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NPR suspends veteran editor as it grapples with his public criticism

• incomingpain 3y ago
  I looked up the article: https://www.thefp.com/p/npr-editor-how-npr-lost-americas-trust 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?
  • netsharc 3y 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 3y 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.
  • jimbob45 3y 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) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Johnson_(journalist)
• typeofhuman 3y ago
  Welp, this is one way to validate his criticisms and prevent others from ever speaking out again. This is journalistic oppression.
• spaceprison 3y 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 3y 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.
  • kelipso 3y 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_waste 3y ago
      Their podcasts went from non-fiction stories to advertisements for peoples random cultural book.
  • jmbwell 3y 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.
    • forgetfreeman 3y 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.
• underseacables 3y 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.
  • pessimizer 3y 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.
• alephnerd 3y 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.
  • vundercind 3y 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.
  • tombert 3y 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 3y ago
      This American Life is from PRI not NPR. Radiolab is NPR however, though of course not really news-focused.
      • tombert 3y ago
        Fair enough; I'm pretty sure I've listened to This American Life on NPR at some point but it was probably just a syndication thing. Yeah, neither are really news-focused, more human-interest stories or deep dives into newer tech.
    • 3y ago
• bonetruck 3y 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....
• InTheArena 3y 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).
  • alephnerd 3y 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.
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    • InTheArena 3y 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-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1999-jul-21-mn-58123...
      • alephnerd 3y ago
        Ok. This seems to be well before my time on the Hill. Imo, you can't really compare NPR in 1999 with NPR in 2024 - almost everyone who was senior in the organization back then will have already retired 15-20 years ago, and their funding structure today is much more donor and advertiser driven than it ever was in the 1990s.
        • photonthug 3y ago
• chaostheory 3y 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.
• donatj 3y 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 3y 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.
  • netsharc 3y 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.
    • gottorf 3y 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-failed-at-viewpoint https://steveinskeep.substack.com/p/how-my-npr-colleague-fai...
      • MisterBastahrd 3y ago
        Yeah, couldn't possibly be that he got approval for outside work. That's too hard to even comprehend.
      • WoahNoun 3y ago
        The policy doesn't say all outside works is banned. It says approval must be sought. Do you have any evidence Inskeep didn't have approval to post on Substack?
        • gottorf 3y ago
• cafard 3y 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.
• jmbwell 3y 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 3y 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_foe 3y 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.
    • StarterPro 3y ago
      Is it possible half the population is wrong? Or maybe over counted?
      • friend_and_foe 3y ago
        Over counted, probably not considering the thin margins of election outcomes. Wrong? Yes, half the population is wrong. Which half is wrong depends on which half you're asking. We are all probably wrong about a lot. This cooperation we do in spite of it helps us figure that out.
• vonnik 3y 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 3y 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-radio-podcast-pounded https://www.mikepesca.com/thegist/episode/30939dec/public-ra...
    • gred 3y ago
      This week there's a solar eclipse; women and minorities hardest hit.
    • indil 3y ago
      Ugh, please don't capitalize black. That's the kind of stuff Berliner was talking about.
• freitzkriesler2 3y 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.
• InTheArena 3y ago
  Here is the article that he was punished for - https://www.thefp.com/p/npr-editor-how-npr-lost-americas-trust https://www.thefp.com/p/npr-editor-how-npr-lost-americas-tru...
  • smrtinsert 3y ago
    [flagged]
    • InTheArena 3y ago
      Right, half the country is truth social and newsmax, and should be ignored by the government sponsored press.
      • jefurii 3y ago
        Considering that they're basically calling for the the overthrow of the government, maybe that's appropriate?
        • mistermann 3y ago
          Does the question mark indicate some possibility you'd be willing to consider "finding some way" to install a genuine democracy, that governs according to the will of the people and actually walks the talk? If you think the so-called democracy we have now is acceptable, you've got pretty low standards in my opinion.
          • mistermann 3y ago
            That this is downvoted (twice!) is very interesting. Will this one also? Have I once again (for the third time) picked up an ambitious anti-fan? ;)
      • wwweston 3y ago
        > the government sponsored press. I guess "the nominally-funded by public grants in amounts about two orders of magnitude down from total funding" doesn't have the same rhetorical sizzle. And it's not "ignoring" people to realize that those who choose Truth Social or Newsmax maybe just don't want what NPR does, let alone other reasons why it might be a poor idea to chase those listeners.
• cantaloupe 3y 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.”
  • InTheArena 3y 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.
    • dekhn 3y 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-protests-military.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/03/opinion/tom-cotton-protes...
      • eej71 3y ago
        The Atlantic ran an interesting piece about the details of how that op-ed came together. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/02/tom-cotton-new-york-times/677546/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/02/tom-cotton...
• kenjackson 3y 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?
  • forgetfreeman 3y 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_foe 3y 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.
      • forgetfreeman 3y ago
        I think you meant to say there are manufactured disagreements and ideological differences among Americans, construction of which is impossible without the full-throated support of media outlets. Peddling opinion in lieu of fact is bullshit full stop. If you're trying to frame this as a political issue know that I'm deadass certain that supporters of both major political parties are useful idiots carrying water for the oligarch class to their own detriment, so arguments that either side of the current suite of public debates has legitimacy is a tough sell on most issues. As an example, the current tempest in a teapot over transgenderism, however well-intentioned, elevates the notional concerns of a group roughly equivalent to the population of Houston, Texas to a position of a national wedge issue. Attention that has arguably done more harm than good for the very community it's intended to serve. So no, I don't believe disagreements like this need to be serviced since they're entirely synthetic in nature and other than giving fodder to religious and political extremists produce nothing of benefit.
• burnished 3y 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 3y ago
  If NPR wanted to improve, they would fire their bigoted CEO and make Berliner the new one.
• donatj 3y 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.
  • vundercind 3y 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 3y 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.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • dang 3y 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.
    • jrootabega 3y 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?
      • 3y ago
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• mjmsmith 3y ago
  I still listen to my local NPR station (WNYC) despite its failure to pander to fragile white people.
  • woooooo 3y ago
    Audience demographics seem to disagree with your assertion here. A specific type of white person is the core.
• richrichie 3y ago
  [flagged]
  • IshKebab 3y ago
    > radicalised, far left, activist .. Her social media history is just crazy. I looked this up. Apparently she once tweeted that Trump is racist, and posted a photo of herself wearing a Biden hat. Just crazy.
    • richrichie 3y ago
      I sense a lack of quality look up! Start here: https://www.racket.news/p/new-npr-chief-katherine-mahers-guide https://www.racket.news/p/new-npr-chief-katherine-mahers-gui...
      • deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      • lyu07282 3y ago
        > "with the radicalised, far left, activist CEO" > She also scored the rare personal triumverate of being member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a World Economic Forum young global leader, and a fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Labs. the cognitive dissonance is amazing
• chatmasta 3y 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.
  • seanmcdirmid 3y 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.
    • MisterBastahrd 3y ago
      WSJ is hilariously biased. It might as well be the financial arm of the NY Post at this point.
  • wombat-man 3y 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_lady 3y ago
• criddell 3y 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.
  • thegrim33 3y 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.
    • elevatedastalt 3y ago
      A simpler question to ask is "How would anyone trying to report this 'bug' internally before launch have been treated?"
    • root_axis 3y 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.
  • alephnerd 3y 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.
• ilamont 3y 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-public-radio-stations-two-different-business-models-one-future-of-public-radio-in-boston-hangs-in-the-balance/ https://www.boston.com/news/the-boston-globe/2024/04/11/two-...
  • anonporridge 3y 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.
    • dhosek 3y 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.
      • anonporridge 3y ago
        It was a pretty explicit message along the lines of "come discover how to connect with God with us".
        • SV_BubbleTime 3y ago
          Not one is actually going to make you do it though. I’m not sure what the complaint is. You’re mad they paid to sponsor an NPR station?
          • 3y ago
• StarterPro 3y ago
  Thread ended up way more conservative than i'd imagine.
  • JasserInicide 3y ago
    People getting sick and tired of news outlets becoming increasingly partisan are now automatically "conservative"? You're part of the problem
  • tick_tock_tick 3y ago
    In all honestly it really didn't. You're probably just significantly more liberal then you thought you were.
• markdeloura 3y 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.
• wwweston 3y 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 3y 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
    • decremental 3y ago
      [dead]
    • zdragnar 3y 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.
      • lolinder 3y ago
        I think the concept of an Overton window doesn't work well with our modern politics. The window hasn't really slid left so much as split in half and slid both left and right. The far right now says and does things that would have been completely out of the Overton window three decades ago, as does the far left in the other extreme. It's like there are two Overton windows depending on which wing you associate with, which is why increasingly people find that they can't engage with those on the other side at all—they're operating with different windows of acceptable expression.
• gyudin 3y 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.
• slibhb 3y 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 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 3y ago
    The guardian seems less polemic and agitation propagandising recently also.
  • mannyv 3y 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.
    • slibhb 3y ago
      "Telling the truth was invented in the 1930s" Hmm
      • tootie 3y ago
        Bias and accuracy are separate axes. Mother Jones is explicitly liberal media, but their reporting is highly factual. Fox News is right-wing and has settled multiple cases over defamation for spreading false stories.
        • slibhb 3y ago
          I don't agree. I think lies by omission are lies.
• barfard 3y ago
  [dead]
• AlbertCory 3y 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 3y ago
  Don’t tell people how to think. Sums it up perfectly.
• mlhpdx 3y 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_ 3y ago
  To a casual observer this looks like a case of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_woke,_go_broke https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_woke,_go_broke
• georgeburdell 3y 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 3y ago
    Try: "The recent unpleasantness".
• etchalon 3y 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 3y 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.
  • crackercrews 3y 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 3y 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.
• wolverine876 3y 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 3y ago
  I don’t like NPR but I also don’t like this guy. He lacks loyalty.
• khana 3y ago
  [dead]
• mmcgaha 3y 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 3y ago
  This guy fails basic critical thinking; Occams razor, and Sagans Standard, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence".
  • mp05 3y 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?
• nubianwarrior 3y 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.
  • subsistence234 3y ago
    >no one called our inclusion DEI - they just called it hiring locally. because it wasn't DEI.
    • nubianwarrior 3y ago
      It 100% was but your take is the kind of dismissive, attempts invalidation I’m referring to so thank you for the example.
      • subsistence234 3y ago
        lol no
  • javajosh 3y 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.
• Glyptodon 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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 https://twitter.com/titonka/status/1778461456410800339
• specialist 3y ago
  I'm not much for radio. But based on all this whinging, today's NPR sounds awesome. I may have to start listening.
• skyechurch 3y 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.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• crmd 3y 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 3y 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.
  • WalterBright 3y 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.
    • mixmastamyk 3y 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.
      • WalterBright 3y ago
        In my K-12 public school years, the propaganda was just a dab. The schools were well-meaning and at least tried to educate us. These days, though, the social engineering seems front and center.
        • akaru 3y ago
          Care to share a specific example?
• Boy_Beaver 3y 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 3y 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.
• EasyMark 3y 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 3y 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 3y ago
  Seems this editors article needs to be better fact checked https://steveinskeep.substack.com/p/how-my-npr-colleague-failed-at-viewpoint https://steveinskeep.substack.com/p/how-my-npr-colleague-fai...
  • subsistence234 3y ago
    https://steveinskeep.substack.com/p/how-my-npr-colleague-failed-at-viewpoint/comment/54081856 https://steveinskeep.substack.com/p/how-my-npr-colleague-fai...
• faeriechangling 3y 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 3y 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.
• mikewarot 3y 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.
  • stusmall 3y 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.
    • mikewarot 3y 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 3y 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 3y ago
  He’s now resigned: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/17/business/media/uri-berliner-npr-resigns.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/17/business/media/uri-berlin...
• bigbillheck 3y 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_Murph 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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.