NPR suspends veteran editor as it grapples with his public criticism

https://www.npr.org/2024/04/16/1244962042/npr-editor-uri-berliner-suspended-essay

by RickJWagner • 2 years ago

406 798 2 years ago

I looked up the article: https://www.thefp.com/p/npr-editor-how-npr-lost-americas-tru...

Generally speaking NPR rarely shows up on my radar. Punishing him for this article though sure has the opposite effect of what they hope to achieve. In fact, with this they just sent a message to all their journalists that they are not allowed to express viewpoints making their problem worse.

Objective outsider view, NPR is guilty as charged. How can NPR ever repair trust in their reporting with this over their head?

netsharc2• 2 years ago

The reason for his suspension is: "the organization told the editor [i.e. Berliner] he had failed to secure its approval for outside work for other news outlets, as is required of NPR journalists."

Not because he criticized them.

It this a punishment that is always applied; or used selectively? If the first, then it's fine, if the latter... then yeah there's a problem.

obelos• 2 years ago

This opinion piece is less a incisive criticism of NPR than it is a resume line item for Berliner applying to The Atlantic. His three leading “big” examples are largely wrong. The Mueller report didn't say “no collusion”. Barr did. The report said that it was not possible to conclude with prosecutorial confidence what level of cooperation had taken place because there had been so much obstruction of justice, so charging for that would be the appropriate law enforcement action after Trump resumed his role as a regular citizen.

Conversely, the Hunter laptop thing has never been a compelling above-the-fold story. Hunter Biden is a politician's kid, not some elected official or, ahem, a politician's kid who has been appointed to a cabinet or advisory role within an administration. There has been no evidence that implicated Joe Biden was a meaningful participant or benefactor in whatever name-dropping grift he's gotten on at. Why would a news outlet spend airtime on this?

The lab leak story is somewhat more compelling. Although I think at this point because of analysis that concluded there were two different, yet closely related strains of the virus simultaneously present at different sections of the wet market, it's hard to conclude a lab origin is more likely than it coming from wild origins. But at the time he's referring to, it was simply a matter of dogma to conclude a lab origin was off the table.

And commenting that the DC staff is 87 Democrat is... amazing. That's the natural demographic of DC, one of the most Democratic regions in the country.

jimbob452• 2 years ago

Objective outsider view, NPR is guilty as charged. How can NPR ever repair trust in their reporting with this over their head?

NPR can't fix itself because any time they get someone that shows promise at being a stand-up reporter, they leave for a better gig.

Case in point: Joshua Johnson[0] who used to run the The1A. The show was incredible while he was there. MSNBC picked him up and now it's daily partisan propaganda.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Johnson_(journalist)

typeofhuman• 2 years ago

Welp, this is one way to validate his criticisms and prevent others from ever speaking out again. This is journalistic oppression.

spaceprison• 2 years ago

I grew up listening to NPR, it was always on. Car talk with my dad on the weekends, Prarie home, etc. It's been programed in every car I've owned since I was a teenager. My wife and I have listened together and donated for years. But starting around 2019ish it gotten harder and harder to stay engaged with the programming.

Almost every piece of reporting is now some kind of soft-outrage human-interest pseudo news. I want to listen but every other story is a tale of victim hood and oppression. It's just too much.

karpatic• 2 years ago

A lil game I play is to see how long until a pandering buzzword is said from the time I turn on the radio. Usually T < 3 seconds if not the very first word I hear.

kelipso2• 2 years ago

Same, used to be my default radio and podcast listening, then a few years ago they had a major jump in their style/producers/journalists and just couldn't keep listening anymore.

resource_waste3• 2 years ago

Their podcasts went from non-fiction stories to advertisements for peoples random cultural book.

wumeow• 2 years ago

Every time I tune in, I measure the time-to-race, which is the amount of time that passes before race becomes the main topic of discussion. Usually it’s less than 15 minutes.

unethical_ban5• 2 years ago

Similar!

I think some of the flagship programs talk nonstop about LGBT and minority issues, but this has been a thing for some years. I remember pre COVID driving to work chuckling at how every time I turned on the radio, it was a story on those topics.

There is a lot more going on in the world that can also be discussed.

I like Weekend edition and All Things Considered, and their hourly news updates.

Finally: there is a distinction between a faux "both sides" centrism and constant focus on identity. Having a liberal bias can exist while providing a wide range of coverage and de-emphasizing identity politics.

xracy13• 2 years ago

Hot take... How many other news sources discuss race?

I think this is an under-discussed topic for how pervasive a problem it is in our country. And I think we do ourselves a disservice by trying to hide from it. The more we talk about it, the easier it is to pick up a discussion where we left off.

And my guess here is that the proportion of news about this relative to proportion of people affected by that news is way off.

jiscariot• 2 years ago

20 year listener here. I now listen until they force identity politics in to the subject at hand, then change the channel. In my experience it's much less than 10m, but could be my market too.

LVB• 2 years ago

Sprinkle in climate change, and you'll be down to 5! I may be grading them too critically at this point, but in recent years, it feels like that XKCD about Wikipedia and how all roads lead to "Philosophy." Sometimes, I'll sit there wondering how the leap will be made from some benign story to these anchor topics, but they usually manage. I don't like that predictability at all.

sobellian2• 2 years ago

I once tuned in to NPR when they were talking about artificial intelligence, and they were talking about how the seminal figures in the field (e.g. McCarthy) were white men. I reflected that if I had to pick the least interesting possible topic on AI, it would probably be how white the AI researchers were in the 1950s.

I think this is the transcript: https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1161883646.

The Dartmouth conference has become an origin myth... Of course, the origin myth served to empower these men to tell their own story. And it's a story full of erasure... We hear nothing in that origin myth about the relationship that AI has to industrialization or to capitalism or to these colonial legacies of reserving reason for only certain kinds of people and certain kinds of thinking.

(later, same show):

White men wanted to call themselves universal and produce themselves in the machine.

I mean, seriously?

jmbwell2• 2 years ago

In fairness, all that soft-outrageous shit is actually happening.

But yes, turning off the news from time to time is, in general, good for your health.

forgetfreeman6• 2 years ago

Some years ago I had a deeply weird conversation with a conservative political operative in my area wherein (among other things) they advanced the claim that liberals had demonstrably and totally won the culture wars, and then proceeded to go totally off the rails. I balked at the notion at the time but as the years have gone by I've come to the sullen realization that they had a point.

bradleyjg3• 2 years ago

There are 8 billion people on the planet. You can fill 24/7 with whatever kinds of stories you wish—-sad, maddening, inspiring, funny, joyful, and outrageous too. It’s pure choice to pick the last one, it’s not in any way forced by reality.

ordinaryradical• 2 years ago

A useful heuristic for measuring news quality is to ask yourself, “Am I more informed about what’s happening or about what people are angry about.”

Like you, I was a life-long listener and donater. I stopped both during the pandemic when I noticed NPR was playing the anger game, like every other outlet, for social media points.

lainga2• 2 years ago

Big context shift for me was realising roughly 2019 that Portal:Current events could efficiently replace 95% of my news scrolling

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events

aaronax2• 2 years ago

Images of what I imagine to be their yearly performance goals rush through my head as soon as it turns to victim, race, oppression, etc.

"25% of stories uplifting Black voices" etc.

It just seems so forced.

kenjackson7• 2 years ago

Would “a focus on making sure we also give the conservative angle“ also seem forced?

ripper1138• 2 years ago

American Fiction satirizes this aspect of modern media incredibly well.

gosub1004• 2 years ago

I wonder if it has parallels to the Salem Witch Hunt? If they spend x/2% of their time accusing others of being racist, they must expend x/2% "uplifting blacks" so they cannot be accused of it as well.

bryanlarsen• 2 years ago

The indicator on NPR is one of my favorite podcasts, and doesn't play the outrage games.

photonthug2• 2 years ago

And Berliner apparently helped to start planet money, which indicator is a spin off of. That’s almost the sum total of real news that’s still available at npr :(

xracy13• 2 years ago

Is this discomfort with the state of the world? Cause I think the goal is that you feel inclined towards action on that. The state of the world isn't... all good. We've got some serious issues right now. And it seems like a lot of people are complaining that they have to hear about that (I will point out almost no other news station is doing this, so also as a proportion of news this seems kinda reasonable) rather than that others are experiencing the bad things.

It's funny to me because their used to be a conservative take that liberals needed safe spaces to talk about all of this stuff, and when it's actually in the media people don't want to grapple with it. I would bet that the most vocal proponents of changing this dialogue lean conservative as well.

BeetleB8• 2 years ago

Is this discomfort with the state of the world?

There are two separate critiques going on:

1. There is a lot of bias in the news coverage.

2. There is a lot more to a radio station than covering the state of the world (news, social issues, etc). There's stuff like entertainment, humor, etc.

A lot of people are arguing about 2 above.

There's always malnutrition somewhere in the world (and yes, in the US). But we don't criticize the existence of movie theaters.

goatlover5• 2 years ago

I don't think it's the media's place to make us feel inclined to take action. What action, exactly? Progressive, conservative, green, techno-optimist, religious, etc? It's their job to report on whatever is news-worthy, and it's up to viewers what they want to do with that information. I don't agree with pushing agendas disguised as news. That used to be mainly a Fox News and AM-talk radio thing. It's dissapointing to see the rest of media follow suit.

thinkingemote• 2 years ago

It's true that there's big problems and it's true that things should change.

The issue is that the solution that is proposed to the problem is to have more attention to the problem. This result in a virtuous circle where things have to address the problem more and more. It does help address the problem though, it's not falling on deaf ears and it is educational.

This then becomes a kind of noise drowning out other signals. It's the signals that listeners want not the noise.

Is anything actually improved, do people benefit? I would say yes!!

But it's a move away from signal and information towards problem education and political or social messaging.

The virtuous circle can get reinforced by objections to the changes. Objections or "discomfort" are often proof that more changes need to be made. The signal is further reduced and those in change become blind in their virtue. Metrics in how good they are doing are perceived in terms of the messages that are put out not in quality productions. A kind of seige mentality makes it hard to determine the difference between criticism of the content or format and political objections of the added messaging to the content. Both positions become opposition and encourage more of the same.

To me, the change to add more unbiased views or thoughts from the other side seem artificial and miss the actual change in content. It makes things more political and less about life.

tick_tock_tick3• 2 years ago

The state of the world isn't... all good

That's true it's fucking amazing! It's so much better then any point in history it's hard to image how far we've come.

johndhi2• 2 years ago

Car Talk with my dad was so fun

resource_waste3• 2 years ago

One time they said that fast food was cheaper than grocery food.

It was so wrong, that I never listened to NPR since.

krapp2• 2 years ago

One time they said that fast food was cheaper than grocery food.

It often is. I can get a burger and fries at McDonalds for far less than the cost in ingredients to make it myself.

alistairSH4• 2 years ago

A Happy Meal is frequently sold for $3. YOu're saying to can buy the raw ingredients for a hamburger, fries, apple slices, and juice box for less?

dekhn12• 2 years ago

That's factually correct- it is often cheaper to buy the equivalent of a hamburger, fries, and coke at McDonalds, Burger King, or other similar stores, for less than you can buy the ingredients at the supermarket. This is actually a "known thing" which has been factually verified.

I wouldn't stop listening over that.

DoreenMichele3• 2 years ago

I've been thinking about this recently and articles that make cost comparisons of that sort tend to compare only the cost of ingredients and assume you have the equipment to cook it, the skills to cook it and that your time is worth zero.

I don't know how to come up with good metrics for measuring that but I think currently all such articles are seriously bad because most don't even list their set of implicit assumptions concerning the costs that they are bothering to measure.

gosub1004• 2 years ago

This comment sparked a really good debate - one which I am pretty sure I remember seeing on HN before. But what it makes me think of is seeing the parent issue: that accounting can be abused to spin the truth however you want. I really want to go in the meta direction with this and say I wish accounting shenanigans could be identified and labelled as fallacies or at least sneaky tools used for persuasion, just like people are becoming wise to established fallacies like strawman or relative privation.

Does it "cost more" based on calories/dollar, or weight of food, or cooked-meals-per-dollar? (I'm not asking for an answer, thats what everyone below your comment has been arguing about I assume). Are cigarettes "just as addictive" as heroin? Well, it depends on how you measure/define _____. I keep seeing effort wasted in arguments that all point back to the "well, it depends on how you measure it", but to me, the arguments never actually get anywhere and nobody seems to realize that they are playing with movable goalposts.

BeetleB8• 2 years ago

I grew up listening to NPR, it was always on. Car talk with my dad on the weekends, Prarie home, etc.

Note: These are not NPR shows. They're merely shows that your (and most) local NPR affiliates purchased for broadcasting.

If you think your local affiliate doesn't have enough of these types of shows, let them know! Many local affiliates have wide discretion on the programming.

More details: https://www.npr.org/about-npr/178640915/npr-stations-and-pub...

eurleif4• 2 years ago

Car Talk was an NPR show.

CoastalCoder2• 2 years ago

Note: These are not NPR shows. They're merely shows that your (and most) local NPR affiliates purchased for broadcasting.

That seems like a pretty fine distinction. If nothing else, NPR makes decisions about which externally produced shows to license. In the end, NPR deserves all the credit / responsibility for what it broadcasts.

It reminds me of the distinction NPR makes (used to make?) between "advertising" and "underwriting". Maybe the distinction was relevant for some legal / regulatory things. But it wasn't relevant for e.g. discussions about whether or not they were subject to "advertiser" pressure on their content.

trashface• 2 years ago

I don't listen anymore but still like to use text.npr.org for news, its pretty easy to scan the headlines and mentally filter out most of the social justice pieces (and there are a lot of them).

TBF I don't think NPR is really much different then most other mainstream lefty sources. I think axios is way worse than NPR (a lot of their "articles" are just vibes with really poor evidence, at least NPR still tries to do some traditional reporting).

doublepg23• 2 years ago

You may like https://brutalist.report/ - very easy to filter just by changing the URL query too.

bevekspldnw• 2 years ago

Same, and it’s pretty good. Not sure what the complaints are as I only use the text only version.

voidwtf• 2 years ago

It's hard to say how much of that is manufactured outrage and how much is an unsettling new reality. It may not be your reality, but for an increasing number of people quality of life is deteriorating. Not saying you're wrong, just saying that we shouldn't completely tune out everything that doesn't fit our own reality.

AnimalMuppet2• 2 years ago

It's hard to say how much of that is manufactured outrage and how much is an unsettling new reality.

There's plenty of unsettling new reality, I'll give you that. And it should be reported on, even if it makes people uncomfortable.

But how is it reported on? There's a difference between "here's the economic reality of 20% of of the population" and "you should be outraged about the economy". And if you listen in order to analyze the way the story is told rather than to hear what the story is about, you can tell which is which fairly reliably.

Much of the left has gone from "we're going to report the stories that happen" to "we're going to report the things we think need to be reported, like poverty" (which is all right, as long as they also report the news), to "we're going to report things so as to make you become politically active on the side that we think you should". That last step is highly problematic. For one thing, once you're that blatantly a cheerleader for one side, can I trust that you're telling the truth about what you're reporting on, or are you distorting it out of all resemblance to reality?

SubiculumCode• 2 years ago

NPR has been downgraded, intellectually. They follow the rest of the news, discussing the same topics with the same framing as the rest of the media, following whatever hot topic there is at the moment, no matter how trivial. News and discussion is often spoon-fed in bite sized chunks that miss nuance and lack the willingness to go past the headlines to the real meat of the issue for fear of boring less sophisticated listeners. Its become boring, repetitive, and uninformative in the vast majority of the stories I hear on NPR One. It is a sad state of affairs.

tick_tock_tick3• 2 years ago

Almost every piece of reporting is now some kind of soft-outrage human-interest pseudo news.

God yes I hate it! I can listen for 20 minute and not walk away with a single fact or learn anything new.

Tokkemon• 2 years ago

Stick with Consider This and the NPR News. NPR Politics Podcast is great too. I tend to avoid the opinion stuff since, yes, it's definitely got an overly-lefty outrage-bait angle.

Modified3019• 2 years ago

Yep, many years ago NPR was quite eclectic and a great way to satisfy my curiosity on weekends as a kid or later at my factory job.

Incidentally, it now occurs to me that HN is basically my current replacement. Even if I have zero interest in a linked topic, I’ll often find a comment or discussion that’s enlightening and furthers my perspective of something in a meaningful and positive way.

kulahan• 2 years ago

I treasure this site and the insightful comments I read. It’s one of the last places I’ve found on the internet where someone can bring up a controversial topic and get legitimate responses.

DarmokJalad1701• 2 years ago

I used to listen to NPR quite a bit after moving to the US, mostly during my commutes. Over the last few years, it has gotten worse and worse. The point where I stopped listening to it and switched to podcasts was when they had someone claiming that office breakrooms were "basically white spaces" where non-white people do not belong (and calling for remote work as the alternative). And the interviewer essentially took them at face value.

Have these people not heard of office breakrooms existing outside of white-majority countries? I would bet that having food together in a communal setting is a team-building and fun activity throughout the world regardless of skin-color. Most likely, this was some young, introverted person who was uncomfortable being in a group and wanted to somehow bring in race into that to justify their viewpoint.

As someone who isn't white, this sort of coddling non-sense is simply infuriating. I do not want to be judged based on what I look like, and platforming/pushing these sort of views does exactly that.

They have become the very caricature of what right-wing news makes out liberals to be.

elevatedastalt3• 2 years ago

You've always had narcissistic people make everything about themselves or seeing victimhood everywhere.

However what's new is that as long as claims being made are of a certain type, they are not only accepted uncritically, but in fact trying to challenge them can be dangerous for your employment status. So essentially no one can call BS on their ideas because no dissent on these topics is allowed.

unholythree2• 2 years ago

I recall hearing an NPR piece in the past couple months that was discussing how best to handle reparations for slavery. The entire piece clearly came from the conceit that reparations would be good and desirable. All of the expert interviewees supported and spoke favorably of reparations with no counterpoints, the few opponents were extemporaneous "man on the street" interviews. The end effect was an one sided piece almost contemptuously disregarding any opposition. Certainly not a convincing message to the 68% of US adults (including 49% of Democrats) that don't support reparations.

More than the staking a clear political position on the matter, it was the presumption and condescension that was the most off-putting. Far too often their pieces have adopted that tone. With the "right-thinking" guest or guests interviewed by the "right-thinking" host about a issue clearly the listener would agree with too... if they are "right-thinking."

chiefalchemist2• 2 years ago

If you think NPR has fallen - and it has - try following The Economist on Instagram. Talk about a once reputable media outlet losing it's way. Nearly every post feels like they fell asleep next to a BuzzFeed pod.

sandspar5• 2 years ago

The Economist has a firewall between its magazine and its social media team. The magazine is still good.

pkulak• 2 years ago

Yeah. There are sooo many good podcasts (so much so that I am still a “sustaining member” of OPB because of all the value they bring me), but if you turn it on in the car at a random time, you’re going to die of boredom.

listless• 2 years ago

I used to love listening to All Things Considered followed by Planet Money every day on my grueling commute home from work. It was my only companion. I haven't turned it on in years.

I mourn the loss. Living in a red area NPR was a much-needed breath of Fresh Air.

WalterSear• 2 years ago

Sure. It's a real problen. But that was a verging-on-cover-story part of Berliner's criticism, which was just another crypto-fascist diatribe, of the kind that are currently so depressingly ubiquitious.

pyuser583• 2 years ago

I live in a very liberal part of America.

Wokeness is not popular with anybody.

20% of America is outraged, 60% is willing to give woke media a try as long is it’s entertaining and not too preachy, 15% gives extra points for “representation” but still wants a good story, and 5% thinks it doesn’t go far enough.

Part of this is generational.

In the workplace, I suspect “representation” is a proxy for age discrimination.

I’ve seen too many old white men pushed aside for much, much, much younger minorities.

Seems like thats happening at NPR.

nsagent3• 2 years ago

I similarly stopped listening to NPR around 2018, because they really leaned into news commentary with a very one-sided bias. I could no longer stand the preachiness of their newer programming, and it seemed that the more established folks like Robert Siegel and Steve Inskeep got roped into toeing the line as well. I think the Trump era really broke a lot of news sources I previously relied on.

underseacables• 2 years ago

The suspension proves his point. NPR could've taken this in such a different direction. Not punishing the journalist, and instead providing evidence for their fair and accurate reporting standards in a transparent way. Instead, they got angry and went right for the suspension "without pay" for a pathetic reason.

I used to love NPR growing up.

pessimizer2• 2 years ago

If you listened to it in the 90's or before, it was a different place. Then the Republicans attacked its funding in the culmination of a general attack at funding of the arts, and a specific attack on hearing hated perspectives on particular issues (80% of those issues being Palestinians being allowed to speak.)

The head was replaced with the ex-head of Radio Free Europe (a propaganda station), and a permanent pair of ombudsmen were placed there (one meant to always be a Democrat and the other always meant to be a Republican) to help censor news and editorial on behalf of the two private clubs who trade off leadership in the US. Funding from the government was decimated, and funding was taken over by giant managed funds, heavy extractive industries, and medical/insurance companies.

Any semblance of the hoped-for manufactured balance (to be provided by the ombudsmen) was eliminated by 9/11 and the need to invade Iraq for some reason. I'm pretty sure the positions are long gone (the mainstream media hates ombudsmen, the job attracts the ethical.) The place became neocon central until the property-inflation bubble burst. Everything that went on in society with the crash, and with weariness from the wars and the draconian surveillance laws and media censorship that resulted from them, resulted in the Obama media frenzy and election victory.

Democrats who had felt silenced during G.W. Bush felt like they had turned the tables. The problem with that was twofold. One, the Democrats who had stayed with NPR for that entire period were people with no values at all, who had continued working as if nothing had changed.

Two, the Obama presidency was not going to be a significant departure from the previous presidency, was going to extend the Bush doctrine and the surveillance indefinitely, and he made it his first priority to indemnify the people who had done very illegal things up to and including atrocities and a torture network. He was even eventually going to bring back the Espionage Act, and start surveilling journalists and political campaigns. He was also going to put all of his economic effort into protecting wealthy people from the fallout of all of those poor people losing their homes. Years later, there would be a big to-do about Trump's taxes, and the most horrifying thing in them is that Obama's legislation irt the crash had simply refunded an entire year of Trump's taxes.

Obama couldn't be more liberal, economically, other than the favoritism towards party insiders, the weakening of the boundaries between church and state, and the idea that government social programs should all be outsourced to nonprofits through heavy, usually indirect, infusions of cash. In fact, the only thing left of the social ambition that had characterized the Democratic Party from Kennedy until the destruction of the Rainbow Coalition by the Clintons' New Democrats (and their funders) was the constant discussion of race, homosexuality, immigration, abortion, and gun control (edit: and global warming.) Never decisively, of course, but stretched into endless length and endless detours, with constant claims of being too weak to actually change any policy in the face of Republican evil, eventually resulting in executive orders, again carrying forward GWB's antidemocratic executive philosophy.

That's how you end up with an NPR totally staffed with elite, careerist Democrats who are somehow now also completely neoconservative and neoliberal. The only consistent position they have on any issue is that elite Democrats are the best people to be deciding on them, not the ignorant, evil Republicans whom they agree with on almost every issue. The big controversy between them? How guilty should they feel. Democrats say very guilty. Republicans say, not guilty at all, but actually proud.

This is Democrats arguing with Republicans about who should feel guilty and who should feel powerful, not anything meaningful. The only reason Republicans are speaking up is because Palestinians are trying to talk again, and the Democrats at NPR have to give in at about a million starving children, especially if there are pictures. The guilt messes with their digestion.

astrange8• 2 years ago

behalf of the two private clubs who trade off leadership in the US

You've confused the US with the UK. There is no gatekeeping of political parties in the US, no way to stop someone from joining them, and no way to kick them out if they claim to be in it.

What they do have is primary elections.

alephnerd4• 2 years ago

Even NYT didn't suspend Bari Weiss despite her bringing similar criticisms about NYT.

In all honesty, I never understood the appeal of NPR, and I've been consuming news all the time since I was in elementary school (I even got my elementary school library to get a weekly subscription for The Economist).

I love PBS, but NPR always felt like cultural commentary with no actual in depth reporting. NYT occasionally feels like that as well, but their track record has more than redeemed themselves.

vundercind4• 2 years ago

Their news programming used to be pretty good (‘00s and earlier, maybe a little into the 20-teens). Now it’s at its best when my local station’s syndicating news from the BBC. :-( It’s markedly better, really highlights how bad NPR has gotten.

On the Media remains good. Their market show’s ok. I like Wait, Wait. That’s a complete list of their programs I’m still happy about listening to.

tombert6• 2 years ago

I don't listen to NPR directly, but I think RadioLab and This American Life are generally pretty good. I don't know how much those are NPR as a whole or works by affiliate stations, but they are media that I enjoy, so I kind of see why people would listen.

I will say, though, PBS is generally better. I think Frontline is very consistently excellent.

readams• 2 years ago

This American Life is from PRI not NPR. Radiolab is NPR however, though of course not really news-focused.

nox1012• 2 years ago

RadioLab did the same thing. Was science for the first ~10 yrs, then turned politics from a fairly left POV. I finally stopped listening after they passed the torch.

This American Life is also pretty far left. It's still on my podcast list but I only listen when I run out of others. And then, 2 out of 3 times the story a race/identity piece and fast forward to the next part.

bitcurious• 2 years ago

Older episodes of RadioLab are absolute gems. Around the time Robert Krulwich retired I noticed a palpable shift. The new hosts' motivation shifted from inform to influence. It still has good stories, but the framing is somewhat more manipulative, in a way that's hard to pin down but makes me distinctly uncomfortable and sometimes exhausted.

bonetruck• 2 years ago

I used to listen to NPR regularly. I enjoyed many of the programs. But that all changed when the "news" reporting became so heavily biased that I couldn't distinguish NPR from main stream media. In fact, I've become so irritated by the bias that I now openly call for defunding NPR and I've removed them from all my radio presets. I didn't leave NPR, they left me....

InTheArena8• 2 years ago

This is the same NPR that sold it's subscriber list to the Democratic party. In the US, the government has no business paying for speech, especially partisan speech.

Like most of the rest of the media, NPR is no longer liberal (in respect to protecting personal human rights, economic freedom, observable truth and government institutions) but rather Liberal causes (restricting speech against protected classes, skeptical of free markets, relative truths, tearing down government institutions).

alephnerd4• 2 years ago

sold it's subscriber list to the Democratic party

Do you have a source for this? This is massive allegation you are giving, and can veer directly into disinformation.

InTheArena8• 2 years ago

To be fair, this was a long time ago - it's a quick reminder that I am a lot older then I remember - in the late 90s, NPR and CPB member stations were caught selling their membership lists. There was a compromise that preserved CPB and NPR funding in 1999 that explicitly forbid them from doing so: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1999-jul-21-mn-58123...

CamperBob23• 2 years ago

The Democratic Party is a private organization, not the government.

InTheArena8• 2 years ago

NPR's funding in part comes from CPB - which is government backed.

chaostheory• 2 years ago

This is the reason I stopped donating. They don’t even bother trying to look objective and impartial anymore. It’s no different from Fox or CNN. At least PBS News is still decent.

donatj3• 2 years ago

I used to have NPR on in my car basically all the time since I started driving in the early aughts.

I am in no way a Trump supporter but the way the tone shifted into vitriolic acid spitting after his election, I just can’t abide or frankly listen anymore. I just want the news.

0xbadc0de5• 2 years ago

"This article is completely false and misleading! We'll show everyone how fair and unbiased we are by... suspending anyone who dares to criticize us?"

That's a bold strategy Cotton, let's see if it pays off.

netsharc2• 2 years ago

The reason for his suspension is: "the organization told the editor [i.e. Berliner] he had failed to secure its approval for outside work for other news outlets, as is required of NPR journalists."

Not because he criticized them.

It this a punishment that is always applied; or used selectively? If the first, then it's fine, if the latter... then yeah there's a problem.

gottorf6• 2 years ago

It this a punishment that is always applied; or used selectively?

Steve Inskeep, a fellow NPR journalist, published a rebuttal on his own Substack[0] to Uri Berliner's article. Considering that Inskeep's Substack is also for profit (meaning people must pay a subscription to read non-public articles), it seems that unless he is also suspended, there is in fact selective enforcement.

[0] https://steveinskeep.substack.com/p/how-my-npr-colleague-fai...

JoBrad2• 2 years ago

I didn’t think Berliner’s article made very good points, but did appreciate that the conversation was being had. Suspending him doesn’t look good, even if there was some rule he violated. The article mentioned other instances that he wasn’t punished for.

cafard• 2 years ago

Having mastered the art of the circular firing squad, NPR continues to practice it.

Juan Williams may be laughing now. Don't know about the person who fired him, then lost her job in the fallout.

jmbwell2• 2 years ago

In the stories he’s listing in the article, plenty of organizations were taking the “team x” positions he describes. It’s not like NPR had the only newsroom having to make choices.

Summing it up as a lack of transparency (would he rather say “fairness?”) and viewpoint diversity (“balance?”) seems somewhat disingenuous. At a higher level view, different organizations are going to take different positions. Arguably, obligated to do so.

Surely he doesn’t believe every org has to pretend there are “both sides” to every story. But if he’s no longer aligned with NPR, then perhaps the suspension is in everyone’s best interest.

mustafa_pasi• 2 years ago

Exactly. To me it sounds like he's a corporate stooge who tried to steer NPR into being yet another fake centrist outlet, full of tailored opinions.

friend_and_foe5• 2 years ago

A public organization, funded by public money, should not be taking a political stance against more than half the population. It's one thing to just report some fact that goes against a narrative that half the population believes. That's not what is going on at NPR. If they want to take a team x position, fine, team y shouldn't be funding them under threat of imprisonment. They can get their funding the way all the other newsrooms having to make choices do.

StarterPro2• 2 years ago

Is it possible half the population is wrong? Or maybe over counted?

etchalon2• 2 years ago

It receives < %1 of its funding from "public" money.

vonnik• 2 years ago

Grew up in a purple state listening to NPR. For many many years, it was the only smart talk radio available. But it turned into partisan cant a few years ago. A great tragedy.

FeloniousHam• 2 years ago

I've been a lifelong listener, since I was a nerdy kid. I'm down to hate-listening to Morning Edition, mostly for the audio cues that help get the kids out the door.

This morning they had a short piece on the kidney transplant list, and how it affect Black recipients differently. They spent 90% on a personal story and how this impacted him, and I know nothing about why the process is racist or how it was created.

I rant to my friends, but recently Mike Pesca (an NPR alum) had a good take on the decline and failure of the network: https://www.mikepesca.com/thegist/episode/30939dec/public-ra...

gred• 2 years ago

This week there's a solar eclipse; women and minorities hardest hit.

indil• 2 years ago

Ugh, please don't capitalize black. That's the kind of stuff Berliner was talking about.

freitzkriesler2• 2 years ago

Npr was great when Bush Jr was in office. Once Obama became elected, it went downhill and hasn't recovered. I stopped listening to it years ago and it's a shame what has become of the network.

InTheArena8• 2 years ago

Here is the article that he was punished for - https://www.thefp.com/p/npr-editor-how-npr-lost-americas-tru...

TheEggMan2• 2 years ago

You're the man for sharing this

DoreenMichele3• 2 years ago

Not really my thing, but this section suggests he likely has a valid point. Sometimes, being right is the most unforgivable thing you can be.

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.

An open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR, and now, predictably, we don’t have an audience that reflects America.

hackerlight2• 2 years ago

I mean, that data in itself doesn't say much, conservatism in the US changed dramatically in 2015/2016. The people who call themselves conservative now are different to back in 2011. For example the education levels are a lot lower among conservatives and a lot higher among liberals than before.

cantaloupe• 2 years ago

NPR is not a monolithic media organization. In my experience, local NPR stations are one of the best sources of interesting and relevant local news. In contrast, most local TV/Radio news is borderline a crime blotter ginned up to keep people outraged.

Regarding the national NPR newsroom, I think this story will provoke positive change, as indicated in the article. There is no media which every person would consider unbiased, and very few media organizations take action to even attempt to reign in biases. The fact that editors will start reviewing coverage more closely to remove tilt sets a higher bar than all but a few news organizations.

I chuckle thinking about a reporter stepping out of another random news room in the country and spreading outrage that the coverage has a bias. The response would generally be: “Yes, duh.”

InTheArena8• 2 years ago

I think as shown by similar scandals at NYT and WSJ, that the media press do not accept feedback, and instead will rally around extending and furthering their ideological anti-liberal (authoritarian) monoculture, and instead get rid of dissenting voices.

see James Bennet at NYT (who was fired for publishing a op-ed from a sitting American senator) or even Kevin D. Williamson at the Athletic.

dekhn12• 2 years ago

I can't see why everybody got so worked up about the op-ed you're referring to. The Times has traditionally been a venue for voices that are not in its constituency, and in this particular case, Cotton wrote such a crazy article that it reduced his credibility significantly in front of the nation. He proposed using the military to quell protests, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/03/opinion/tom-cotton-protes...

faeriechangling6• 2 years ago

Never look NPR or NYT to have an anti-liberal monoculture, I thought they were mostly liberal.

cscurmudgeon• 2 years ago

There is no media which every person would consider unbiased, and very few media organizations take action to even attempt to reign in biases.

NPR receives public money. They should be unbiased and objective.

kenjackson7• 2 years ago

Realistically there is no way to do news without a bias nowadays. A Trump supporter told me there was no war between Russia and Ukraine. I said “OK, conflict”. His reply was “mainstream media has you brainwashed”.

To cover Jan 6 do we have to say that maybe it was Trump supporters who peacefully went to the Capitol or maybe it was Antifa who stormed it - we have to treat all possible scenarios as equally likely?

forgetfreeman6• 2 years ago

Nope. The idea that all viewpoints are equally valid is intellectually bankrupt and a classic example of weaponized human stupidity because anything is possible when you don't know what you're talking about. Playing into the bullshit asymmetry principle in an effort to sway crackpots only mainstreams their lunacy.

friend_and_foe5• 2 years ago

Nobody is demanding that the editors at NPR entertain the idea that the earth is flat. There are legitimate disagreements among Americans, difficult to resolve ideological and pragmatic differences, that we compromise on mostly peacefully via our political process. Not unbiased discussion on these contentious issues is dishonest, people treating opposing political views as "of course" wrong and therefore not meriting discussion misses the point: we all think we are right and our opponents are wrong, which is precisely why we have to talk about it. Dismissing them as lunacy is arrogance at best, malicious shutting down of discussion you don't want to have at worst. Q is lunacy, the idea that transgenderism is a mental illness for example, to pick a very contentious, mostly party line division, is a genuine disagreement. Our society has to address these disagreements, that almost always all sides of think the opposing view is ridiculous, if we want to continue calling ourselves one people.

richrichie2• 2 years ago

Actually, ability to keep two or more competing hypotheses in mind at the same time is a sign of intelligence.

denton-scratch• 2 years ago

Realistically there is no way to do news without a bias nowadays.

There never has been; there is no such thing as unbiased reporting.

There is only reporting that is open about it's assumptions, premises and biases, and reporting that purports to be "unbiased". The latter is insidious and dangerous. With the former, you can simply avoid it, if you want to live in a bubble; or you can consume it, and evaluate it based on the known proclivities of the source.

goatlover5• 2 years ago

There is a clear distinction between trying to be objective and pushing agendas. Just as there is a difference between news and propaganda. What's dangerous is blurring those lines. That's Orwellian.

melondonkey• 2 years ago

I think it’s honestly annoying how they feel they have to parenthetically add every time something is a lie or untrue. While their intention is good I think it does a service to no one and underestimates the intelligence of their listeners.

Also almost every story gets tied to either identity politics or climate change. Also just gets annoying even for those who agree. It’s like watching a movie with too much exposition dialogue.

burnished• 2 years ago

Huh. That article is.. alright. Reads as pretty emotional. The inciting article (linked in a sibling comment, well worth reading) does not deserve the criticisms as portrayed by the quick quotes included in this article.

The bit about political 'ammunition' is interesting to me though, given that the inciting article is briefly but thoroughly damning of the political camp evidently using this as 'ammunition'.

baggy_trough• 2 years ago

If NPR wanted to improve, they would fire their bigoted CEO and make Berliner the new one.

donatj3• 2 years ago

Despite having been near the top of the homepage mere minutes ago, this news article is now seemingly entirely delisted from HN without being marked flagged...

[It has since been marked flagged. My comment was seemingly changed by someone to "and marked flagged", I've changed it back for posterity]

I went back through five pages of posts.

I understand the desire to keep politics out of HN but this seems like a big story to cover up.

vundercind4• 2 years ago

I appreciated this one making the front page because I encountered the original article on HN and wondered if there’d be retaliation. I like having the follow-up, shame it was more than we could handle I guess.

bloopernova• 2 years ago

Unfortunately any political thread gets a lot of attention from people with ulterior motives to "steer" the thread. It almost never feels organic or authentic, just a lot of astroturf pushing a particular viewpoint.

I don't want to have to dig through folks' comment histories to try to determine if they're actually being truthful or engaged. So I'd rather the political stuff stays on reddit and x.

dang2• 2 years ago

Flags affect a post's ranking before the [flagged] marker appears. The [flagged] marker indicates that there are a large number of flags relative to upvotes.

jrootabega3• 2 years ago

Can you please comment on donatj's claim that his post was edited by someone else? Can you or anyone else do this, and did that happen in this case? Does this happen often?

jjulius• 2 years ago

... this news article is now seemingly entirely delisted from HN without being marked flagged...
I went back through five pages of posts.

It's currently on the first page, post #16. Methinks there has been a rush to judgement.

jrootabega3• 2 years ago

No, it was flagged for hours until recently.

2OEH8eoCRo0• 2 years ago

I see it differently. I see inauthentic users boosting these stories so people lose trust in the press.

naasking5• 2 years ago

That ship has long since sailed.

mjmsmith• 2 years ago

I still listen to my local NPR station (WNYC) despite its failure to pander to fragile white people.

woooooo2• 2 years ago

Audience demographics seem to disagree with your assertion here. A specific type of white person is the core.

chatmasta2• 2 years ago

Complaints about bias in journalism only exist because of an idealist assumption that unbiased "news" or "facts" is something that exists. But it does not. Sure, there are some "objective facts," but they're really more measurements or scientific observations — today's temperature, yesterdays death totals, the price of a stock, the score of a sports game, etc.

Anything beyond the boundaries of this ticker of raw measurements depends on some level of narrative, and therefore bias. Even the driest, most unbiased reporting of "what happened" is not immune to selection bias in choosing which events to report.

Ironically, the more that a news organization pretends this purist ideal of unbiased news exists, the more biased it becomes in its effort to hide its natural biases.

In terms of raw signal/noise, a pair of oppositely polarized news organizations are more informative than a single "unbiased" one. I learn more about the "truth" (which is mostly a matter of perception) by reading both Fox and CNN, and comparing the overlaps and differences between them, than I ever could by reading a single "unbiased" source of news in the middle.

seanmcdirmid4• 2 years ago

by reading both Fox and CNN

Most of us don't have time for that. I mostly prefer news oriented at business people, where too much bias would cost their readers real money, so the reporting tends to be more factual. So read WSJ rather than watch FoxNews, since even though both are owned by Murdoch, the former is for rich conservatives who have less time for idealistic BS.

MisterBastahrd2• 2 years ago

WSJ is hilariously biased. It might as well be the financial arm of the NY Post at this point.

wombat-man2• 2 years ago

I read his post which led to this. You should consider reading it, he cites specific examples. I think he had some good points.

giraffe_lady2• 2 years ago

There are serious journalistic problems with his concrete claims. For example the early part of it hinges on the Mueller report showing "no credible evidence of collusion" which is a straight up misrepresentation. It found many specific instances of collaboration, and some evidence of collusion but not enough to indicate criminal conspiracy. Which is messier than what he is implying and very relevant to his argument.

Later when he talks about the political affiliations of the newsroom, how did he access the voter registrations? How many of those people don't live in DC and so aren't registered there, and how did he count them? What are the professional-ethical implications of researching your coworkers in this way?

goatlover5• 2 years ago

Ironically, the more that a news organization pretends this purist ideal of unbiased news exists, the more biased it becomes in its effort to hide its natural biases.

Strong disagree. You're saying that the more someone tries to be unbiased, the more they end being biased? This seems like an excuse to embrace bias and push a narrative. I've never agreed with that regarding news.

chatmasta2• 2 years ago

I am a proponent of _openly_ embracing bias and pushing a narrative. The problems come when they try to hide it, by claiming to be unbiased (either deceptively or naively) while actually pushing a narrative. If everyone is open about their agenda, then the reader has more agency to triangulate the "truth" without first needing to cut through some layer of obfuscation.

AnimalMuppet2• 2 years ago

Kind of true, and very false.

Don't think of "bias" as a boolean. Think of it as a real value between 0 and 1.

You can't get perfectly unbiased. (I actually think I agree - you can't.) But you can get more biased and less biased, and the difference really matters.

Was Walter Cronkite perfectly unbiased? No. But he tried. Was the result better than, say, Fox News? Yes, it was.

There was an editor of the New York Times who, recognizing that his reporters leaned left, deliberately leaned the editorial stance of the paper somewhat to the right, in order to keep the results closer to neutral. He literally had "He kept the paper straight" put on his tombstone. The results were not perfect - they never are - but they were better than the results of "bias is inevitable, so we won't bother even trying" (which quickly transforms into "bias is inevitable, so we might as well run with our biases").

fooqux• 2 years ago

Ironically, the more that a news organization pretends this purist ideal of unbiased news exists, the more biased it becomes in its effort to hide its natural biases.

"Citation needed".

I don't disagree with your general premise, that journalism always has some level of bias; it's likely impossible to create an unbiased narrative. That said, I find it difficult to get on board with the notion that seeking this perfection is self-defeating.

I also find it difficult to believe that choosing to simply get your news from two "known biased" news organizations is the more correct choice. Some of the so-called news reported on by a certain news agency is factually false. It's misinformation, and the only use it has is exposing the bias of the agency. Presuming the agency on the other extreme end of the spectrum is doing the same thing, all you have are two pieces of incorrect data. You haven't learned anything because there's nothing of value to be learned from something completely false.

criddell• 2 years ago

This comment thread is almost entirely people who think NPR of today is worse than it used to be (with some exceptions for local news).

It makes me wonder if NPR news leadership thinks they are doing a good job? Is there an audience out there that think NPR is doing a good job in absolute terms? It's easy to say they are better than Newsmax or some other outlet, but that's not the same as saying NPR is good all by itself.

thegrim332• 2 years ago

The first thought that came to my mind was the Google Gemini debacle, as a useful analogy. How did Google release it in the state it was in? How did they not notice the problems? How did leadership think it was a good idea? I think you'd find a lot of similar answers in both cases.

elevatedastalt3• 2 years ago

A simpler question to ask is "How would anyone trying to report this 'bug' internally before launch have been treated?"

root_axis• 2 years ago

I agree with most of the criticisms regarding NPR's decline, but totally disagree with the idea that it's at all comparable to the Gemini situation. NPR is deliberately pushing an editorial agenda, not a product that they immediately took offline because it was performing poorly.

Every diffusion image model produces all kinds of arbitrarily bizarre behavior, this particular permutation just happened to catch fire in the media because it's culture war tinder. The idea that Google leaders thought it was "a good idea" to generate black Nazis and native American founding fathers is a caricature.

alephnerd4• 2 years ago

It seems to be a mix of donor capture and lack of relevance at the national level.

Local NPR affiliates produce locally relevant content, but national level NPR has no actual differentiator. The forces them to be much more heavily dependent on their donors (who have clearly chosen a specific side) and also means they aren't top of the list to get breaking news (no Congress member is going to spend 1-2 hours interviewing at NPR when they can have multiple interviews with nationally prominent news sources).

This seems to have caused a vicious cycle for NPR as they need to keep their donors and listeners happy, but at the expense of the long term feasibility of the product.

Furthermore, podcasts are a major portion of national NPR's "bundle", and the podcasting industry is extremely democratized/commodified now.

kelipso2• 2 years ago

I think it's institutional capture by a group, coastal liberal elite progressive woke, whatever you want to call them, and they have their own subculture and viewpoint that are disconnected from the majority of Americans. You have similar things happening in a lot of other news agencies too.

Karrot_Kream• 2 years ago

and also means they aren't top of the list to get breaking news (no Congress member is going to spend 1-2 hours interviewing at NPR when they can have multiple interviews with nationally prominent news sources).

This has been a problem with NPR forever though, at least since the late '90s. Donor capture and the podcast market are probably bigger reasons.

JasserInicide2• 2 years ago

It makes me wonder if NPR news leadership thinks they are doing a good job? Is there an audience out there that think NPR is doing a good job in absolute terms?

Yes and yes. As rags have become increasingly partisan, the only ones that are sticking around and engaging/paying are those that have also become increasingly partisan. And they think the rag is doing a swell job so the execs only have their echo chamber of ardent supporters to get feedback from.

tootie7• 2 years ago

My two cents is that Berliner was just dead wrong and his opinion based on some really spurious reasoning. He pretty badly mischaracterized several key stories and then cherry-picked some bits and pieces of articles where guests said things he didn't like.

cm2012• 2 years ago

Having read his article and then checked on the stories, I came away with a different take, that Berliner's characterization seemed fair.

int_19h10• 2 years ago

I don't think there's much audience that thinks they're doing a good job, but there are very different reasons for those opinions.

On one hand, you have the majority of bewildered moderates who are increasingly annoyed about getting a lecture about their "privilege" every time they want to read the news, and seeing everything reduced to a small set of talking points in a very forced and artificial manner.

On the other hand, you have genuine progressives who very much buy into the whole privilege stuff etc, but at the same time they are broadly anti-establishment, and - quite rightly - see traditional news media, including NPR, as establishment. To that audience, it just all feels like a very crude and meaningless attempt to pander to them to get their attention (and money). If they want news told from an authentic perspective that aligns with theirs, they are much more likely to get it from podcasts, blogs etc.

The end result is that nobody is happy.

notanastronaut• 2 years ago

This comment thread is mostly populated by people who are more like Uri Berliner than they are like Katherine Maher, so isn't surprising that they agree with Berliner about the issues he brought up.

ilamont• 2 years ago

If the numbers Berliner revealed about audience losses are correct, the impact is surely being most felt at the local station level. If fewer people are tuning in, fundraising will suffer and cuts are inevitable.

For instance, Boston has two NPR stations, WGBH and WBUR, and both are in trouble. This article talks about declining numbers of live listeners and resistance to digital transformation, but never mentions the issues brought up by Berliner.

https://www.boston.com/news/the-boston-globe/2024/04/11/two-...

anonporridge3• 2 years ago

KUOW in Seattle seems to be in trouble too. Their sponsors have been getting increasingly cringeworthy. Just last week I heard a long sponsor message from Christian Science. They seem to scraping deeper into the bottom of the barrel and sponsor message seem to be increasing in quantity.

dhosek5• 2 years ago

Are you sure it was from Christian Science and not the Christian Science Monitor which has been a long-time sponsor (and if I recall occasional reporting partner) of NPR.

colmmacc• 2 years ago

I was a long time listener and donor to KUOW. My intention was to support local radio, hopefully get some more community pieces, and so on ... and that matched the donation drive pitches.

When they decided to use their cash to empire build and buy a Jazz station for $8M, I completely gave up and could no longer even stomach listening. I like Jazz, but it hardly needs the help. It seemed like an utter betrayal.

UncleOxidant3• 2 years ago

But Seattle (and Boston) are very blue areas, the issues that Berliner is suggesting wouldn't seem to apply to those areas, they would seem more likely to apply to the hinterlands. The Boston situation probably implies that they just need to combine the two stations into one.

tzs• 2 years ago

I definitely listen to KUOW a lot less than I used to. The main reason is that a few years ago they had a lineup on Saturdays that kept me listening most of the day. It included:

• A Prairie Home Companion [1]

• The Vinyl Cafe [2]

• Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me! [3]

• Says You! [4]

• The Swing Years and Beyond [5]

Those I'm sure were on Saturday. I know I'm missing 4 other programs from Saturday. I remember the following programs as being on weekends at the time, but can't remember which were Saturday and which were Sunday.

• This American Life [6]

• The Moth Radio Hour [7]

• Snap Judgement [8]

• Radiolab [9]

• Freakonomics Radio [10]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Prairie_Home_Companion

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vinyl_Cafe

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wait_Wait..._Don%27t_Tell_Me!

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Says_You!

[5] https://archive.kuow.org/show/swing-years-and-beyond

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_American_Life

[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moth

[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snap_Judgment_(radio_program)

[9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiolab

[10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freakonomics_Radio

mywittyname2• 2 years ago

I still listen live on their app when I can, but a lot of their programs are also available in podcast format.

I'm sure its hard to compete with so many alternatives to the same content.

corn13read22• 2 years ago

Or possibly their content is far too weighted ;)

cyanydeez2• 2 years ago

I assume the lost is entirety into the cloud of podcasts.

I don't listen to any radio programs anymore and part of that is work from home. But I do listen to NPR programming via podcasts.

Their business model seems to not survive the move to work from home.

It's got nothing to do with politics. It's entirely the same technologies disrupting all media. We have simply stopped wholesale media consumption for the modern network.

burningChrome2• 2 years ago

As an aside, I always wondered why conservative radio always dominated liberal radio. Nearly every conservative pundit has a national show and is syndicated far and wide on AM/FM radio stations. Liberal shows you can't find with a search light. Remember Air America? It lasted two years before a host of scandals and a bankruptcy put it into the "where are they now?" bin as it limped along for another 4 years before shuttering.

But I digress.

Just curious why conservatives still love radio after so many decades and liberals have almost nothing comparable to listen to locally or nationally.

dhosek5• 2 years ago

https://bigthink.com/guest-thinkers/why-do-conservatives-dom...

pesus• 2 years ago

I imagine at least part of it is age and aversion to change/new technology.

anon29112• 2 years ago

Because many conservatives have blue collar jobs that have them in their car / at a work site by themselves where they can listen.

Whereas progressives seem more likely to listen at a desk, hence the plethora of leftist podcasts.

jimbokun17• 2 years ago

Isn’t NPR the glaring exception?

angiosperm• 2 years ago

Right-wing radio is heavily subsidized by right-wing institutions funded by the billionaires we all know about. It is happy to repeat lies, without shame, at length until they are believed. No non-subsidized radio station can compete, so all AM talk radio is openly right-wing, and is all there is on the dial in most rural settings.

r14c• 2 years ago

IME a lot of millenials and younger that are "progressive" are too left for what can be considered "acceptable content" on corporate platforms. Tiktok has pretty good content in this area, but I think a lot of it boils down to the biases of liberal broadcast media owners not keeping up with the kind of content people want to hear. Anything further left than liberalism is considered a "national security issue" so you don't get any interesting viewpoints. Even breadtube is pretty milk toast. I'll just stick to my hip hop and punk jams tyvm.

thomastjeffery• 2 years ago

There is no one true liberal narrative. There are somewhere in the range of 1 to 3 true conservative narratives.

Politics in the US is represented with two parties: the right, and the tent. No one person can represent everyone in the tent. Anyone can represent the right.

CamperBob23• 2 years ago

Conservatives are easier to herd. They may argue with what the Republican party is doing at any given moment, but ultimately they will fall in line.

Centralized messaging is simply a better fit for the conservative worldview than it is for those on the liberal/left-leaning side of the spectrum. (Which in reality occupies a bigger tent than the GOP ever pitched.)

csnover• 2 years ago

There is a podcast miniseries called The Divided Dial[0] that answers the question of why conservative radio dominates in America, but very briefly, based on my understanding of their reporting:

1. The elimination of the Fairness Doctrine meant that radio stations no longer had a legal obligation to provide a fair reflection of differing viewpoints on matters of public importance;

2. The elimination of national ownership caps in the 1996 Telecommunications Act enabled a rapid and extreme consolidation of radio stations;

3. These new national radio conglomerates slashed costs by vertically integrating production, creating fewer shows, and rebroadcasting them to all their owned stations;

4. The concept of “format purity” spilled over from music radio into talk radio, causing commercial talk stations to switch from showcasing a variety of opinions to airing one political perspective all day;

5. The conservative talk radio format was perceived as less risky by radio executives, and so that was the format that commercial talk radio switched to.

Air America may have eventually succeeded despite its many other flaws—except they owned no radio stations of their own, so there was no place for them to go in this hyper-consolidated, format-pure commercial market.

[0] https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/divided-dial

mindslight5• 2 years ago

I'm libertarian with blue tribe sympathies. Whenever I try listening to NPR, I literally fall asleep. It's just something about the combination of cadence, intonation, and premium mediocre presentation of ideas that just paralyzes me. I'm powerless to stop it. Meanwhile I can listen to reactionary [0] talk radio just fine, and sometimes do just for cringe entertainment value. The bellowing of indignant righteousness is stimulating regardless of whether one agrees with the ideas. I don't know that this explains the overall popularity per se, but take it as one data point.

[0] it's a grave mistake to refer to the current Republican party as conservatives. If anything, actual conservatism these days means supporting the Democratic party - respect for American institutions, the rule of law, strong foreign policy, gradual change, etc. The Democrats are even checking the box of fiscal conservatism compared with the past two decades of ZIRP.

johnp271• 2 years ago

I always figured that liberal radio, e.g. Air America, struggled and failed because that point of view had too much competition from other media, e.g. newspapers and television. Back before internet, conservatives only had radio to hear what they considered their point of view taken seriously and the other side derided whereas liberals had lots of other options to hear their points of view taken seriously while the other side was painted as rubes.

jimbokun17• 2 years ago

It is kind of comical that NPR made racial and gender diversity their main priority…and still have a listener base that’s much whiter than the country as a whole.

astrange8• 2 years ago

No conflict there if you're used to their New England shows like Car Talk and Wait Wait (* pretending Chicago is New England for the moment). They were always woke, as in constantly making identity jokes about ethnic white people like Jews and Italians.

samatman• 2 years ago

https://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/01/31/44-public-radio/

Wolfenstein98k5• 2 years ago

It's getting whiter!

crackercrews7• 2 years ago

WAMU had layoffs recently.

mrcwinn• 2 years ago

Is this really a business model issue? I understood that NPR’s funding primarily comes from corporate sponsors, not listeners or the government. If that’s true, there is less incentive to preserve local affiliates. Consolidation is inevitable, I would imagine.

tootie7• 2 years ago

That's not exactly true. For one, all the local affiliates have their own budgets, their own expenses, revenues and staff. Up until this year, NPR was specifically prohibited from collecting donations from listeners. If you had gone to npr.org and clicked "donate" it would force you to donate to your local affiliate. Affiliates do not give NPR a cut of their donations. Instead they pay (on a sliding scale I think) for the rights to content produced by NPR. If you look at the sources of revenue for any given affiliate, it will probably be mostly donation from listeners. So taken as a whole, public radio is very much paid for by listeners.

tootie7• 2 years ago

Just to be clear, when it comes to radio audience, the audience is 100% local stations. NPR does not own any radio spectrum. The structure is that local stations have complete editorial control of their programming so long as it adheres to the principles of the NPR mission and in exchange they get access to the network of content produced by NPR and local affiliates. Bigger affiliates like the ones in Boston produce a lot of local content or even sell back to the national network, while smaller ones are mostly running NPR content. They are also all running their own budgets and revenue operations.

wolverine87610• 2 years ago

Every news outlet and broadcast media outlet are losing audience rapidly. There's no evidence of correlation between NPR's coverage and that outcome.

For example, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/04/conserv...

coldtea3• 2 years ago

Even if "every news outlet and broadcast media outlet losing audience rapidly", the criticism wasn't about NPR losing audience in general, but about NPR losing audience from a particular side predominantly.

StarterPro2• 2 years ago

Thread ended up way more conservative than i'd imagine.

JasserInicide2• 2 years ago

People getting sick and tired of news outlets becoming increasingly partisan are now automatically "conservative"? You're part of the problem

tick_tock_tick3• 2 years ago

In all honestly it really didn't. You're probably just significantly more liberal then you thought you were.

markdeloura• 2 years ago

NPR listener for 30 years and I'm having a similar reaction to many of you in this thread. For the first time, I'm finding myself turning off the radio once I'm awake.

It seems like Berliner breaking the rules (or norms) and throwing bombs by way of another media outlet was his last-ditch effort to break through and be heard. In that, at least, he's getting attention, and now let's hope it leads to change.

The examples he gave in the FP piece all seemed very political, focusing on not covering "the other side". Honestly I don't want any of that crap coming at me in the morning, I don't want "other side" coverage just like I don't want "my side" coverage. I can get that anywhere. I listen to NPR because I want good journalism, not both-sidesism. I hope this event can lead coverage back there. With the new CEO, perhaps there's an opportunity.

wwweston9• 2 years ago

Recently I bought a car from the early 2000s, no aux jack or BT and I've been having an interesting time just listening to the radio rather than dropping my phone ecosystem into the car. So I'm listening to a lot more NPR than I have for at least a decade.

And I have no idea where people who are saying NPR has made some kind of hard partisan shift are coming from. If anything, as far as I can tell, most programming is still trying to walk a middle-of-the-road multiple-perspectives this-side-says-this but that-side-says-that, sometimes annoying so.

Of course, there is one group of people that has been casting NPR as particularly partisan for at least 25 years, and a lot of these comments sound like a cross between their rhetoric and NYT Pitchbot.

zzzeek• 2 years ago

right, "middle of the road" is now "far left", "crazy batshit rightwing BS" is "the truth". This is overton window war stuff.

And I have no idea where people who are saying NPR has made some kind of hard partisan shift are coming from.

right wing extremist groups and leaders like Chris Rufo

zdragnar3• 2 years ago

Middle of the road used to be that maybe gay people could have civil unions but not actual marriage.

Middle of the road used to be that cross-dressing was fine as a hobby, but trans people had a mental illness that is harmful to enable.

Middle of the road used to be "I don't like what you say but I'll defend your right to say it".

On most issues, the Overton window in America has and continues to slide left, not right.

mywittyname2• 2 years ago

sometimes annoying so.

Agreed.

I've been an regular NPR listener for like 15 years now, and if I had a complaint about their reporting, it would be that they shy away from being based if it could potentially alienate the right wing audience.

It's good to be empathic to your audience, especially when reporting on sensitive topics. But tiptoeing around the facts because it might give ammo to people who already hate you shows a lack of self-confidence.

anon29112• 2 years ago

Tiptoe around the facts like Hunter Biden's laptop? I agree NPR needs to stick to facts, not editorially choose to censor a topic that the public has deemed important.

crackercrews7• 2 years ago

they shy away from being based if it could potentially alienate the right wing audience.

Funny typo, considering that "based" means something completely different in the political realm. NPR is most certainly not based...

gottorf6• 2 years ago

having an interesting time just listening to the radio

The NPR member station you're listening to is distinct from National Public Radio, Inc. The former controls its own programming. Uri Berliner was employed by the latter.

dhosek5• 2 years ago

A large fraction of NPR programming, particularly drive-time programming, comes from NPR. I’m pretty sure OP can distinguish between All Things Considered and What’s Up Spokane.

cyanydeez2• 2 years ago

It's people who want the polarity to be "what we say" and fake news.

NPR and other liberal media works really hard to not pierce the facade of conservative arguments even when they consistently create incongruous reasons and end up explicitly stating that they're doing things for political benefit and no other reason.

Anyway, like most conservative media, NPR is just a target to chill and try and draw them into producing news that better builds the conservative facade of "rational" discourse they want people to believe is the basis for their decisions.

As opposed to the racism and corrupt business practices that is the entire American Republicans.

majormajor2• 2 years ago

It's interesting that the majority of those comments are focused on a single issue. It sounds more like a preconceived notion rather than an informed criticism, where one would also likely be annoyed by discussions of economic injustice, ideas around UBI, taxation discussion, the criminality-or-not-of-Donald-Trump's actions (a primary thing Berliner himself actually mentioned in multiple instances, even!), etc...?

hn_throwaway_992• 2 years ago

Also, perhaps this is stating the obvious, but this article is posted on npr.org itself, and it is quite an in-depth treatment and analysis of the situation. While other news orgs my have a short blurb (often buried somewhere on their website), I rarely see them airing their own dirty laundry with such gusto.

Wolfenstein98k5• 2 years ago

That's because he forced the issue by going to every outlet he could, mostly liberal ones, and he was right too.

He'd be buried if he didn't and wasn't.

crackercrews7• 2 years ago

This isn't laudable, it's defensive. The snafu has been covered in the NYT so there's no burying it. They are making sure their side is told by covering it themselves.

Alupis6• 2 years ago

When one agrees with content they are much more likely to say it sounds non-partisan, middle ground, common sense, etc.

The issues with NPR reporting stem from word choice (inclusions and exclusions), choice of stories to report (crickets about things they disagree with and wall-to-wall on things they want you to be outraged with), etc.

NPR is about as partisan as it gets... it's a smoke screen to bill themselves as non-partisan - and some people just eat it up.

hobs• 2 years ago

The GP isn't praising them for their middle ground reporting. The truth often doesn't have a middle ground.

wwweston9• 2 years ago

Who said I agreed with whatever I'm hearing from NPR? Not me. See the phrase "sometimes annoyingly so", the general lack of any particular praise.

NPR is... fine, more or less, both helped and hobbled by its efforts at journalistic triangulation while basically doing its job of touching on some points of currency and providing mental snack material. I roll my eyes and keep listening at some things, I make a note to check out others, I switch stations in boredom or anger in other cases.

My mention of it here or my tuning into it isn't an endorsement any more than my time listening to Christian radio networks in similar dial segments, or college radio, or freakin' Pacifica.

The point of my observation isn't an absolute assessment of its value. It's a relative one compared to "the old days" -- that it hasn't changed much at all. Arguably it should have changed more given extraordinary times and figures.

People are giving their vague experiences here, I'm sharing mine.

And this Berliner guy is apparently airing the reasons why he really needs an editorial board or shouldn't be with an organization that actually has the journalistic integrity he's posturing about. Why do I say this? His summary of the Mueller report alone in his op-ed is justification for the idea that the world would be better off in every last way with nothing of value lost if he'd never been involved with the field.

kernal3• 2 years ago

I have no idea where people who are saying NPR has made some kind of hard partisan shift are coming from.

Perhaps this will help you out:

A veteran National Public Radio journalist slammed the left-leaning broadcaster for ignoring the Hunter Biden laptop scandal because it could have helped Donald Trump get re-elected.

Of course, there is one group of people that has been casting NPR as particularly partisan for at least 25 years

Congratulations on contradicting yourself.

dhosek5• 2 years ago

He’s saying he doesn’t see the basis for the complaints. The Hunter Biden laptop scandal? Even the New York Post (not exactly a left-leaning publication) only ran with the story with the original reporter insisting his byline be omitted and the reporter who was given the byline wasn’t informed of this happening because while the laptop was Biden’s, the validity of the contents could not be verified and had roughly the validity of the Bush National Guard letter.

wwweston9• 2 years ago

As usually invoked the Melter Liden Bipbop Sandal is less a story people are actually interested in than a conceptual container for non-specific aspersions (hence it may as well be referred to as I just did). The most instructive thing about it is how readily certain people take enthusiastically to guilt by association with pretty vague allegations of ostensible corruption when they can't get anything closer (especially ironic when paired with denial about the absolutely overwhelming tidal wave of obvious and directly connected corruption for another figure). Maybe someday a story about someone who's never held public office and is barely a public figure will be actually be worthy of news when a court case or two conclude.

But on a more concrete level, the idea that NPR ignored the specific topic invoked here is wrong, not just considering that there's no there there, but in absolute terms. I have heard NPR segments discussing it and seen posts about it. I don't expect you to take my word for it, here's some front page results from a search:

https://www.npr.org/2024/02/15/1231884999/fbi-informant-char...

https://www.npr.org/2023/09/26/1201691151/hunter-biden-sues-...

https://www.npr.org/2023/08/11/1193465237/hunter-biden-inves...

https://www.npr.org/2022/04/09/1091859822/more-details-emerg...

JoBrad2• 2 years ago

The entire Hunter Biden obsession blows my mind. Rural America at large has been devastated by drug addiction, with very few families being spared. While I voted for Biden in the last election, and am very likely to do so again, I’ve also looked at most of the actual evidence that has been presented by Republicans. I’ll admit that a part of me has been dreading the day that we see evidence that he has been involved in fraudulent activity. And yet, nothing that I’ve seen connects the President to illegal activity beyond his familial connection to his son. What I have seen is a very caring father who has tried to help his addicted son in the wake of losing another son tragically. This is something that families across the nation, but especially rural families - Republicans and Democrats alike -have had to deal with as well. Should we disqualify all families who have members that struggle with addiction? That seems absurd.

The origins of the laptop story have been fairly suspicious. The handling of the laptop by the computer repair shop, Giuliani, and others, has been shameful, in my opinion, and reflects their willingness to violate anyone’s rights in the pursuit of power. Lev Parnas’ recent comments seem to confirm many of the suspicions that were talked about back then.

The fact that NPR didn’t immediately run the story seemed like a good idea to me, and they even reported on why they delayed reporting it, at the time. Maybe that’s my bias showing, but it’s hard to deny that this type of story would be relegated to tabloids a decade ago.

mrkstu2• 2 years ago

I’m a never-Trumper, came up as a voter in the Reagan era, omnivorous consumer of all news content, listened to NPR prior to the pandemic near daily, and still regularly afterwards, until the bias just completely turned me off.

Your take seems wildly off to me. NPRs non-straight news programming has always been left, but the regular news programming at least mildly tried to be viewpoint neutral.

That disappeared post-Trump. All programming took a strong PoV, and unless the politician was actively anti-Trump their interactions with non-leftists were adversarial.

Again, as a now third party voter because of Trump/Maga this is not because I felt any commonality with the other side of the coin, but purely that I was essentially being fed propaganda rather than news.

symfoniq• 2 years ago

You’re basically me. I was a daily NPR listener until the Trump era. If a never-Trumper can’t handle NPR abandoning all pretense of objectivity, that might be a bad sign.

anon29112• 2 years ago

This is not a surprising take to find online as it's been well demonstrated that while conservatives mostly understand where liberals are coming from, liberals have a really hard time understanding right wing concerns.

je_bailey• 2 years ago

I haven't seen that demonstrated myself. Could you point me to a study or two that provides the details on that?

lolinder8• 2 years ago

Speaking as someone who leans very slightly left in a deep red state (I would probably be considered a conservative anywhere else), this is nonsense. It may or may not have been true in the Reagan years, I'm too young to know, but Trump conservatives have absolutely no idea where liberals are coming from. Their perspectives on liberal views are just as skewed by stereotypes and propaganda as leftists' views of conservatives are.

ars4• 2 years ago

I listen to both NPR and Fox news summary every day, and both of them are virtually identical in how they cover things.

Every once in a while you'll hear a slant in how they will frame something, like the context or who they chose to quote. But it's clear that both NPR and Fox try very hard to be neutral.

(Note the Fox TV show with "personalities" is not the same as their news show.)

scarface_74• 2 years ago

I only watch Fox News during elections and I find it just as good as any other outlet if not slightly better.

Fox Business seems about the same.

TheHill seems fairly balanced and surprisingly enough newsmax seems fairly balanced.

Redstate on the other hand has a double standard and ignores anything negative about Trump. They kicked out all of thier traditional conservatives.

skywhopper• 2 years ago

Yeah, the article in question that got this guy suspended was like reading about an alternate mirror reality. If anything has gone wrong at NPR (and similar media orgs) in the past decade it's the willingness to bend over backwards to try to satisfy their harshest bad-faith critics, which is utterly impossible, and results in really terrible coverage.

I find the five day suspension thing bizarre... either fire the guy or don't, whatever. But his claims that they didn't give enough credence to the craziest, most pernicious lies out there is the opposite of true.

newZWhoDis• 2 years ago

Last time I listened to NPR was in an Uber ride in 2020, it sounded like some kind of right wing parody of far-left activists. I couldn’t believe people considered that “middle of the road”.

I’m rather disgusted that my tax dollars go to them.

alfor3• 2 years ago

Have you ever voted conservative? Do you have friends that vote conservative?

Do you have collegues that vote conservative.

Is it possible you are in the bubble?

Just here in HN is progressive to ultra progressive. Any mention of the other side is a sure way to get downvoted to oblivion.

TheEggMan2• 2 years ago

Completely agree. Being a conservative here is not much fun.

notabee• 2 years ago

HN culture is progressive on some things but very libertarian on others. It's not very left wing because a large portion of the posters here are quite insulated from the plight of blue collar workers.

feoren2• 2 years ago

This take only works if you tunnel-vision yourself to only looking at the United States. It's all too easy to say "we believe X and you believe Y; who's to say which is right!? From our point of view, you're the one in the bubble!" But if you step back and look at the American political spectrum from a global and historical perspective, it's abundantly clear that it's the conservative side that is in a bubble; nearly even a cult. The rest of us would love to have two rational political parties to pick from. Few people are ideologically beholden to the Democratic Party directly, it's just literally our only option.

lolinder8• 2 years ago

Have you read this thread that is currently pinned to the top of the page [0]?

I'm a one-time conservative who moved to the center after Trump. I live in a deep red state but work remotely with an extremely left-wing company (the kind that regularly has deep discussions of identity politics during work hours). I like to think I have a pretty good idea of what each extreme looks like and every shade in between, and HN has by far the most balanced political discussions I've ever seen in any forum in-person or online.

Part of my evidence in favor of that claim is that people on each extreme both perceive HN to be biased in the opposite direction.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40051728

wwweston9• 2 years ago

Just here in HN is progressive to ultra progressive. Any mention of the other side is a sure way to get downvoted to oblivion.

The idea that a forum that's a discussion and PR arm for a venture capital firm is progressive at heart is almost funny. If HN is anything, it's technocratic first, then libertarian to classic liberal matched with business/market friendly, then progressive at whatever margins are left. Plenty of room for someone who can argue non-progressive politics in the first two terms, and people do.

Have you ever voted conservative? Do you have friends that vote conservative? Do you have colleagues that vote conservative.

Since you asked: yes, yes, and yes.

Bubbles are pretty much irrelevant to the question of whether NPR has changed over time. Someone who listened a lot in the 00s and then came back in the last few years is qualified to weigh in on that. And it's not like my comment is a glowing endorsement of NPR.

But assuming reasonable models of how you'd tell I'm in some kind of vacuum isolated from non-progressives... in terms of radio/audio habits alone I also spend a good deal of time listening christian radio networks that occupy the same parts of the dial as public radio stations, Rogan / Friedman and adjacent, I've spent an ungodly amount of time listening to Jordan Peterson although I dialed it way back once he became a vaccine crank and Russian shill. I get lots of whatever Musk and people who are still there because they like the direction he's taking Twitter get. I get lots of exposure from a social circle that has as many conservatives as progressives.

So, why is it you think I might be in a bubble again? Or was that just your rhetorical strategy to say "well your opinion is no less biased than anyone else's, if anything you're the biased one"?

gyudin• 2 years ago

Funny how self-proclaimed progressives are not considered progressive by any means by liberals both in EU and Asian countries. But I guess impudence and stupidity can get you a long way in US.

slibhb3• 2 years ago

The lapse of journalistic objectivity over the past ~10 years is a dead horse.

I do think we've turned a corner for the better. I haven't listened to NPR in years but the Times has improved over the past few years.

One of the themes of Civil War, the new Alex Garland movie, concerns this dynamic. See his interview in the Times: https://archive.is/pzs1a. His theory is that the press is supposed to check polarization by disseminating objective facts (which never fit one faction's worldview perfectly) and this process' failure has led to increasing polarization.

ametrau• 2 years ago

The guardian seems less polemic and agitation propagandising recently also.

mannyv• 2 years ago

Journalistic objectivity was basically invented by anti-Roosevelt media. Before that newspapers were explicitly partisan. Roosevelt was so dominant that Republicans felt the need to change the script.

FYI, the Civil War was really started by the ridiculously stupid attack on Fort Sumter. If SC hadn't gone off and attacked the fort the US would have split into two or three countries...and everyone would have been OK with that.

slibhb3• 2 years ago

"Telling the truth was invented in the 1930s"

Hmm

mcmcmc• 2 years ago

“Civil War, the new Alex Garland movie” is not actually about the US Civil War. FYI.

And how exactly do you think everyone would have been ok with the US splitting into multiple countries?

Supermancho• 2 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalistic_objectivity

I think it's more like something that was formalized around the turn of the 19th century. Maybe wikipedia isn't accurate here.

woopsn• 2 years ago

Joseph Pulitzer's retirement letter from 1907 (referencing St. Louis's metro paper):

I know that my retirement will make no difference in its cardinal principles, that it will always fight for progress and reform, never tolerate injustice or corruption, always fight demagogues of all parties, never belong to any party, always oppose privileged classes and public plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to the public welfare, never be satisfied with merely printing news, always be drastically independent, never be afraid to attack wrong, whether by predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty.

It was he of course who had previously declared:

Our Republic and its press will rise or fall together. An able, disinterested, public-spirited press, with trained intelligence to know the right and courage to do it, can preserve that public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a mockery. A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in time a people as base as itself.

eschaton• 2 years ago

Everyone, are you sure? Seems like you’re forgetting someone in this statement: The enslaved people.

shortsunblack• 2 years ago

Journalistic objectivity is not real and has never existed.

It is much better when a journalistic outlet acknowledges its plausible biases and lets the reader make up their own mind. This ideal gets further stretched with "citizens journalism" where normies do their own journalism. You expect to some system to emerge that allows for audiences to converge on the "truth".

Anyone that espouses these idealistic ideals of "objectivism" has drank the koolaid. And of course, The Objectivity always somehow accidentally converges to the status quo. Is it because the status quo is? Unlikely.

AlbertCory• 2 years ago

Berliner said that the newsroom had all Democrats, and zero Republicans. Yet magically they're going to have a balanced approach anyway?

They interviewed Adam Schiff 25 times in the RussiaGate "scandal." They dismissed the Hunter Biden laptop story as a "non-story" and somehow they still want to claim they're non-partisan?

It might be more straightforward and honest for all you NPR-defenders to just come out and say, "It's OK when we do it, because we're right. And we're SO tired of hearing about that laptop."

frankhhhhhhhhh• 2 years ago

Don’t tell people how to think. Sums it up perfectly.

mlhpdx• 2 years ago

"Did we offer coverage that helped them understand — even if just a bit better — those neighbors with whom they share little in common?"

I find the person leading the coverage “solution” has the same emblematic word choice issues as the organization as a whole. I love NPR and the local public affiliates but they cannot see their own failings.

Are there any two people, anywhere in this world that truly “share little in common”?

qwertyuiop_• 2 years ago

To a casual observer this looks like a case of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_woke,_go_broke

georgeburdell• 2 years ago

Haven’t read Mr. Berliner’s piece, but I was a listener for 15 years before I stopped altogether shortly after the events of 2020 that do not need to be named (and whose particular name chosen by the speaker usually reveals their political leanings)

Coverage seems to have gotten stuck around that time.

rsync• 2 years ago

Try: "The recent unpleasantness".

etchalon2• 2 years ago

NPR programming has been non-partisan left-of-center with a bias towards humanity over raw factual presentation for as long as I can remember. It's essentially the NPR "house-style".

hackable_sand• 2 years ago

I appreciate NPR's unbiased reporting on internal conflict. They could have dragged Berliner but chose to report the facts as they are.

That's why they're in my top three rotation.

crackercrews7• 2 years ago

How do you know they could have dragged him? If what he said was fair then they wouldn't have been able to land any punches.

syndacks• 2 years ago

Anyone remember how awesome This American Life was? They used to be about just that — an American [in their life] with an amazing story to tell. So simple and elegant. Then they went massively down hill around the time Trump was elected. They seemed to be “on the campaign trail” more often than not, or about some kind of grievance or “injustice”. I stopped listening.

wolverine87610• 2 years ago

Berliner said the social media posts demonstrated Maher was all but incapable of being the person best poised to direct the organization.
"We're looking for a leader right now who's going to be unifying and bring more people into the tent and have a broader perspective on, sort of, what America is all about," Berliner said. "And this seems to be the opposite of that.

Berliner could have stopped at criticism of the coverage, but now seems to be looking for ways to attack the institution in destructive ways. Berliner knows these attacks could bury and destroy NPR. NPR holding onto Berliner this long might be a mistake - it invites the tidal wave of attacks from the right, and the 'centrist' Dems will join in (like cowards joining the bully) - but at this point, it may be time to fire them.

The real test of the CEO will be handling this crisis. It should not be unexpected in the modern world, and there are playbooks for being effective. It's now part of the job.

samirillian• 2 years ago

I don’t like NPR but I also don’t like this guy. He lacks loyalty.

mmcgaha• 2 years ago

I listen to public radio a lot. I am not exactly a liberal or progressive but I know exactly what I am getting into when I turn on public radio. None the less, I can still enjoy it the same way I enjoy an action movie or WWE so long as I am willing to suspend disbelief.

awful• 2 years ago

This guy fails basic critical thinking; Occams razor, and Sagans Standard, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence".

mp05• 2 years ago

Occams razor

What does Occam's razor have to do with anything here? Unless you want to assert that assuming NPR acts in bad faith should be rejected in favor of them just being complete, out-of-touch morons?

nubianwarrior3• 2 years ago

It’s really disheartening to hear so many objections to “race” or “class” stories on NPR as these are the pieces that speak of experiences like my own. I’m in my 40s today but I remember being one of barely a handful of Tejano game developers in Austin back in the 90s and no one called our inclusion DEI - they just called it hiring locally. It seems all these good things that were the norm have been hijacked and brought the worst of the objectivists. Maybe if listening to understand (vs listening to react) a lot of these comments here wouldn’t look fence walking outbursts.

I still have hope for the future. Not much to be found in these comments tho.

subsistence2347• 2 years ago

no one called our inclusion DEI - they just called it hiring locally.

because it wasn't DEI.

nubianwarrior3• 2 years ago

It 100% was but your take is the kind of dismissive, attempts invalidation I’m referring to so thank you for the example.

javajosh2• 2 years ago

It’s really disheartening to hear so many objections to “race” or “class” stories on NPR as these are the pieces that speak of experiences like my own

They could reasonably apply to me, too (I'm Jewish, raised in a Christian town, was wildly bullied through middle school for being Jewish). Yet somehow I've always felt that aspect of my identity was the least interesting about me. I don't care about Judaism, or Jewishness. After the Nth Holocaust movie it was like "Enough already, I get it." I wanted to talk about science fiction and physics and music and girls and sailing and yoga and computers and all kinds of other things. It's a strange impulse to want to "center" aspects of yourself that other people feel are important but you don't. (Of course, Jewishness is odd, because later in life people wanted to talk about it because of their positive prejudices - this was, if anything, even more annoying, because it was something I didn't care about and it was uncomfortable flattery and it was well-meaning so it was hard to put the kabosh on it.)

It's funny but I notice how many of the liberals pushing against left-wing extremism are Jewish. Jonathan Haidt comes to mind, but there are many others (who currently escape me). My hypothesis is that we are, as a group, relatively recently assimilated, and we know how much worse it could be, and how damn good Enlightenment Culture is compared to all the rest, and how far America has come with Jewish acceptance. Assimilation is great because it works both ways - I can't tell you how much it warms my heart to see people use words like "schmuck" or "kosher"! I don't think it would have helped me then, or helped now, to have "race" stories about Jews in American Christian suburban middle schools. If anything, I can imagine making it much worse, giving me a victim complex and a habit of blaming the system, instead of taking my social L's, and out-performing the shit out of my dumb-ass classmates, and laughing all the way along the rosy path of nerd-dom. Maybe one thing Jews really do have is a sense of humor about racism and bigotry, since we've dealt with so much of it over time. But I recall no stories of Jewish minorities guilting the majority into "centering" their experience and hating themselves and their own culture. And if I did I don't think I'd see this as a win, but as a dastardly act of passive-aggression and dominance that is unhealthy for both groups. Oppression is not the way, of either the minority OR the majority. We grow and merge and love each other and take on the best qualities of each and that's awesome.

Metacelsus• 2 years ago

It's funny but I notice how many of the liberals pushing against left-wing extremism are Jewish. Jonathan Haidt comes to mind, but there are many others (who currently escape me).

Scott Aaronson and Scott Alexander come to mind. Also Edward Blum, though he's more of a "classical liberal" than a liberal in the modern sense.

nubianwarrior3• 2 years ago

As Tejano I am constantly bombarded by falsehoods, revisionism, and racism about my identify.

Glyptodon• 2 years ago

Used to like NPR back when talk of the nation was decent circa 2005 ish. But it's really changed and a lot of the news reporting is of lower quality and so much more of the overall content has distinct viewpoints on purpose.

In all fairness, I think generations of folks aren't really able to set viewpoints aside and have come to believe that attempting to is bad. Which is complicated. But it no doubt meant that they needed to meet that audience to keep donations up.

And at least it's better than Fox News or talk radio and their ilk.

throwaway765123• 2 years ago

The most telling part about this "debate" is conservative activists blasting center and center-left outlets for barely off-center comments, while ignoring the blatant extreme partisanship coming out of right wing media outlets like Fox.

Why do these "activists" always seem like they're operating in bad faith?

tqi• 2 years ago

The journalists at NPR seem appalled that a member of their staff would "violate everyone’s trust" by speaking publicly about this, which is odd since so much of their profession relies on people breaking confidentiality and trust to speak to the press...

[1] https://twitter.com/titonka/status/1778461456410800339

skyechurch• 2 years ago

"NPR goes woke, loses listeners" is a great viral narrative, but I think it's causally backwards. NPR, like every media entity, is now in constant completion with endless social media influencers pretending to be rich, videos of every possible permutation of interspecies baby animal cuddling, tweaking Minecraft streamers, logorrheic racists and paranoid schizophrenics with enormous research budgets, an infinite amount of disturbing pornography beyond the nightmares of de Sade, ISIL/Los Zetas beheading videos ... all of this I can personally attest to, and rumor has it that on the very darkest corners of the web there exists video of Ben Shapiro rapping. There is no such thing as "the news" anymore, it is just one niche in the monolithic media marketplace in ferocious completion for your drooling, doomscrolling attention, and "sober presentation of the facts" has never gotten anyone to bang that subscribe button.

Now, I don't listen to NPR anymore, and it is for exactly the reasons described, but my media consumption at this point is limited to 3blue1brown videos (veritasium can sometimes get a bit sensationalistic). Outrage politics and in group/out group signalling is a perfectly valid competitive strategy in the modern media monomarket, and the Old Media graveyard is littered with previously esteemed names in journalism who were too principled to let trending Twitter narratives drive their reporting.

specialist3• 2 years ago

I'm not much for radio.

But based on all this whinging, today's NPR sounds awesome. I may have to start listening.

crmd2• 2 years ago

… concerns that coverage is frequently presented through an ideological or idealistic prism that can alienate listeners.

Speaking as a lifelong NPR listener who recently had to cut them off because of ideological exhaustion: yep!

colechristensen• 2 years ago

That’s the perfect word: exhaustion. Every nth (for some small value of n) segment is on a progressive zeitgeist topic, the vast majority of them are not newsworthy, those that are are mostly unnecessarily projecting on top of a newsworthy story, and they seem designed simply to elicit an emotional response.

WalterBright3• 2 years ago

I have liberal friends who, before this essay appeared, told me that they'd stopped listening to NPR because of its slide into advocacy rather than reporting news.

mixmastamyk4• 2 years ago

It's happening everywhere, people no longer can help themselves in professional situations. They must tell us what to think, rather than help (or teach us) how to think.

For example, I don't remember any overt politics at high school, but ours feeds a steady diet. Entertainment is another area.

trothamel• 2 years ago

This. As someone who's probably center-right, I used to listen to NPR a lot because they'd often offer new perspectives on things. But now, they offer the same perspective, over and over and over again - and so I usually turn them off.

crmd2• 2 years ago

I feel like a person who’s been eating only one food group for the past couple of years and has developed a scurvy-like disorder.

My mind is craving thoughtful, non-partisan, deeply intellectual conservative analysis of current events.

Not cult of personality American GOP pop conservatism, not the dumb-dumb outrage machine new media personalities, but rather seriously legitimate academic right wing thought leadership to expand and challenge my thinking about the world. I honestly don’t know where to find it.

ein0p2• 2 years ago

I thought it was just me. I put them on every now and then while driving, go “wtf?!”, and switch to listening to audiobooks or music again.

datavirtue3• 2 years ago

If you want a real WTF put on the local AM right wing talk shows. It does get worse. They straight up spew lies and dog whistle hate on repeat. I can't accuse NPR of lying.

duped• 2 years ago

Give me less 1A, and more Reveal or Snap Judgement. 1A is probably the poster child for transition from interesting content from marginalized voices that informs listeners into whatever it is today, which is circling around the drain of angry media told through a calming voice.

I still think that the major national shows like Morning Edition and All Things Considered hit just like they did a decade ago - albeit one dimension of our politics is less deserving of air time of the other, and that is reflected in their coverage.

datavirtue3• 2 years ago

I have had to turn them off numerous times because they play Trump's sound bites too much. I guess they want to exact full impartial coverage but it comes to a point where some swill just doesn't need air time. I'm totally cool with paraphrased coverage but not giving that pig a megaphone.

nicomeemes2• 2 years ago

1A is hot garbage. The lady always interrupts guests if they stray beyond the 2-minute soundbite.

datavirtue3• 2 years ago

Same. I still listen because, after all, it is still reporting as opposed to other outlets that are pure entertainment. But David Broncochio needs to go and they are over the top when it comes to actively promoting LGBTQ and race division. It is so bad that you have to call it propaganda and question their motives and sanity.

At the end of the day these people at NPR care, and they are compassionate, but I do not find them credible on a lot of topics because they are only employing people who fit in. Economic and science issues? A joke. Horrible.

pj_mukh• 2 years ago

Question is..when are we going to see this kind of reckoning and self-analysis at Fox News?

tim333• 2 years ago

It's a bit of a different category in that NPR is public funded and so has kind of an obligation to represent the public. Fox is owned by the Murdochs and so it's a bit down to them. At least they fired Tucker.

johnp314• 2 years ago

Yeah, or the Wash Post or NYT or MSNBC. As for Fox, listen to the Howard Kurtz show on Sunday mornings, he provides a nice, dare I say "fair and balanced", analysis of media coverage of news stories from the previous week.

w0de0• 2 years ago

Self-awareness - let alone analysis! - is not a part of their or their viewership’s culture. May as well ask when Donald Trump will next reflect on an emotional state not his own.

WoohDang2• 2 years ago

As a long time NPR listener who cut them off in 2020 because of a change in my worldview, I do think NPR misses facts because of ideological bias but I take this position from a far Left stance. I broadly label myself as an Anarcho-communist and think that NPR, and other more liberal or progressive sources, largely serve the biases of existing institutional structures - that both conservatives and liberals belong to - rather than challenge them with journalistic integrity founded in expansive coverage of factual narratives. The tendency in NPR's coverage of the Palestinian genocide, the ongoing COVID pandemic, and the climate and ecological emergency are demonstrative of their systemic bias.

snapcaster• 2 years ago

Yeah it's state controlled media, why would you (especially an anarchist) expect it to ever go against any core state narratives?

craig_s_bell• 2 years ago

I gave up NPR a few years ago, after four decades of frequent listening. It has become more difficult to recognize the attributes which made it so useful and insightful, for so long. Once in a while, they run something which reinforces my opinion that they've strayed into the weeds. A recent example: https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1197955833

  LUSE: I talked to other professors in preparation for this conversation, and something that came up was, like, it's seen by many as a very extreme form of nonviolent direct action.

  WOODLY: Yes. I mean, it is the most extreme form of nonviolent direct action because self-immolation is not meant to hurt others. It's not meant to destroy property. It's really meant to use one's own life to make a statement. It's also on a spectrum - right? - like, you know, sort of on a spectrum from, for example, hunger strike. Some people do things like nail parts of their bodies to buildings. And then sort of self-immolation is, like, on that spectrum of the most extreme kinds of nonviolent direct action.

Boy_Beaver• 2 years ago

Several posts here have interesting, critical comments on the past and recent content of NPR.

Sounds like some of the HN audience wants content that is some of entertaining, interesting, informative and, instead, is getting some quite different content, superficial, and based on some topics common in current journalism and/or partisan politics.

Why??

For "partisan politics" content, one candidate explanation is simply money.

But for journalism, that's more difficult. A guess is that journalism is an old profession with some accepted assumptions and techniques.

One such assumption is:

"Keep it short, simple, superficial. Avoid credible information as too difficult, demanding of the audience."

One technique is:

"Keep it emotional about problems of people."

With the Web, for a focused audience journalism may be changing.

Maybe I'll pay attention to journalism again when, for a start. they report numerical data with graphs, done like STEM field students do.

bell-cot• 2 years ago

From my own PoV, NPR and their stations in my area mostly went to crap back ~2000 - shifting formats from music-heavy to much more talk-heavy and news-heavy (especially after 9/11), and seeming far more idiotic and partisan as part of that.

I still recall listening to an especially wretched NPR news story ~2003 - where (in effect) Senator Slime(D) insisted that 2 + 2 was 3, Senator Sleaze(R) insisted that 2 + 2 was 5, and NPR was far too fair, balanced, and brain-dead to even hint at the possibility of 4. I stopped tuning in, and never donated another dime.

EasyMark3• 2 years ago

that was a dumb move, it was obvious that he wasn't happy there and probably would eventually retire/resign from NPR. I still listen to it almost every day, but it's hard to deny it has a left leaning bias. That doesn't bother me in the slightest because they back up what they say with facts or clearly delineated opinions, unlike certain other news networks.

magicmicah85• 2 years ago

Gotta hand it to NPR for at least linking to the public criticism and interviewing people within their org and getting comment from Uri. Maybe this will tamp down the ideological bent NPR has been on for the past few years.

donohoe• 2 years ago

Seems this editors article needs to be better fact checked

https://steveinskeep.substack.com/p/how-my-npr-colleague-fai...

subsistence2347• 2 years ago

https://steveinskeep.substack.com/p/how-my-npr-colleague-fai...

faeriechangling6• 2 years ago

I've never expected NPR to have all that much diversity of opinion really, I expect them to be centre-left but way closer to the centre than is advertised. I only listen to the podcasts, never the radio, because it's an obsolete format other than in term of robustness.

binkethy• 2 years ago

My issue is not NPR showing overt partisanship, but the way NPR trivializes global events of major import by interleaving them with softball human interest or culture stories in their primary news feed. Just totally lacking any organization, and playing to a presumably dumbed down public. Self fulfilling prophecy.

mikewarot2• 2 years ago

I'm liberal, and in 2016 NPR failed to even say the name Bernie Sanders in any of it's election coverage during the week following his victory in the Iowa Caucuses. I rapidly lost trust in NPR. Any of the subsequent visits haven't shown any signs of reform.

I miss the good old NPR, the narrative machine that's replaced it needs to go away.

stusmall5• 2 years ago

So this didn't seem right at first glance. NPR just not covering a primary contest, and especially one as important as Iowa, seems wrong. I was curious and went to check. Sanders didn't even win Iowa.

mikewarot2• 2 years ago

It's wild to me that the "facts" recorded on the internet vary so wildly from my recollection of events at the time. Perhaps I mistook the "straw poll" for the "caucuses"?

So, I was wrong, but NPR certainly hasn't remained true to their original format.

sotix• 2 years ago

I wish NPR would follow the BBC model. Multiple radio stations devoted to different topics with high quality hosts and a completely ad-free experience for those living in the host country. Instead, it’s quite political and pretty small in scale.

semiquaver• 2 years ago

He’s now resigned: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/17/business/media/uri-berlin...

bigbillheck• 2 years ago

I've got no love for NPR, but as a result of the comments here I've had to do some self-reflection, and keep coming back to that saying about a table with ten people and that story about the bartender who kicked a dude out.

@dang please ban this account.

Pat_Murph3• 2 years ago

Funny how the right lose their shit when media outlets take a progressive stance but don't say a thing about right wing media and their obvious ideological bias.

The right are huge hypocrites. Seems like only the progressives need to apologise for holding their views but the right never does.

NPR should tell everyone to fuck off and go watch fox news if they don't want a progressive and fact based view point.

webninja• 2 years ago

“NPR has formally punished Uri Berliner, the senior editor who publicly argued a week ago that the network had "lost America's trust" by approaching news stories with a rigidly progressive mindset.”
”Berliner's five-day suspension without pay, which began last Friday, has not been previously reported.”

What’s the point of free speech if you have no meaningful way to exercise it?

ttfkam• 2 years ago

This is a very low bar, but when a journalist at Fox News (not the opinion shows, just their regular news outlet) is fired, disciplined, calls out issues, whatever…

How many times do you recall seeing coverage of it on Fox News itself, whether on TV or their web site? How many times have you seen a similar piece of self-reflection on OANN? Or Newsmax? Or CNN?

Most of the time, news outlets clam up and you read the articles about them on other outlets.

NPR suspends veteran editor as it grapples with his public criticism

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