8 ms·

There's no journalism outfit that can beat back this criticism from someone, all things not being aligned with every ideology. Perfect neutrality doesn't exist,

There's no journalism outfit that can beat back this criticism from someone, all things not being aligned with every ideology. Perfect neutrality doesn't exist, and very arguably isn't desirable anyway. But NPR is doing better than most.

timr 4y ago
NPR hasn't even been close to neutral for years. I say that as someone who was a regular listener from high school until 2020, and nominally on their side of the political spectrum. I feel like things really started to turn south after 2016 -- lots and lots of content about feelings and opinions presented during "news" times. But only for a super-narrow class of people, and never called out as opinion content. They did and do regularly mix editorial content with "news", and the line between each has been getting fuzzier with each passing year. To be fair, the entire news media went crazy after 2016, but NPR was clearly on the left before, and went hard left after that. It's essentially propaganda now.
- 93po 4y ago
  Agreed here, but also there isn't any corporate news outlet that isn't propaganda anymore.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
    NPR isn't definitionally "corporate" news. It may functionally be, due to the way funding has worked out, but this is not baked into its structure or culture. Yet.
    - jahsome 4y ago
      The yet part is what hurts my soul. I've watched the decline for almost two decades in horror, but all I can say is they're the lesser of many, many evils, but as always: buyer beware.
- wahern 4y ago
  What's your local NPR affiliate? KQED is all identity politics, all the time. It's been over 10 years since I was in the DC area, but WAMU always seemed to have better political shows (even though some of them touched directly upon, e.g., race long before KQED went down that road), and from what I can tell their lineup is still far better than KQED. I still regularly listen to WAMU's The Big Broadcast; they may be more selective about the classic episodes they play, but I wouldn't know as they haven't turned it into a virtue signaling exercise. Ditto for Hot Jazz Saturday Night. Some of the national, NPR-produced shows definitely recite identitarian narratives more often than they used to, but compared to KQED-produced content it's still a massive difference in tone and content.
  - timr 4y ago
    I've had many over the years, but I'm mainly referring to the national "NPR" programming now. I agree with you about the identity politics thing.
    - colechristensen 4y ago
      The thing is I’m generally in support of these things, but jeez the amount is just exhausting. You but you, whoever you are, but I’m also a supporter of shutting up about how you identify and doing something else with your life. (No “you” in particular)
      - Auracle 4y ago
        On my station there’s at least a 50/50 chance that when I turn the radio on within a minute they’ll mention identity politics. Today it was right when I changed the channel, and I changed right back to a music station.
  - AdamJacobMuller 4y ago
    WNYC listener here. They've gone hard identity politics over the past decade, definitely got way worse in 2016. Their reporting on so many topics has been biased bordering on being intentionally disingenuous so for a long time now. I do occasionally listen however because I try to expose myself to a lot of points of view, especially when I know I might not agree with them. I was listening to Brian Lerher a few weeks back and it was so sad. I wish I could recall the exact topic but it was exactly some identity politics nonsense, presented in a way which was designed to stoke the most outrage possible (anyone who disagrees is knowingly trying to harm the other side, they can't possibly have good intentions but disagree with us!) and it was all over some trivial thing too. Add onto that it just sounded like Lerher, someone I used to idolize, someone who used to be incredibly passionate, just sounded like he was phoning it in. It was very disheartening. I remember WNYC was the place during the Afghan/Iraq wars where I could get some reasonable and balanced coverage of the situation, especially in the first few months/years when things were very in-flux (and I recall Lerher being an intimate part of that). Air America was the lib-left perspective, NPR would echo that but give me a reasonable perspective of what the other side thought. That seems completely and utterly dead now.
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
  > NPR was clearly on the left before, and went hard left after that. It's essentially propaganda now. Do you understand that actual leftists consider NPR to be a voice of the corporate right-center? Anyway, the correct analysis of NPR, like most "mainstream" media outlets, is that they are biased but not consistently left or right (or any other direction in whatever N-dimensional political space is now fashionable); their bias is pro status quo. That is, their bias is always towards the idea that we live in something roughly approximating the best of all possible worlds, that it requires a bit of tinkering, some careful tweaks to get it dialed in even closer to justice and desirability, but that's about it. The concept that we live in something that is basically, fundamentally broken on the deepest levels is very difficult for mainstream media to tackle, and even though some occasionally do try, it is quickly put back in the box so that we continue to consider how best to tweak and tinker with what we already have.
  - timr 4y ago
    > Do you understand that actual leftists consider NPR to be a voice of the corporate right-center? Google: "No True Scotsman". Just because you think that they're not left enough to be "really left" is not responsive to my point.
    - Sai_ 4y ago
      > Google: “No True Scotsman” Another recent front page HN story talks about ChatGPT and other advances in AI. So, defining “no true Scotsman” would be within AI’s wheelhouse. I think Openai needs to verbify the act of using GPTx to summarise ideas.
  - chris_wot 4y ago
    It’s hilarious to me that you and the OP keep bandying about terms like “left” and “right” but don’t ever give any instances to support what you mean. It’s basically just hand waving - in other words, pretty meaningless other than “I don’t like their viewpoint”.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
- Karrot_Kream 4y ago
  I think you're raising two points here? 1. NPR used to have a stricter separation between editorial content and news content. I agree and you're right I think this got a lot worse after 2016 across the board and IMO NPR has been better than many other agencies about it. 2. NPR took a turn left. I disagree. I think they continue to be vaguely American center-left and haven't really changed much. In general it's quite hard to define "left" as there's multiple groups, but yes since 2016 the social justice left has become a bigger part of the conversation.
- malermeister 4y ago
  I've never seen any remotely left wing content on NPR. When did they call for shared ownership of the means of production or nationalization of industry? That's what being left wing means. Identity politics are liberal, which is a right wing movement.
  - daedalus_j 4y ago
    I think it's fair to say that they bias leftwards at least. They may not be, you know, outright communists or anything, but that doesn't mean they don't lean towards the left side of the American political spectrum a fair bit past center. In the standard distribution of political views calling them "left wing" is fair, even if they're not out on the long tail.
    - malermeister 4y ago
      Which positions do they support that you would call left wing?
      - daedalus_j 4y ago
        Big ones I can think of off the top of my head: Immigration, tax, gun control, abortion, all modern "social justice" issues. But my point isn't that they're "far left", just that they are reliably left of american center. They make no (or at least almost no) effort to present the center-right versions of the argument.
        kthejoker2 4y ago
        Tax? You serious, Clark?
        malermeister 4y ago
        > immigration It is easy to understand how the degrading position of the English workers, engendered by our modern history, and its immediate consequences, has been still more degraded by the presence of Irish competition ~ Friedrich Engels > gun control Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary ~ Karl Marx > all modern "social justice" issues None of those are left wing. They're all liberal, which is a counter model to leftism. > They make no (or at least almost no) effort to present the center-right versions of the argument. They almost exclusively present the liberal argument, which is the center right.
- mjmsmith 4y ago
  To be fair, the Republican Party went full white-nationalist cult after 2016, which is a real problem for outlets that want to maintain a "centrist" viewpoint.
  - misssocrates 4y ago
    The Red Tribe says the Blue Tribe are all communists. The Blue Tribe says the Red Tribe are all nazis. Are they both correct or neither correct? How boring.
    - dragonwriter 4y ago
      > Are they both correct or neither correct? There is no reason the relation of two faction’s opinions to the truth must be the same.
    - mjmsmith 4y ago
      Is the full-scale attack on reproductive rights boring? Perhaps if you were in a position where you had to pay attention, you’d find it more interesting.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - misssocrates 4y ago
        That's a good example from the Blue Tribe. Red Tribe: Is the full-scale genocide on the unborn boring? See how boring and unproductive these tribes are yet?
        mjmsmith 4y ago
        Do you understand what the word genocide means? Do you know any women? Maybe ask if they’re bored.
- rossjudson 4y ago
  Yeah sure. Every time I listen to "The Indicator" or "Planet Money" or "Throughline" I'm just thinking to myself wow, this is some hardcore left wing propaga;.. You need to get out more.
  - ryanbrunner 4y ago
    Nothing says hardcore communist like pretty mainstream Fed-positive economists.
- gcanyon 4y ago
  > the entire news media went crazy after 2016 It's more accurate to say that the U.S. went crazy, and media is doing its best (which is not good enough) to adapt and keep up.
Vaslo 4y ago
It can exist if you list all important facts, not just the ones that tell the story you want. NPR is definitely not doing that. A single fact or a group of handpicked facts is not the truth.
- el_benhameen 4y ago
  Huh? Who determines which facts are important to a story? It’s turtles all the way down.
  - daedalus_j 4y ago
    Let's make up an example: Fact A) Carrots are healthy. Fact B) Carrots may be carcinogenic. These are both inherently important facts to any story talking about the health, or danger, of carrots. To present a position on if one should be eating carrots or not, without including both of these facts, is to handpick facts to tell the story you want to tell.
    - jahsome 4y ago
      Handpicking, aka gatekeeping, is a core tenet of journalism. It's a requirement of the newsgathering process and determining which facts are relevant (newsworthy) _is_ a reporter's job, while the editorial process provides the necessary checks and balances.
Dalewyn 4y ago
C-SPAN with their unedited broadcasts of Congressional proceedings are as neutral and proper journalism as it gets.
- toast0 4y ago
  Congress generally controls the cameras though. Although, not until after they elected a majority leader and do some house keeping. That said, unedited broadcasts of meetings isn't really journalism. Journalism is highlighting the portions of the proceedings that need highlighting. It's an editorial process by nature. That's not to say what C-SPAN does isn't important; it absolutely is valuable and important to have a record of the proceedings, and with video and audio rather than just a transcript or minutes is quite useful.
- beezlebroxxxxxx 4y ago
  Journalists and the public (often looking up to journalists post-Watergate) have made journalism sound wildly more "truthy" and "neutral" than it really is, or ever was. Unedited broadcasts of congressional proceedings isn't "journalism" --- that's a broadcast. By the same token, most 24hr news on TV, which is just commentary on some live event, is barely or often not journalism at all. Journalists write and tell stories. Journalism offers an account of real (or supposed) events. It always involves storytelling in some degree, in the sense that an account of events (in order, or in an order which clarifies the chain of events) is constructed and presented. There's an ideal of neutrality, which is generally understood as a certain set of journalistic "practices", but journalism is ultimately storytelling with the general idea of offering an accurate account of a real event. The idea that journalists have special access to the "truth" is largely just a thing journalists say to make their job sound more specialized than it really is because it has become a "prestige" job. The same goes for 'neutrality' as a relatively recent ideal for journalists to strive for. The history of journalism is actually rife with journalists saying they weren't neutral and never tried to be. Journalism is important, and vital to democracies, but it's important to understand and clarify why they are because journalists can hang themselves on their own petard. They're storytellers with the idea of "holding people, institutions, and the public to account" by offering the public accounts of events that happened, which the public could not immediately witness. For instance, an unedited broadcast of congressional proceedings doesn't require nor is it journalism at all because the public can just watch it. The most a journalist could do is offer context...by situating the proceedings in a chain of historical events.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

timr 4y ago

NPR hasn't even been close to neutral for years. I say that as someone who was a regular listener from high school until 2020, and nominally on their side of the political spectrum. I feel like things really started to turn south after 2016 -- lots and lots of content about feelings and opinions presented during "news" times. But only for a super-narrow class of people, and never called out as opinion content. They did and do regularly mix editorial content with "news", and the line between each has been getting fuzzier with each passing year. To be fair, the entire news media went crazy after 2016, but NPR was clearly on the left before, and went hard left after that. It's essentially propaganda now.

93po 4y ago
Agreed here, but also there isn't any corporate news outlet that isn't propaganda anymore.
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
  NPR isn't definitionally "corporate" news. It may functionally be, due to the way funding has worked out, but this is not baked into its structure or culture. Yet.
  - jahsome 4y ago
    The yet part is what hurts my soul. I've watched the decline for almost two decades in horror, but all I can say is they're the lesser of many, many evils, but as always: buyer beware.
wahern 4y ago
What's your local NPR affiliate? KQED is all identity politics, all the time. It's been over 10 years since I was in the DC area, but WAMU always seemed to have better political shows (even though some of them touched directly upon, e.g., race long before KQED went down that road), and from what I can tell their lineup is still far better than KQED. I still regularly listen to WAMU's The Big Broadcast; they may be more selective about the classic episodes they play, but I wouldn't know as they haven't turned it into a virtue signaling exercise. Ditto for Hot Jazz Saturday Night. Some of the national, NPR-produced shows definitely recite identitarian narratives more often than they used to, but compared to KQED-produced content it's still a massive difference in tone and content.
- timr 4y ago
  I've had many over the years, but I'm mainly referring to the national "NPR" programming now. I agree with you about the identity politics thing.
  - colechristensen 4y ago
    The thing is I’m generally in support of these things, but jeez the amount is just exhausting. You but you, whoever you are, but I’m also a supporter of shutting up about how you identify and doing something else with your life. (No “you” in particular)
    - Auracle 4y ago
      On my station there’s at least a 50/50 chance that when I turn the radio on within a minute they’ll mention identity politics. Today it was right when I changed the channel, and I changed right back to a music station.
- AdamJacobMuller 4y ago
  WNYC listener here. They've gone hard identity politics over the past decade, definitely got way worse in 2016. Their reporting on so many topics has been biased bordering on being intentionally disingenuous so for a long time now. I do occasionally listen however because I try to expose myself to a lot of points of view, especially when I know I might not agree with them. I was listening to Brian Lerher a few weeks back and it was so sad. I wish I could recall the exact topic but it was exactly some identity politics nonsense, presented in a way which was designed to stoke the most outrage possible (anyone who disagrees is knowingly trying to harm the other side, they can't possibly have good intentions but disagree with us!) and it was all over some trivial thing too. Add onto that it just sounded like Lerher, someone I used to idolize, someone who used to be incredibly passionate, just sounded like he was phoning it in. It was very disheartening. I remember WNYC was the place during the Afghan/Iraq wars where I could get some reasonable and balanced coverage of the situation, especially in the first few months/years when things were very in-flux (and I recall Lerher being an intimate part of that). Air America was the lib-left perspective, NPR would echo that but give me a reasonable perspective of what the other side thought. That seems completely and utterly dead now.
PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
> NPR was clearly on the left before, and went hard left after that. It's essentially propaganda now. Do you understand that actual leftists consider NPR to be a voice of the corporate right-center? Anyway, the correct analysis of NPR, like most "mainstream" media outlets, is that they are biased but not consistently left or right (or any other direction in whatever N-dimensional political space is now fashionable); their bias is pro status quo. That is, their bias is always towards the idea that we live in something roughly approximating the best of all possible worlds, that it requires a bit of tinkering, some careful tweaks to get it dialed in even closer to justice and desirability, but that's about it. The concept that we live in something that is basically, fundamentally broken on the deepest levels is very difficult for mainstream media to tackle, and even though some occasionally do try, it is quickly put back in the box so that we continue to consider how best to tweak and tinker with what we already have.
- timr 4y ago
  > Do you understand that actual leftists consider NPR to be a voice of the corporate right-center? Google: "No True Scotsman". Just because you think that they're not left enough to be "really left" is not responsive to my point.
  - Sai_ 4y ago
    > Google: “No True Scotsman” Another recent front page HN story talks about ChatGPT and other advances in AI. So, defining “no true Scotsman” would be within AI’s wheelhouse. I think Openai needs to verbify the act of using GPTx to summarise ideas.
- chris_wot 4y ago
  It’s hilarious to me that you and the OP keep bandying about terms like “left” and “right” but don’t ever give any instances to support what you mean. It’s basically just hand waving - in other words, pretty meaningless other than “I don’t like their viewpoint”.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
Karrot_Kream 4y ago
I think you're raising two points here? 1. NPR used to have a stricter separation between editorial content and news content. I agree and you're right I think this got a lot worse after 2016 across the board and IMO NPR has been better than many other agencies about it. 2. NPR took a turn left. I disagree. I think they continue to be vaguely American center-left and haven't really changed much. In general it's quite hard to define "left" as there's multiple groups, but yes since 2016 the social justice left has become a bigger part of the conversation.
malermeister 4y ago
I've never seen any remotely left wing content on NPR. When did they call for shared ownership of the means of production or nationalization of industry? That's what being left wing means. Identity politics are liberal, which is a right wing movement.
- daedalus_j 4y ago
  I think it's fair to say that they bias leftwards at least. They may not be, you know, outright communists or anything, but that doesn't mean they don't lean towards the left side of the American political spectrum a fair bit past center. In the standard distribution of political views calling them "left wing" is fair, even if they're not out on the long tail.
  - malermeister 4y ago
    Which positions do they support that you would call left wing?
    - daedalus_j 4y ago
      Big ones I can think of off the top of my head: Immigration, tax, gun control, abortion, all modern "social justice" issues. But my point isn't that they're "far left", just that they are reliably left of american center. They make no (or at least almost no) effort to present the center-right versions of the argument.
      - kthejoker2 4y ago
        Tax? You serious, Clark?
      - malermeister 4y ago
        > immigration It is easy to understand how the degrading position of the English workers, engendered by our modern history, and its immediate consequences, has been still more degraded by the presence of Irish competition ~ Friedrich Engels > gun control Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary ~ Karl Marx > all modern "social justice" issues None of those are left wing. They're all liberal, which is a counter model to leftism. > They make no (or at least almost no) effort to present the center-right versions of the argument. They almost exclusively present the liberal argument, which is the center right.
mjmsmith 4y ago
To be fair, the Republican Party went full white-nationalist cult after 2016, which is a real problem for outlets that want to maintain a "centrist" viewpoint.
- misssocrates 4y ago
  The Red Tribe says the Blue Tribe are all communists. The Blue Tribe says the Red Tribe are all nazis. Are they both correct or neither correct? How boring.
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    > Are they both correct or neither correct? There is no reason the relation of two faction’s opinions to the truth must be the same.
  - mjmsmith 4y ago
    Is the full-scale attack on reproductive rights boring? Perhaps if you were in a position where you had to pay attention, you’d find it more interesting.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - misssocrates 4y ago
      That's a good example from the Blue Tribe. Red Tribe: Is the full-scale genocide on the unborn boring? See how boring and unproductive these tribes are yet?
      - mjmsmith 4y ago
        Do you understand what the word genocide means? Do you know any women? Maybe ask if they’re bored.
rossjudson 4y ago
Yeah sure. Every time I listen to "The Indicator" or "Planet Money" or "Throughline" I'm just thinking to myself wow, this is some hardcore left wing propaga;.. You need to get out more.
- ryanbrunner 4y ago
  Nothing says hardcore communist like pretty mainstream Fed-positive economists.
gcanyon 4y ago
> the entire news media went crazy after 2016 It's more accurate to say that the U.S. went crazy, and media is doing its best (which is not good enough) to adapt and keep up.

Vaslo 4y ago

It can exist if you list all important facts, not just the ones that tell the story you want. NPR is definitely not doing that. A single fact or a group of handpicked facts is not the truth.

el_benhameen 4y ago
Huh? Who determines which facts are important to a story? It’s turtles all the way down.
- daedalus_j 4y ago
  Let's make up an example: Fact A) Carrots are healthy. Fact B) Carrots may be carcinogenic. These are both inherently important facts to any story talking about the health, or danger, of carrots. To present a position on if one should be eating carrots or not, without including both of these facts, is to handpick facts to tell the story you want to tell.
  - jahsome 4y ago
    Handpicking, aka gatekeeping, is a core tenet of journalism. It's a requirement of the newsgathering process and determining which facts are relevant (newsworthy) _is_ a reporter's job, while the editorial process provides the necessary checks and balances.

Dalewyn 4y ago

C-SPAN with their unedited broadcasts of Congressional proceedings are as neutral and proper journalism as it gets.

toast0 4y ago
Congress generally controls the cameras though. Although, not until after they elected a majority leader and do some house keeping. That said, unedited broadcasts of meetings isn't really journalism. Journalism is highlighting the portions of the proceedings that need highlighting. It's an editorial process by nature. That's not to say what C-SPAN does isn't important; it absolutely is valuable and important to have a record of the proceedings, and with video and audio rather than just a transcript or minutes is quite useful.
beezlebroxxxxxx 4y ago
Journalists and the public (often looking up to journalists post-Watergate) have made journalism sound wildly more "truthy" and "neutral" than it really is, or ever was. Unedited broadcasts of congressional proceedings isn't "journalism" --- that's a broadcast. By the same token, most 24hr news on TV, which is just commentary on some live event, is barely or often not journalism at all. Journalists write and tell stories. Journalism offers an account of real (or supposed) events. It always involves storytelling in some degree, in the sense that an account of events (in order, or in an order which clarifies the chain of events) is constructed and presented. There's an ideal of neutrality, which is generally understood as a certain set of journalistic "practices", but journalism is ultimately storytelling with the general idea of offering an accurate account of a real event. The idea that journalists have special access to the "truth" is largely just a thing journalists say to make their job sound more specialized than it really is because it has become a "prestige" job. The same goes for 'neutrality' as a relatively recent ideal for journalists to strive for. The history of journalism is actually rife with journalists saying they weren't neutral and never tried to be. Journalism is important, and vital to democracies, but it's important to understand and clarify why they are because journalists can hang themselves on their own petard. They're storytellers with the idea of "holding people, institutions, and the public to account" by offering the public accounts of events that happened, which the public could not immediately witness. For instance, an unedited broadcast of congressional proceedings doesn't require nor is it journalism at all because the public can just watch it. The most a journalist could do is offer context...by situating the proceedings in a chain of historical events.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]