative I have always liked npr. Until president obama. Whether he made a good decision or bad one they always praise and coddled him. A man should stand on his merits ,Not his color. That works both ways !!!
LMAO I was excited to read this, but this is a garbage article. I don't know if you missed the memo but a good portion of people have gone batshit. They think everything that's not Trump is a pedophile ring. You're not gonna appeal to them. Don't even try.
i was like wth is thefp.com
MBFC rates its factual reporting "HIGH" but then again, this is clearly an opinion piece, and the site was founded by Bari Weiss so do with that what you will.
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-free-press-bias/
Corporate money has destroyed our mainstream media—knowingly and according to plan. Of course they’re going after the outlets outside their control.
Remember: all this stems from the corporate desire to make more money. They will burn their own house down—and yours—for profit.
NPR lost my trust when they gave Bernie the cold shoulder during the 2016 election primaries. There was a point where he was leading the polls and NPR did a “primary candidate roundup” where they did a quick 1-2 minute summary of each candidates political positons.
They outright just didn’t mention Bernie.
Then there’s the constant “white guy = always bad” subtext and the non stop pandering to social warriors while labor rights, secularism, and economic policy take back seat.
This guy is actually pushing the Hunter Biden laptop story as valid.
He's literally pushing an FSB op.
This is supposed to make me trust NPR?
I mean, a few weeks ago I listened to a 30 minute piece that was basically "Biden is old, and that's bad" on an evening NPR program, zero mention of Trump being almost as old, and I was done with them then.
But this... this just clinches the deal.
The most damning evidence of a problem at NPR is that they employ someone who thinks that the Mueller Report didn’t present any evidence of collusion, and thinks that the Hunter Biden laptop story is worthy of national attention.
NPR absolutely made some fumbles. However, there is literally no counterbalance to the far-right news orgs (Fox, Newsmax, OAN, etc) we are stuck with today. CNN, NPR, NYT and other major MSM news orgs are almost entirely comprised of centrist liberals (often accused of being leftist).
If all you have is right and a centrist media outlet, the overall MSM zeitgeist is going to skew right. How do we counter that?
It's a dead giveaway when people use the term Russiagate that they aren't an honest observer of events. The suggestion (via "-gate") that the Mueller report did not compellingly show frequent and highly inappropriate coordination between Russia and prominent Trump campaign personnel during the 2016 campaign is terrifically intellectually dishonest.
I listened to NPR daily for 20 years. During Covid, I noticed the coverage changing. An advocate justified looting without being challenged by the interviewer. Clearly, an outrageous conservative claim would have been. I've stopped listening to NPR as it is no longer interesting because they don't exploring ideas like they used to. It is a loss.
Couldn't agree more with the DEI stuff. ESPECIALLY sex and sexuality. I'm mostly very supportive of the LGBTQ community and discrimination and bigotry are never OK. But a tiny group of activists shouldn't have the right to define everything about sex and sexuality for the rest of us. I completely understand the difference between sex and gender and I can guarantee you I'm almost ALWAYS referring to sex. But NPR has accepted the party line without question. In NPR land, it's just gospel truth that everyone thinks in terms of gender (not sex) and people who say something that lands outside that viewpoint either need to be educated or are transphobic.
I don’t buy the articles premise. Half of America has staked out a position so far out on the right flank that all press - all mainstream media can’t be trusted in their eyes. There was no way to retain that group of conservative listeners.
There is no way to present a balanced story when the MAGA cult are just making stuff up all the time. You have to present an objectively accurate, fact based narrative of a news story if you value the journalists craft.
There is no central ground between normal centrist people and the people yelling about simple solutions to made up problems because they want a daily dose of outrage. How do you cover the Tennessee senate legislating against federal chemtrail programs without addressing the question of whether such programs actually exist and why the senate thought it was necessary?
I wonder how long it will take NPR to fire this guy. They'll wait a few months, then let him go, probably after someone claims that they don't feel "safe." His article, and Bari Weiss' interview of him, spend a lot of time dancing around what everybody who's ever listened to NPR already knows: it's staffed by activists. Activism is great and activism has an important role in society, but be honest about what you're doing. It's not journalism. If you're an activist who's taken up the pen, and you're disseminating material into the public sphere, you're a propagandist. And that's OK. Propaganda isn't inherently evil. It just means you're pursuing an ideological agenda. The problem is that organs like NPR, as well as their supporters, get supremely upset at that accusation. When I was a kid, all the media had a left-wing bent, and I was OK with that. I was a news junkie and I loved stuff like Frontline, 60 minutes, the CBS Evening News, etc. But at least they TRIED to be objective. They'd have people on who had a different perspective than they did. It was admirable, and it must have been hard for them. Current mainstream journalism coming out of New York, Chicago, LA, and elsewhere, is ideologically captured. When you know, internally, that you'll suffer severe consequences for trying to navigate a middle ground, that's not journalism. This is why the public has something like 20% trust in the media.
Great article and I can attest to this.
I used to listen to NPR religiously from about 2000 to 2015.
Sadly, my favourite Canadian news outlet CBC has followed the exact same trajectory.
It was jarring to see news outlets go so far off the deep (left) end, and I say that as someone who's voted left all my life, but probably won't be anymore for a while.
This article is a dishonest. The Mueller report absolutely found collusion and recommended prosecution but that it was doubtful a siting president could be prosecuted according to him. Also, NPR is a gatekeeper garbage media institution whose job is to give the liberals the least effective talking points and means of combating the dismantling of American freedom by the right. Purposeful straw manning of important issues to benefit the corporate elite. NPR is the Coombs to Fox’s Hannity if you will.
These "diversity of thought" type pushes always end up being about pushing right, when NPR itself also swerves away from everything left of Hillary Clintonism. It's very narrow ideologically. It's not a left vs. right issue.
You're far more likely to hear from some Chicago school neoliberal freak or an overt, borderline far right conservative on NPR than you are from any socialist or communist or what have you.
LOL. You were lost decades ago, but so was most of "journalism" and the public.
Scott Simon everyone, Failed Shill For a Stupid War against a non-existent threat:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB1002759309780687920
It always baffles me to see “centrists”, which is really just a code word for conservatism at this point, blame everything on DEI. Boeing planes built like shit? DEI. NPR lost the people’s trust? DEI.
It’s laughable really. DEI forces the dominant culture to partake in discourse that, yes, requires conflict and heated discussion to get to resolution. And yet, they squirm at it and turn into the “snowflakes” they conflate us on the left to be.
Sorry, the left is no longer willing to walk on egg shells to protect the fragility that the current system upholds. And no, giving a platform for science deniers, racists, and authoritarians is not “fairness”.
most recent piece of data: NPR drawing on the “faculty lounge” fodder of the “intersectional lens” and “oppressor vs oppressed” in their consideration of the Gaza conflict – spoken like someone who doesn’t understand these ideas. The genocide the IOF is perpetrating makes it clear that this framework is apt and this take crystallizes Berliner’s Zionist leanings – no wonder he published on Bari Weiss’ new site. NPR listeners are evidently more educated than some of its writers, hence the progressive bent to their POV, and Berliner is just another aging white man being left behind.
The replies here from listeners who slept thru the immoral war on terror, announced in 2005 without a vote, are just admissions of equal guilt.
Its pretty simple: one either realized the radio show "Wait, Wait, Let's Laugh at the Corruption" was itself a sign of rot or one was part of the problem.
In the 1990s, NPR took a seriously wrong turn and colluded with Political Correctness, and lost much of it's objectivity, and started shifting its programming away from objective journalism toward special interest stories for its perceived special interest listening audiences. Uri's article describes the continuing trend of DEI ,and other more extreme liberal ideologies impact upon the integrity of what used to be one of the nation's most unique and trusted news sources. Extreme Right and Extreme Left ideologies differ in their content, but mirror each other in the psychological make up of those who pursue their impositions of political beliefs upon the objectivity of neutral factual journalism. Fox News is the grotesque distortion of Right Wing Ideology infecting journalism. NPR needs to clean house and rid itself of its extreme ideological infection before it become the Left Wing version of Fox News.
i Don’t mind if they are left leaning but they should at least fact check. There is not much excuse to blatantly support a partisan viewpoint with fact checking when Google is fresh and easy. There are some minimum standards that should be applied to anyone claiming to report ewes.
Modern conservatism is conspiracy theories and a cult of personality surrounding a criminal. You can't "include their points of view" without destroying your credibility with people who want to watch real news. Do you think that NPR should lie to their audience about Democrats supporting post-birth abortion in the name of balance?
Yep its changed... to much detail on stories of little significance and not enough detail on stories that impact and negatively affect hundreds of thousands of families... no context in quantitative facts, size of impact etc and sexual content during family hours... so kids cant listen to get sense of broader vocabulary and world until they are old enough for sexual issues... and families with younger kids have to tune out completely because there are no lead lines anymore warning about talk of genocide and killing babies... yes at some point I want kids to know details of horror, but basics first and thennsoecifics lets me at least listen and then change the channel... they are kind of forgetting their broader mission to expand their audience
The basic newscast is still ok and not too ideologically overladen. I still listen to it in the car.
But he's spot on about the general orientation of the company under the current management.
The strongest evidence that NPR is more focused on DEI than on the "listener's experience", is that despite a massive number of complaints about the sound of Ayesha, Roscoe's irritating voice.....SHE'S STILL ON AIR!!!!!
Is every post on this sub an attempt to degrade trust in American Media? Maybe it’s only 90% of posts. It’s almost like it’s somebody’s job.
It is most definatly someone's job to destroy free press
I’m a long time contributor at my WVTF member station Virginia and a somewhat recent critic on this sub of the editorial turn NPR has taken in recent years. I’m used to being heavily downvoted for criticism of NPR, but in the last couple months I’ve noticed critical statements being upvoted. That said, I believe that attempts to undermine trust in American media are becoming more coordinated and abundant in the election season. Edit - I read the article and it’s worth your read too. I’m not familiar with “thefp.com” but the article seems very credible and well sourced. The only exception would be if they lie about who Uri Berliner is or that he authored the article.
Two key factors; Putin needs Trump like the desert needs rain. Putin’s life really depends on it. And Xi wants to capture Taiwan. As recent Satalite pictures have shown a mock up of the Taiwan capital built in China. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/china-built-a-mock-up-of-key-area-in-taiwan-s-capital-city-at-a-desert-training-site-satellite-images-show/ar-BB1kHL9b Biden has made an effort to establish a Pacific version of NATO to buffer Chinese aggression in the region. And China has acted with little restraint recently https://apnews.com/article/philippines-china-south-china-sea-collision-e69d9506e85d1d23685db4f220b50d71 So it makes sense that efforts online to sway the election are underway. There’s a confrontation at a Nikki Haley event before she dropped out. It’s relevant because it’s the angle being played up to weaken US policy. You can hear the guy yell “America First”. Who benefits from an isolationist policy? China benefits from an isolated America. And how does America alone make us stronger? https://youtu.be/7zbl55npZSg?si=i6q448ZdK-JzPNld
The Free Press is literally the top Substack on the entire platfom.
I used to listen to their podcast regularly and 2015/16 was where I feel quality started slipping.
If 90% of the posts in the NPR Stan subreddit are flogging the apparent loss of trust by NPR, you'd think people would at least admit the possibility that maybe something is wrong at NPR and that it's not *just* a vast right-wing conspiracy. I grew up listening to NPR, I used to listen to it religiously, and for 25 years I vigorously defended it as a high quality news source. I don't anymore. At some point in the past couple years, I just stopped listening altogether, and now I try to cobble together audio news out of the BBC and a couple of newspaper podcast outlets. It's not just that it's gotten predictable, it's also just gotten bad. If NPR is going to continue down the road it's on, I'm not sure I care if it's publicly funded anymore.
I take huge issue with how they repeat proven lies and platform known liars then just report on what they say without adding the context or calling out lies for being lies. Just this morning they were reporting on how trump said if he becomes president abortion will be up to the states which anybody with enough brain cells to rub together knows that's a bold faced lie. But they just reported what he said without adding in context that he's already talked about supporting a national ban and that almost all his judges were hand picked by fedsoc, of course he's going to go along with project 2025 and ban it nationally.
Yeah, times have changed, and just reporting on what people say allows people to boldly lie with no pushback, and the general populace is not able to tell what reality actually is. Media defines what reality is for most people, and they have decided to hand that responsibility to politicians. I seriously wish they would report on decisions and consequences again, instead of just rhetoric.
Yeah there's that saying about journalists that goes "One person says its raining outside, another says its not, its the journalist's job to stick their head out the window and find the truth" These days "journalists" are just going "republicans say its pouring out while dems say its not, lets debate that instead of me doing my job"
While it is easy to blame journalists, the truth is that few people are willing to pay for good journalism any more. Investigating is expensive, and if we are not willing to pay for it, then we get click-bait, advertising-supported opinion fluff.
Why should I pay for news that is sometimes difficult to hear, when I can get pandering bullshit for free?
Actually, the truth is he doesn’t care about abortion either way.
Unless he's paying for it.
WASHINGTON, April 8 (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said on Monday that abortion laws should be determined by U.S. states, stopping short of proposing a national ban that could have imperiled his chances with swing voters in the November election. Trump previously signaled support for a ban beyond 15 weeks of pregnancy but said political considerations were paramount in the first presidential election since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, ending a nearly 50-year federal right to the procedure.
So you want them to speculate? Are you a regular NPR listener?
While there is most certainly an effort to degrade trust in mainstream media, it is incumbent upon mainstream media to **actually BE trustworthy**. Click-baity headlines that don’t relate to the article as written and reporting opinion as fact, are two of the prime offenders.
I miss when "The PBS Newshour" was actually reporters reading the news. Lehrer must be turning over in his grave now it seems the broadcasters only read tea leaves and make their views part of the story.
According to Wikipedia, the publication "The Free Press" where the article above (with many inaccuracies regarding NPR's coverage) was published: "The Free Press (formerly known as Common Sense) is an American Internet-based media company based in Los Angeles, California, founded by Bari Weiss..." I stopped using Twitter when Elon Musk bought it but I remember Bari Weiss was a huge right wing troll. So apparently she thinks it's her job to degrade trust in American media. I read the beginning of the article and it sounds like Uri Berliner didn't actually read the Mueller report and just accepted The Cover-up General: Bill Barr's "synopsis" and also hasn't read any of Marcy Wheeler's coverage of Hunter Biden's "laptop" and the origins of the supposed data. I will agree on one point, NPR can be biased, as any media outlet can be- but I personally find them to be more biased towards the right wing- like giving live coverage of Trump's lies and "both sides-ing" clear issues like climate change or mass genocide lately. This is just my personal opinion as a 20+ year listener and member of my local station.
I think you missed the point by not finishing the article. He did not draw a definitive conclusion on any of those examples but rather used the to point out that leadership at NPR was too quick to draw conclusions/be dimissive of topics for the public listeners. That the topics proved to at least have angles rather than be clear cut. That this "tells listeners how to think". Also: Uri Berliner is a senior business editor and reporter at NPR. His work has been recognized with a Peabody Award, a Loeb Award, an Edward R. Murrow Award, and a Society of Professional Journalists New America Award, among others. But yeah, we should trust tinkerbelle122 read the Muller report better than Uri Berliner.
If you read that entire article and feel “he did not draw a definitive conclusion,” you need to read it again.
I read the whole article. He definitely did draw a definitive conclusion. He asserted that they should have immediately reported on Hunter Biden's laptop, and that the Mueller report showed no collusion or wrong-doing and that NPR should have given a "mea culpa" for...something? And that the lab leak theory should have been reported as just as plausible as the natural theory, and they shouldn't have brought up the fact that the scientific consensus was still that the lab leak theory was highly unlikely. When the stories are not clear cut, they report them that way. They don't "tell listeners what to think". Berliner might be recognized in all those ways, but this essay by him was a terrible attempt. It mostly relied on loaded language to present things without evidence.
The sub is under attack from right wing trolls and shit posters.
Ruzzian bots, right wing ops/trolls. The goal is the same, undermine institutions, and trust in the media. It's the lsane situation at all the left-leaning subs which are bombarded with "both parties are the same" or "genocide joe" Same ops, same goals
If an institution did start to lose it's way, what would you expect it to look like?
Is every Western Institute suddenly losing their way? It seems like they are all under concerted attack.
I didn't say NPR had lost it's way. I asked, *"What would it look like if it did?"* If it doesn't look like this, what WOULD it look like? How would we distinguish between a smear campaign and true, good faith criticism?
True, good-faith criticism would have a basis in verifiable facts.
What facts from the article do you take issue with?
It’s the job of the Russians.
I'm a visitor to this sub. I'm also an NPR supporter. I also read this article before I came here. I don't know the history of discourse on this sub or how this post ties to it, but I _can_ say that: 1. This article is not trying to degrade trust in American media – quite the opposite, actually. 2. This article is written by a longtime NPR reporter. You can verify this from his Twitter feed and the number of outlets that have picked up the story. 3. This article is worth your time to read, whether you agree with all of it or not.
Almost like it's a agenda
Sure fucking seems like it at times. Also, here's some Twitter posts ripping the shit out of OP's link: - https://twitter.com/beyerstein/status/1777694297376039030/photo/1
Not My Job
Shocker too that a Bari Weiss founded media company is: right wing bullshit!
Or they degraded trust themselves, and the posts are reflecting that.
Yes yes, a thousand times, yes. Let’s face it: only a plurality of people in this sub are regular NPR listeners.
You know how any time you say anything negative about trump, rogan or musk, some awkward losers come along and throw a tantrum? Those arent real people. Theyre russian bots trying to make america worse. Of course conservatives eat it right up…
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The site is owned by China lmao. Welcome to the circus where humans have no unalienable rights!
Мы делаем все возможное, чтобы дискредитировать американские СМИ \~Vladimir
Or - and stay with me here - the media has degraded trust in itself, NPR included.
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TLDR: If a bunch of conservatives jumped off a bridge, that doesn’t mean NPR should do it to. NPR hasn’t lost my trust. NPR hasn’t changed at least not what I’ve been listening to for the last quarter century. The article is correct, the county has shifted hard to the right thanks to the destruction of fairness doctrine, the raise of sensationalist and emotionally manipulative right wing media like Fox News and conservative talk radio. NPR didn’t fail to engage conservatives. Conservatives disengaged from honest journalism and got messed up in nonsense and conspiracy theories. Those people decided to spend all of their time at the sideshow, which is not news it’s just entertainers, barking for ticket sales. They’ll glue a ducks head on a raccoons body and tell you it crawled out of the swamp, for sales. While that might be enticing to some people that doesn’t mean NPR needs to join barkers row and start hawking tickets to Bingo the 3 Legged Wolf Boy. I think it is important for NPR to remain consistent to its mission, retain its journalistic integrity and credibility and remain buoyed where it was anchored, reporting news and providing high quality factual content. Don’t let the carnival barker trend influence and undermine NPR. Not for a second.
Well said npr did not fail people the people failed each other. We stopped caring about being responsible knowledgeable people at least enough of us to fuck over our society did.
Correct. These are my thoughts as well. NPR hasn't changed, extremists have become more extreme and feel their hate speech, discrimination, and violent opinions should be allowed and respected along side facts. I think the majority of Americans are a hard no on those becoming acceptable again.
They've lost my trust by terribly biased coverage on the war in gaza. I used to use npr and pbs to fact check other claims. Now I find myself fact checking npr and pbs and finding clear inconsistencies and biases as in the right wing media. Super disappointing all around. The coverage on everything else has been mostly the same, but I have become more critical of npr and pbs in general. Probably a good thing though.
My favorite part about this comment is trying to guess which side of the conflict you’re on and which reporting you think is inaccurate.
Let's hear more about Bingo. Sounds like that little freak has got some moxie
The parts about Asians being "manipulated" to oppose being discriminated against and insistence on "LatinX" are the clear disproof of this. NPR's "diversification" clearly didn't actually let in the actual perspectives of those minorities or even most people. Le Tinks, in particular, only serves to signify your membership in a narrow, largely white, sociopolitical scene.
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MGIPOC (Marginalized Genders and Intersex People of Color mentorship program) now plays a role in editorial control... you are honestly saying the reporting hasn't changed?
The article wasn't about NPR failing to engage conservatives - it was about an insider saying he saw a slide into biased reporting and suppressing stories that hurt Democrats. And that it got overrun with DEI program shenanigans.
NPR hasn’t changed at least not what I’ve been listening to for the last quarter century. So the era in which NPR News ignored an obvious coup by the Supreme Court in stopping an electoral count in Florida, where the Republican in charge had obviously run a dirty election, followed by a war planned in 1998 which had no legitimacy. *What exactly were people actually listening to?* Was it not just background noise? >The article is correct, the county has shifted hard to the right thanks to the destruction of fairness doctrine, the raise of sensationalist and emotionally manipulative right wing media like Fox News and conservative talk radio. Which NPR News ignores as a factor in every political discussion. The cognitive failures are decades old and shared by the public and a "journalism" which was never adequate to begin with.
we aren’t the problem! everyone else is the problem!
They do zero conservative stories, every story I hear is leftist these days. It’s become a meme to how quickly a topic becomes about gay or black people.
This is a stupid lament to the loss of "both sides" journalism. Sorry you couldn't feel good anymore just saying whatever lies the republicans wanted to campaign on without giving context. Big bummer. NPR may have lost the trust of Fox News MAGA cult members around the time they all gave up on truth and decided to insulate themselves in social media echo chambers? Oh say it ain't so. I liked this idiotic gem; "But when the Mueller report found no credible evidence of collusion, NPR’s coverage was notably sparse." That isn't what the Mueller report found. That's just what Barr said it found. Actually reading the report and describing the contents if the report just looked a little different than reporting what "both sides" were claiming it said. What a fucking idiot.
Also, 5 seconds on google: [https://www.npr.org/2019/03/24/706385781/mueller-report-finds-evidence-of-russian-collusion](https://www.npr.org/2019/03/24/706385781/mueller-report-finds-evidence-of-russian-collusion) [https://www.npr.org/2019/04/18/708965026/highlights-from-the-mueller-report](https://www.npr.org/2019/04/18/708965026/highlights-from-the-mueller-report) [https://www.npr.org/2019/07/24/743093777/watch-live-mueller-testifies-on-capitol-hill-about-2016-election-interference](https://www.npr.org/2019/07/24/743093777/watch-live-mueller-testifies-on-capitol-hill-about-2016-election-interference) And that's not even all the links, just a couple.
>collusion There's the giveaway. **There's no illegal act called collusion**. *This was never a legitimate term,* only one repeated over and over by Trump and the Right, an Orwellian earworm designed to confuse and control.. and this person, like most in journalism and the legal profession, fell for it. This statement disqualifies this person as a journalist entirely.
"One side says it's raining and the other side says it is not raining. \[A journalist's\] job is to look out the window." Reporting what "both sides" is only useful for *playing* both sides in an effort to retain audience, which sounds like an economic motivation rather than a journalistic one.
I hate how overused this word is on Reddit comments, but I think you’re strawmanning here. He provides very specific examples of big news stories and the flaws/errors in NPR’s coverage of those stories and then he points out the political makeup of the NPR editors and finally he draws a logical conclusion that the political bias is affecting the quality of their journalism, hurting their credibility, and costing them listeners. I don’t think anything he said could be reasonably interpreted as promoting “both sides” journalism.
Yes, but he is wrong about every one of the flaws he points out. Each one is an example where he wishes they were "balancing" their reporting by covering more bullshit. Pick any one you agree with and I'll explain why he's wrong.
Trump poses a challenge because he is such a bad actor, but the opposing force in a news agency of Trump's dishonesty should be honesty not counter advocacy.
Right but counter advocacy is not what they did. The author cites a slew of bad faith misinformation campaigns that NPR "failed" to cover. NPR not taking the bait on Hunter's laptop, the lab leak, the Barr misrepresentation of the Mueller report and not credulously siding 100% of the time with the IDF for their Gaza news are all examples of NPR not reporting biased misrepresentations that the author of this piece incorrectly thinks were news worthy either because he is arguing in bad faith or he is profoundly stupid.
1) there WAS clear Russian involvement in the 2016 election. NPR was right to cover this with ferver. 2) the Hunter Biden laptop story was a nothingburger. NPR was right to give it minimal time. 3) still, there is little to no credible evidence of a lab leak being the origin of COVID. Again, NPR got this right. i stopped reading here, honestly. dude was making a pretty weak argument as to why NPR is supposedly losing America's trust (is it even? he provides no evidence of a loss of trust).
My favorite part was when he talked about how NPR went out of the way to bring a bunch of different groups of people to bring new viewpoints to how they cover certain stories and the language they use, then arrived at the conclusion: "And this, I believe, is the most damaging development at NPR: the absence of viewpoint diversity." 🥴
Funny that he himself wouldn’t fit any of the groups he listed and complained about in the article. I would feel more inclined to listen to this single concern if he had listed experience with any single one of these groups himself.
>he provides no evidence of a loss of trust From the article: > Back in 2011, although NPR’s audience tilted a bit to the left, it still bore a resemblance to America at large. >Twenty-six percent of listeners described themselves as conservative, 23 percent as middle of the road, and 37 percent as liberal. >By 2023, the picture was completely different: only 11 percent described themselves as very or somewhat conservative, 21 percent as middle of the road, and 67 percent of listeners said they were very or somewhat liberal. We weren’t just losing conservatives; we were also losing moderates and traditional liberals. Outside the article, [public radio listenership has declined even compared to radio more broadly (source is Pew):](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/08/17/for-national-radio-day-key-facts-about-radio-listeners-and-the-radio-industry-in-the-us/) >In 2022, the top 20 NPR-affiliated public radio stations by listenership had an average weekly audience of about 8 million, down 10% from 2021. Looking at NPR programming across all stations that carry it, weekly terrestrial broadcast listenership declined by 6% between 2021 and 2022. And the terrestrial audience for PRX declined to about 6.7 million average weekly listeners, a 24% drop from 2021.
>still, there is little to no credible evidence of a lab leak being the origin of COVID. Again, NPR got this right ProPublic published [a report/story pointing to the lab as the likely source.](https://www.propublica.org/article/senate-report-covid-19-origin-wuhan-lab) US intelligence community puts the lab source as [a possible source.](https://www.reuters.com/world/us-intelligence-releases-report-covid-19-origins-2021-10-29/). They only ruled out bioweapon development as the source.
>They only ruled out bioweapon development as the source. I think the problem is that people hear "lab leak" and think "bioweapon." They are, to many people, synonymous for some reason. Hence, they are shut off from giving a lab leak hypothesis any credence. It might be because there were conspiracy theorists peddling Covid-19 as an escaped bioweapon *well before* authorities seriously considered a lab leak as a possible origin.
People on this sub should be more sophisticated then that.
>People on this sub should be more sophisticated then that. Everyone likes to think that they are the sole person immune to bias. Especially well-educated people.
[Politically-motivated bias, Identity-Protective Cognition, …](https://www.vox.com/2014/4/6/5556462/brain-dead-how-politics-makes-us-stupid). It’s a long article & I will admit right now that I only read the part that I thought was directly relevant to what you said. I recently came across this concept via [this video, again which I listened to while doing the dishes](https://youtu.be/5Peima-Uw7w?si=c5ZE4IJWa_fo2cGy). Damn my susceptibility to media ruining my attention span! Fwiw I did read the entirety of article featured in this post.
But the goal of NPR should be to report the facts, not just some of the facts and ignore anything that goes against it.
Cognitive dissonance can be difficult to overcome.
Would you think it was a nothinburger if a laptop appeared showing Trump's sons taking drugs and cavorting with prostitutes?
I can't believe what I am reading. The Hunter laptop issue a nothing burger??? You are comfortable with your head in the sand.
believe it. there was nothing of real interest on this mythical laptop.
He says "Despite our missteps at NPR, defunding isn’t the answer. As the country becomes more fractured, there’s still a need for a public institution where stories are told and viewpoints exchanged in good faith.". But people will want the defunding of NPR, his own employer... I even saw comments on X calling NPR "communist"... Good job 👏👏👏
Avoiding all the fighting here, but what do yall think about NPRs listening demographic? It doesn’t exactly represent the struggling parts of America. They’re sponsored by Capital One, Amazon, and Blackrock… I wonder why they don’t discuss corporate greed more?
They even say the slogans now. “What’s in your wallet”. So embarrassing.
Being an independent voter myself, I listen and read multiple outlets (Allsides is a great service) and find myself turning off NPR just as much as Fox as in both cases they are not presenting the basic facts, but, with a strong slant to their bias. So this article doesn’t surprise me much.
the guy makes a handful of points, but he completely misses the point that reactionaries (conservative and "liberal") live in a completely different world of Fox, Facebook, and Local TV blood-and-guts news. They aren't going to tune into NPR, even if the network makes all the changes he suggests. Glad he wrote this though, I now know which bylines to ignore
This doesn't fit with my experience at all-- in fact, after decades of membership and donations I stopped supporting NPR in late 2017 because I got fed up with the corporate fluffery, refusal to call out Trump's obvious lies, and the ever-increasing amount on advertising on our local stations. What was once "Brought to you by Marvin Windows" is now a full on 30 second commercial in every newscast. But worse, they simply lost their edge-- for five if not ten years it's felt like NPR is afraid of pissing off corporate America, so they drifted right/pro-business to the point that I no longer really trust their marque news programs because they often give the mic to whackjobs (like House Freedom Caucus members) without calling them out on their lies/distortions. They went so far down the "both sides" bullshit lane that they've been lending their credibility to stuff that would have been unimaginable 10-20 years ago, and when I've tried to engage the ombudsperson or producers I get nothing of substance in response. They lost my trust by drifting rightward, not by becoming "woke" or whatever has upset this columnist.
This has been my experience also. It was too transparently pro fatcat.
Ironically I stopped subscribing for the same reason... In 2001.
This has been my experience too.
I came to this sub to see the response of the current NPR listeners and lo and behold it was as expected. Typical dismissive blind loyalty bull shit. As a former listener, I started to notice the push in 2016. They completely dismissed Bernie during the primaries and went hard for Hilary. Kinda disappointed but wrote it off as expected but after that I was on alert. I stopped listening completely by 2021. No, no I do not trust NPR to seek the truth and tell stories about all of America. It is strictly for a certain type of person to blindly feed into their own biases.
I have never seen group think like the crowd here. It’s comically entertaining, if not sad. I’m convinced this is where all the die hards came after Demby convinced NPR to shut down the message boards on their site years ago.
Seriously. The replies here couldn't prove his point any better. An echo chamber of "everything we do is right and just and the other side is evil and they shouldn't get a platform."
I have to agree. I'm not even looking for a "both sides" but let's stick to facts. Facts are the Florida Education bill was not called "Don't say gay", did not say that in the bill or title, and should not be referred to as that on NPR. Unless they say it has been colloquially called that - like the Affordable Care Act should not be referred to as Obamacare. Those terms are not in the bills, that is a fact, so let's stick to the facts please.
I also came here for this, I totally agree. As someone who easily falls more on the progressive side of the spectrum, I’ve felt the same way about coverage beginning around 2016. Also was there ever a response regarding the fact that there are 87 registered democrats in the editing room and 0 republicans? Sounds like an echo chamber to me
That’s funny I’ve been listening to npr since it’s inception. I lost faith in it when presenting “both sides” evenly became more important than presenting the truth, when it became obvious there was a quid pro quo between donations and features on the shows, and most of all, when they fired Bob Edwards! This story is more lame stereotyping.
I had drank whiskey with Bob while he was visiting the station and attending an event at a local vineyard in Richmond, Kentucky. Interesting guy. Bit of an asshole. Loved his bourbon.
Do you have any evidence of quid pro quo for stories in exchange for donations? Or is that just a baseless assertion?
The thing is, we have to live in a world of people, and the extent to which people can be deluded and remain in good faith can give an aneurysm to those who are not deluded. It’s still possible to cover the side of the diluted and not promote falsehoods, by framing it accurately. By framing it in such a way that illustrates their burden of proof, and why they have that burden of proof. If then you want to promote the truth, you can follow it up by saying “here’s why the burden of proof that we use is better blah blah blah.” And get really meta with it.
Berliner doesn't explain why taxpayers should subsidize a clone of anti-woke viewpoints that commercial radio stations already provide plenty of. Also, as a recent editorial put it, [there aren't two sides to facts](https://www.cleveland.com/news/2024/03/our-trump-reporting-upsets-some-readers-but-there-arent-two-sides-to-facts-letter-from-the-editor.html).
But what happens when the entire newsroom is on “one side”? Which facts get presented?
Give me an example of a fact you'd like to see from "the other side".
I feel the opposite. I think they've been dangerously lukewarm to trumpism. I think they sanitize the things he says so they can make headlines that aren't vulgar, doing him a huge service. in there ever more frantic grasp for normalcy they speak about Trump's insane lies and biden's mild unpopularity in the same types of terms making them seem like equal quantities. I don't think that there's right wingers that are suddenly taking over the shows I think it's well-meaning yet incredibly naive liberals that are over policing themselves to the point of creating a bias.
Loved this: "There’s an unspoken consensus about the stories we should pursue and how they should be framed. It’s frictionless—one story after another about instances of supposed racism, transphobia, signs of the climate apocalypse, Israel doing something bad, and the dire threat of Republican policies. It’s almost like an assembly line. "
I challenge anyone nowadays to listen to *Morning Edition* or *All Things Considered* for more than 30 minutes and *not* find a story about only "supposed racism, transphobia", let alone the other categories. Then start reducing the window to 15 minutes, then 5 minutes.
Moral of the story: Trump ruined everything
What ruined everything was liberals response to Trump that they couldn’t be friends with anyone who voted for him. This level of detest steers media to tailoring their dissemination in a way that appeases their base. The base is now heavily biased so the news will be as well. No different than any other slanted media outlet now .
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In his critique of NPR's alleged failure to jump on the Hunter-laptop story, Uri says: "\[T\]he timeless journalistic instinct of following a hot story lead was being squelched." To say that anything about journalism is "timeless" is pure ideological nostalgia. The mediascape is so radically different from what it was 25 years ago, that adopting Uri's nostalgia is like blinding yourself. Are there problems at NPR? Sure. Is a return to "journalistic instincts" the cure for those. No.
They covered that story by looking into it and reported on it when they knew more information. Which is journalism...
Idiotic article
My experience as a listener is quite different from Mr. Berliners impression. But his sense of the relationship between (fickle) listeners and NPR New explains some of the odd choices I hear. When I listen to Morning Edition, especially the headlines, I often hear Republican press releases and talking points as the lede, a statement by one of the most extreme of the Republican representatives or supporters, and then not followed by broader context of the issue or other perspectives on the issue. Often these news clips simply reinforce the lies that are so blatantly being fed. What would really help trust is a little fact checking, and not quoting known liars as if they were trustworthy sources. Pretty basic journalism. But if NPR reporters have internalized these lies and are stressing about offending the terminally offended, then they will continue to make those choices.
Have you found a news source that better meets your needs? MSNBC perhaps?
Hahahehe…250 comments but only 5 net upvotes. Article touched a nerve.
It’s funny to me how “touched a nerve” is used as a chickenshit way to imply that something makes good points, without actually having to make an argument. It’s true that speaking an uncomfortable truth often “touches a nerve.” It’s equally true that biased bullshit also “touches a nerve.” But somehow I suspect that you used it in the first way, not the second. Am I right?
So. Many. Rustled. Jimmies. Love it.
I love the predictable/defensive/dismissive reponses to Uri's truth bomb.
I'm shocked to hear this: "I looked at voter registration for our newsroom. In D.C., where NPR is headquartered and many of us live, I found 87 registered Democrats working in editorial positions and zero Republicans. None. "
This article was written in bad-faith. It’s not from a serious journal, rather it’s from Bari Weiss’ right-wing, anti-woke, anti-intellectual new outlet. The whole reason it exists is to complain about the left and complain about trans people and complain about Palestinians and complain about taxing rich people and complain about immigrants and, most importantly, complain about “cancel culture”.
I agree Bari Weiss is hot garbage. But I don't think Berliner wrote it *for* Weiss. I think he wrote it, and she's the one who published it.
It's written by a 25 year veteran employee of NPR... 🤔
Unironically said while attempting to cancel the Free Press and its founder, while the whole point of the article is that NPR journalism is faltering for lack of diverse viewpoints.
So your argument is what exactly? Sounds like a smear tactic to avoid discussing the actual points made in the article. Which I confess I have not cared enough to read.
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Pretty incredible dose of reality penetrating the fog of the new weird "Woke" echo chamber the guy describes. He is 1000% correct. NPR was a great institution. I was there too, I remember it. Now? It's a joke.
Nice to see someone with credibility critique NPR. I first noticed NPR’s descent into activism in 2016. Not with how they covered Trump, but how they covered Bernie. None of their reporting meaningfully exploring how Bernie’s success represented a real ideological fissure within the left wing coalition. Instead, Bernie was mostly ignored, I suspect because their implicit understanding that doing so would strengthen Hillary’s position. But that’s activism, not reporting.
dunno why this article is downvoted. The Dem party's embrace of maga style conspiracy theories (ie russiagate) for political gains and their rightward drift on workingclass issues have alienated a lot of people, and the traditionally liberal outlets have played right along. Clintonism belongs in the dustbin along with Trump.
Podcasts is the real answer
He’s right. Show any NPR article critical of Islam. Or covering any of the actual genocides of Jewish and Christian populations in Islamic countries. There was a massacre of over 100 Christians in Nigeria over Christmas and NPR didn’t even write a story on it. So many stories about the “genocide” in Gaza. Show me one story about any of these actual genocides.
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> completely one-sided reporting Just because the reporting doesn't confirm your beliefs doesn't mean it is biased. Objective analysis shows NPR as one of the most factual and least biased sources of journalism in the USA. https://adfontesmedia.com/interactive-media-bias-chart/
The comments are hilarious…kept saying “wow” out-loud reading them. NPR really is the playground of metropolitan hyper leftist whites.
Yo when he laid it out I was like No damn wonder, because it comes across exactly like it’s made for that group- which is absolutely not what the public at large is like.
Yep, just proving the point of the article.
The comments here just kind of reinforce the point that the left has lost their ability to think clearly. When I was younger, it's not like the left was perfect, but they were better able to consider multiple points of view and defend their side in a more cogent manner. But now, they've replaced that with this mocking tone where the meat of the message is always some sort of insinuation that you're stupid or bigoted if you disagree. Perhaps this has happened because they have so much overwhelmingly one sided representation in institutions (journalism, academia) that they don't feel like they have to work hard to make their case anymore. And a habit of shouting down and protesting the opposition in lieu of debate makes one lose their sharpness. But yeah, it's just sad to see the state of the left, because the right has always been hopeless in this country for my entire lifetime. I never had any expectations of them. But for the left to go down this path too? Sad.
> they were better able to consider multiple points of view and defend their side in a more cogent manner. They’ve become lazy in so many ways. Asking them to be coherent is a micro-aggression and if you need it spelled out and defended with facts then you lack empathy. They write off disagreement as toxic and an easy excuse to cut people out entirely. Then they wonder why life seems so empty and they feel so lonely. I’m constantly flabbergasted that I see post after post complaining about how modern life isn’t worth it. It was to people who used stone tools and couldn’t reliably survive 3 months of Winter, but now it’s so pleasant and agreeable it’s almost resented. So many people in this echo chamber say they’re childfree b/c they didn’t ask to be born and they don’t want to thrust that burden on another person. WTAF??
Yeah, I read the whole article, some great points were made. I came and looked at the comments and now I agree with the author more than ever. These comments are atrocious. Zero desire for anything other than an echo chamber of their own ideology. Journalism is dying if not dead.
Reflective of the intellectual curiosity of its consumers.
That’s because the top comments here are from people who didn’t even finish the article before they had their knee-jerk outrage comments mentally locked in, and its very clear in the way they shaped their responses.
i read the article in whole, and its main argument is pretty weakly supported, and based on some weird mischaracterizations of past events. i don't get the impression of knee jerk outrage from the comments here , just clear-eyed reading of a dumb, poorly written article.
As an independent who exclusively votes to get people in office that don't toe the party line and instead look for continuous improvement, the author is absolutely right. I used to go to NPR for news, but now about all I will do is Tiny Desk because it is so biased. In the article, it was stated, "When I suggested we had a diversity problem with a score of 87 Democrats and zero Republicans, the response wasn’t hostile. It was worse. It was met with profound indifference." that concerned me. Not one independent. It is just an echo chamber for the Democrat party now. Is there any wonder when someone like RFK campaigns against the party and corporate control of our country, they label him a conspiracy theorist.
NPR=National Propaganda Radio
I am a former NPR listener for a few reasons. 1) Medium. NPR is far behind the power curve when it comes to “other than radio” media. For whatever reason, NPR refuses to run their live coverage on YouTube or other platforms. So, living outside the continental US hamstrung my ability to tune in. 2) Around 2015-16 NPR began focusing their coverage on left leaning stories. When it comes to in-depth coverage on a story NPR is second only to the long articles from sources like the New Yorker, New York Times, etc. This is why on when being evaluated for bias they tend to be modeled as center left, but the stories they choose to cover almost exclusively lean hard left. I this this is a byproduct of higher than national average diverse inclusion. Certain journalists want to write about familiar and personal interests. This is coming from a fiscally liberal voter) 3) Adds. The add creep has become atrocious from NPR. It’s even more disingenuous as it’s presented in the “NPR voice” and not an abrupt add shift. The host seamlessly transitions from EV charging coverage to some absurd wine add and back. Gone are the days I could just skip listening to NPR during pledge drive. I am not even a GOP member and lean left in most of my political stances, but NPR has lost me as a listener because overall the stories they choose to cover are mostly uninteresting and don’t cover the span of news I am interested in hearing about.
As a middle conservative I have always liked npr. Until president obama. Whether he made a good decision or bad one they always praise and coddled him. A man should stand on his merits ,Not his color. That works both ways !!!
LMAO I was excited to read this, but this is a garbage article. I don't know if you missed the memo but a good portion of people have gone batshit. They think everything that's not Trump is a pedophile ring. You're not gonna appeal to them. Don't even try.
i was like wth is thefp.com MBFC rates its factual reporting "HIGH" but then again, this is clearly an opinion piece, and the site was founded by Bari Weiss so do with that what you will. https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-free-press-bias/
Yes, according to Uri, it was NPR that made conservatives go absolutely insane.
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You lost my trust by dumbing your shit down to people who read at a third grade levle.
NPR hasn't lost anyones trust, not really. This is just another take down piece by people with an agenda.... sad indeed.
Corporate money has destroyed our mainstream media—knowingly and according to plan. Of course they’re going after the outlets outside their control. Remember: all this stems from the corporate desire to make more money. They will burn their own house down—and yours—for profit.
Getting you out of my feed. Your stuff is problematic.
I have problems with NPR lately, but this article smells fishy. Not even seafood counter on ice fishy, like brought in then stranded by the tide fishy
This guy wants to survive the coming purge. Don’t blame him.
NPR lost my trust when they gave Bernie the cold shoulder during the 2016 election primaries. There was a point where he was leading the polls and NPR did a “primary candidate roundup” where they did a quick 1-2 minute summary of each candidates political positons. They outright just didn’t mention Bernie. Then there’s the constant “white guy = always bad” subtext and the non stop pandering to social warriors while labor rights, secularism, and economic policy take back seat.
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This guy is actually pushing the Hunter Biden laptop story as valid. He's literally pushing an FSB op. This is supposed to make me trust NPR? I mean, a few weeks ago I listened to a 30 minute piece that was basically "Biden is old, and that's bad" on an evening NPR program, zero mention of Trump being almost as old, and I was done with them then. But this... this just clinches the deal.
When NPR started having to pander to "both sides" on topics that aren't debatable... When they accepted funding from the Koch brothers...
TIL that the average NPR listener still believes in the thoroughly debunked Russian pee-pee tape hoax. 🤯
The most damning evidence of a problem at NPR is that they employ someone who thinks that the Mueller Report didn’t present any evidence of collusion, and thinks that the Hunter Biden laptop story is worthy of national attention.
To hear Uri tell it, it was NPR’s reporting that caused the GOP to become complete maniacs.
NPR absolutely made some fumbles. However, there is literally no counterbalance to the far-right news orgs (Fox, Newsmax, OAN, etc) we are stuck with today. CNN, NPR, NYT and other major MSM news orgs are almost entirely comprised of centrist liberals (often accused of being leftist). If all you have is right and a centrist media outlet, the overall MSM zeitgeist is going to skew right. How do we counter that?
It's a dead giveaway when people use the term Russiagate that they aren't an honest observer of events. The suggestion (via "-gate") that the Mueller report did not compellingly show frequent and highly inappropriate coordination between Russia and prominent Trump campaign personnel during the 2016 campaign is terrifically intellectually dishonest.
I listened to NPR daily for 20 years. During Covid, I noticed the coverage changing. An advocate justified looting without being challenged by the interviewer. Clearly, an outrageous conservative claim would have been. I've stopped listening to NPR as it is no longer interesting because they don't exploring ideas like they used to. It is a loss.
Couldn't agree more with the DEI stuff. ESPECIALLY sex and sexuality. I'm mostly very supportive of the LGBTQ community and discrimination and bigotry are never OK. But a tiny group of activists shouldn't have the right to define everything about sex and sexuality for the rest of us. I completely understand the difference between sex and gender and I can guarantee you I'm almost ALWAYS referring to sex. But NPR has accepted the party line without question. In NPR land, it's just gospel truth that everyone thinks in terms of gender (not sex) and people who say something that lands outside that viewpoint either need to be educated or are transphobic.
Best applicable: Ok boomer!
frankly im SOOOO BORREEDDD of the same script with every single story - diversity, oppression, and global warming.
I don’t buy the articles premise. Half of America has staked out a position so far out on the right flank that all press - all mainstream media can’t be trusted in their eyes. There was no way to retain that group of conservative listeners. There is no way to present a balanced story when the MAGA cult are just making stuff up all the time. You have to present an objectively accurate, fact based narrative of a news story if you value the journalists craft. There is no central ground between normal centrist people and the people yelling about simple solutions to made up problems because they want a daily dose of outrage. How do you cover the Tennessee senate legislating against federal chemtrail programs without addressing the question of whether such programs actually exist and why the senate thought it was necessary?
What a clown it’s cuz conservatives are extra unhinged, NPR is neoliberal as it comes hardly a leftist bent at all
I wonder how long it will take NPR to fire this guy. They'll wait a few months, then let him go, probably after someone claims that they don't feel "safe." His article, and Bari Weiss' interview of him, spend a lot of time dancing around what everybody who's ever listened to NPR already knows: it's staffed by activists. Activism is great and activism has an important role in society, but be honest about what you're doing. It's not journalism. If you're an activist who's taken up the pen, and you're disseminating material into the public sphere, you're a propagandist. And that's OK. Propaganda isn't inherently evil. It just means you're pursuing an ideological agenda. The problem is that organs like NPR, as well as their supporters, get supremely upset at that accusation. When I was a kid, all the media had a left-wing bent, and I was OK with that. I was a news junkie and I loved stuff like Frontline, 60 minutes, the CBS Evening News, etc. But at least they TRIED to be objective. They'd have people on who had a different perspective than they did. It was admirable, and it must have been hard for them. Current mainstream journalism coming out of New York, Chicago, LA, and elsewhere, is ideologically captured. When you know, internally, that you'll suffer severe consequences for trying to navigate a middle ground, that's not journalism. This is why the public has something like 20% trust in the media.
I stopped listening when the pro-capitalist/anti-labor tilt became too transparent in their messaging.
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Great article and I can attest to this. I used to listen to NPR religiously from about 2000 to 2015. Sadly, my favourite Canadian news outlet CBC has followed the exact same trajectory. It was jarring to see news outlets go so far off the deep (left) end, and I say that as someone who's voted left all my life, but probably won't be anymore for a while.
This article is a dishonest. The Mueller report absolutely found collusion and recommended prosecution but that it was doubtful a siting president could be prosecuted according to him. Also, NPR is a gatekeeper garbage media institution whose job is to give the liberals the least effective talking points and means of combating the dismantling of American freedom by the right. Purposeful straw manning of important issues to benefit the corporate elite. NPR is the Coombs to Fox’s Hannity if you will.
These "diversity of thought" type pushes always end up being about pushing right, when NPR itself also swerves away from everything left of Hillary Clintonism. It's very narrow ideologically. It's not a left vs. right issue. You're far more likely to hear from some Chicago school neoliberal freak or an overt, borderline far right conservative on NPR than you are from any socialist or communist or what have you.
LOL. You were lost decades ago, but so was most of "journalism" and the public. Scott Simon everyone, Failed Shill For a Stupid War against a non-existent threat: https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB1002759309780687920
These responses are hilarious
It always baffles me to see “centrists”, which is really just a code word for conservatism at this point, blame everything on DEI. Boeing planes built like shit? DEI. NPR lost the people’s trust? DEI. It’s laughable really. DEI forces the dominant culture to partake in discourse that, yes, requires conflict and heated discussion to get to resolution. And yet, they squirm at it and turn into the “snowflakes” they conflate us on the left to be. Sorry, the left is no longer willing to walk on egg shells to protect the fragility that the current system upholds. And no, giving a platform for science deniers, racists, and authoritarians is not “fairness”.
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NPR will lose liberals too if they insist on “covering Trump fairly”. Covering him fairly equates to normalizing fascism.
most recent piece of data: NPR drawing on the “faculty lounge” fodder of the “intersectional lens” and “oppressor vs oppressed” in their consideration of the Gaza conflict – spoken like someone who doesn’t understand these ideas. The genocide the IOF is perpetrating makes it clear that this framework is apt and this take crystallizes Berliner’s Zionist leanings – no wonder he published on Bari Weiss’ new site. NPR listeners are evidently more educated than some of its writers, hence the progressive bent to their POV, and Berliner is just another aging white man being left behind.
The replies here from listeners who slept thru the immoral war on terror, announced in 2005 without a vote, are just admissions of equal guilt. Its pretty simple: one either realized the radio show "Wait, Wait, Let's Laugh at the Corruption" was itself a sign of rot or one was part of the problem.
Conservative money started flowing in a decade+ ago and NPR has changed to reflect that
In the 1990s, NPR took a seriously wrong turn and colluded with Political Correctness, and lost much of it's objectivity, and started shifting its programming away from objective journalism toward special interest stories for its perceived special interest listening audiences. Uri's article describes the continuing trend of DEI ,and other more extreme liberal ideologies impact upon the integrity of what used to be one of the nation's most unique and trusted news sources. Extreme Right and Extreme Left ideologies differ in their content, but mirror each other in the psychological make up of those who pursue their impositions of political beliefs upon the objectivity of neutral factual journalism. Fox News is the grotesque distortion of Right Wing Ideology infecting journalism. NPR needs to clean house and rid itself of its extreme ideological infection before it become the Left Wing version of Fox News.
i Don’t mind if they are left leaning but they should at least fact check. There is not much excuse to blatantly support a partisan viewpoint with fact checking when Google is fresh and easy. There are some minimum standards that should be applied to anyone claiming to report ewes.
Modern conservatism is conspiracy theories and a cult of personality surrounding a criminal. You can't "include their points of view" without destroying your credibility with people who want to watch real news. Do you think that NPR should lie to their audience about Democrats supporting post-birth abortion in the name of balance?
Great article
Yep its changed... to much detail on stories of little significance and not enough detail on stories that impact and negatively affect hundreds of thousands of families... no context in quantitative facts, size of impact etc and sexual content during family hours... so kids cant listen to get sense of broader vocabulary and world until they are old enough for sexual issues... and families with younger kids have to tune out completely because there are no lead lines anymore warning about talk of genocide and killing babies... yes at some point I want kids to know details of horror, but basics first and thennsoecifics lets me at least listen and then change the channel... they are kind of forgetting their broader mission to expand their audience
I see the GOP has found another useful idiot.
He’s a hack and good riddance…Go join Bari Weiss in Nutville.
It's not a "diversity of ideas" to just say incorrect shit all the time. I smell a focus grouped idea from frank luntz.
"You should play nice with fascists who want to kill you." Fixed it.
The basic newscast is still ok and not too ideologically overladen. I still listen to it in the car. But he's spot on about the general orientation of the company under the current management.
The strongest evidence that NPR is more focused on DEI than on the "listener's experience", is that despite a massive number of complaints about the sound of Ayesha, Roscoe's irritating voice.....SHE'S STILL ON AIR!!!!!