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Thread: NPR editor speaks out: How National Public Radio lost America's trust

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    NPR editor speaks out: How National Public Radio lost America's trust

    NPR Editor Speaks Out: How National Public Radio Lost Americans' Trust
    https://open.spotify.com/episode/11Y0Vvo32LgObGKAmNhKhM
    {Honestly with Bari Weiss @ Spotify | 09 April 2024}

    Uri Berliner is a senior business editor at NPR. In his 25 years with NPR, his work has been recognized with a Peabody Award, a Gerald Loeb Award, an Edward R. Murrow Award, and a Society of Professional Journalists New America Award, among others.

    Today, we published in The Free Press [see below - OB] his firsthand account of the transformation he has witnessed at National Public Radio. Or, as Uri puts it, how it went from an organization that had an “open-minded, curious culture” with a “liberal bent” to one that is “knee-jerk, activist, scolding,” and “rigidly progressive.”

    Uri describes a newsroom that aimed less to cover Donald Trump but instead veered towards efforts to topple him; a newsroom that reported the Russia collusion story without enough skepticism or fairness, and then later largely ignored the fact that the Mueller report found no credible evidence of collusion; a newsroom that purposefully ignored the Hunter Biden laptop story—in fact, one of his fellow NPR journalists approved of ignoring the laptop story because “covering it could help Trump.” A newsroom that put political ideology before journalism in its coverage of Covid-19. And, he describes a newsroom where race and identity became paramount in every aspect of the workplace and diversity became its north star.

    In other words, NPR is not considering all things anymore.

    On today’s episode: How did NPR lose its way? Why did it change? And why does this lone journalist feel obligated to speak out?



    I’ve Been at NPR for 25 Years. Here’s How We Lost America’s Trust.
    Uri Berliner, a veteran at the public radio institution, says the network lost its way when it started telling listeners how to think.
    https://www.thefp.com/p/npr-editor-h...americas-trust
    [archive: https://archive.ph/74Qu6]
    {Uri Berliner | 09 April 2024}

    You know the stereotype of the NPR listener: an EV-driving, Wordle-playing, tote bag–carrying coastal elite. It doesn’t precisely describe me, but it’s not far off. I’m Sarah Lawrence–educated, was raised by a lesbian peace activist mother, I drive a Subaru, and Spotify says my listening habits are most similar to people in Berkeley.

    I fit the NPR mold. I’ll cop to that.

    So when I got a job here 25 years ago, I never looked back. As a senior editor on the business desk where news is always breaking, we’ve covered upheavals in the workplace, supermarket prices, social media, and AI.

    It’s true NPR has always had a liberal bent, but during most of my tenure here, an open-minded, curious culture prevailed. We were nerdy, but not knee-jerk, activist, or scolding.

    In recent years, however, that has changed. Today, those who listen to NPR or read its coverage online find something different: the distilled worldview of a very small segment of the U.S. population.

    If you are conservative, you will read this and say, duh, it’s always been this way.

    But it hasn’t.

    For decades, since its founding in 1970, a wide swath of America tuned in to NPR for reliable journalism and gorgeous audio pieces with birds singing in the Amazon. Millions came to us for conversations that exposed us to voices around the country and the world radically different from our own—engaging precisely because they were unguarded and unpredictable. No image generated more pride within NPR than the farmer listening to Morning Edition from his or her tractor at sunrise.

    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.

    That wouldn’t be a problem for an openly polemical news outlet serving a niche audience. But for NPR, which purports to consider all things, it’s devastating both for its journalism and its business model.

    * * * * * * * * * *

    Like many unfortunate things, the rise of advocacy took off with Donald Trump. As in many newsrooms, his election in 2016 was greeted at NPR with a mixture of disbelief, anger, and despair. (Just to note, I eagerly voted against Trump twice but felt we were obliged to cover him fairly.) But what began as tough, straightforward coverage of a belligerent, truth-impaired president veered toward efforts to damage or topple Trump’s presidency.

    Persistent rumors that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia over the election became the catnip that drove reporting. At NPR, we hitched our wagon to Trump’s most visible antagonist, Representative Adam Schiff.

    Schiff, who was the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, became NPR’s guiding hand, its ever-present muse. By my count, NPR hosts interviewed Schiff 25 times about Trump and Russia. During many of those conversations, Schiff alluded to purported evidence of collusion. The Schiff talking points became the drumbeat of NPR news reports.

    But when the Mueller report found no credible evidence of collusion, NPR’s coverage was notably sparse. Russiagate quietly faded from our programming.

    It is one thing to swing and miss on a major story. Unfortunately, it happens. You follow the wrong leads, you get misled by sources you trusted, you’re emotionally invested in a narrative, and bits of circumstantial evidence never add up. It’s bad to blow a big story.

    What’s worse is to pretend it never happened, to move on with no mea culpas, no self-reflection. Especially when you expect high standards of transparency from public figures and institutions, but don’t practice those standards yourself. That’s what shatters trust and engenders cynicism about the media.

    Russiagate was not NPR’s only miscue.

    In October 2020, the New York Post published the explosive report about the laptop Hunter Biden abandoned at a Delaware computer shop containing emails about his sordid business dealings. With the election only weeks away, NPR turned a blind eye. Here’s how NPR’s managing editor for news at the time explained the thinking: “We don’t want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don’t want to waste the listeners’ and readers’ time on stories that are just pure distractions.”

    But it wasn’t a pure distraction, or a product of Russian disinformation, as dozens of former and current intelligence officials suggested. The laptop did belong to Hunter Biden. Its contents revealed his connection to the corrupt world of multimillion-dollar influence peddling and its possible implications for his father.

    The laptop was newsworthy. But the timeless journalistic instinct of following a hot story lead was being squelched. During a meeting with colleagues, I listened as one of NPR’s best and most fair-minded journalists said it was good we weren’t following the laptop story because it could help Trump.

    When the essential facts of the Post’s reporting were confirmed and the emails verified independently about a year and a half later, we could have fessed up to our misjudgment. But, like Russia collusion, we didn’t make the hard choice of transparency.

    Politics also intruded into NPR’s Covid coverage, most notably in reporting on the origin of the pandemic. One of the most dismal aspects of Covid journalism is how quickly it defaulted to ideological story lines. For example, there was Team Natural Origin—supporting the hypothesis that the virus came from a wild animal market in Wuhan, China. And on the other side, Team Lab Leak, leaning into the idea that the virus escaped from a Wuhan lab.

    The lab leak theory came in for rough treatment almost immediately, dismissed as racist or a right-wing conspiracy theory. Anthony Fauci and former NIH head Francis Collins, representing the public health establishment, were its most notable critics. And that was enough for NPR. We became fervent members of Team Natural Origin, even declaring that the lab leak had been debunked by scientists.

    But that wasn’t the case.

    When word first broke of a mysterious virus in Wuhan, a number of leading virologists immediately suspected it could have leaked from a lab there conducting experiments on bat coronaviruses. This was in January 2020, during calmer moments before a global pandemic had been declared, and before fear spread and politics intruded.

    Reporting on a possible lab leak soon became radioactive. Fauci and Collins apparently encouraged the March publication of an influential scientific paper known as “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2.” Its authors wrote they didn’t believe “any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible.”

    But the lab leak hypothesis wouldn’t die. And understandably so. In private, even some of the scientists who penned the article dismissing it sounded a different tune. One of the authors, Andrew Rambaut, an evolutionary biologist from Edinburgh University, wrote to his colleagues, “I literally swivel day by day thinking it is a lab escape or natural.”

    Over the course of the pandemic, a number of investigative journalists made compelling, if not conclusive, cases for the lab leak. But at NPR, we weren’t about to swivel or even tiptoe away from the insistence with which we backed the natural origin story. We didn’t budge when the Energy Department—the federal agency with the most expertise about laboratories and biological research—concluded, albeit with low confidence, that a lab leak was the most likely explanation for the emergence of the virus.

    Instead, we introduced our coverage of that development on February 28, 2023, by asserting confidently that “the scientific evidence overwhelmingly points to a natural origin for the virus.”

    When a colleague on our science desk was asked why they were so dismissive of the lab leak theory, the response was odd. The colleague compared it to the Bush administration’s unfounded argument that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, apparently meaning we won’t get fooled again. But these two events were not even remotely related. Again, politics were blotting out the curiosity and independence that ought to have been driving our work.

    I’m offering three examples of widely followed stories where I believe we faltered. Our coverage is out there in the public domain. Anyone can read or listen for themselves and make their own judgment. But to truly understand how independent journalism suffered at NPR, you need to step inside the organization.

    You need to start with former CEO John Lansing. Lansing came to NPR in 2019 from the federally funded agency that oversees Voice of America. Like others who have served in the top job at NPR, he was hired primarily to raise money and to ensure good working relations with hundreds of member stations that acquire NPR’s programming.

    After working mostly behind the scenes, Lansing became a more visible and forceful figure after the killing of George Floyd in May 2020. It was an anguished time in the newsroom, personally and professionally so for NPR staffers. Floyd’s murder, captured on video, changed both the conversation and the daily operations at NPR.

    Given the circumstances of Floyd’s death, it would have been an ideal moment to tackle a difficult question: Is America, as progressive activists claim, beset by systemic racism in the 2020s—in law enforcement, education, housing, and elsewhere? We happen to have a very powerful tool for answering such questions: journalism. Journalism that lets evidence lead the way.

    But the message from the top was very different. America’s infestation with systemic racism was declared loud and clear: it was a given. Our mission was to change it.

    “When it comes to identifying and ending systemic racism,” Lansing wrote in a companywide article, “we can be agents of change. Listening and deep reflection are necessary but not enough. They must be followed by constructive and meaningful steps forward. I will hold myself accountable for this.”

    And we were told that NPR itself was part of the problem. In confessional language he said the leaders of public media, “starting with me—must be aware of how we ourselves have benefited from white privilege in our careers. We must understand the unconscious bias we bring to our work and interactions. And we must commit ourselves—body and soul—to profound changes in ourselves and our institutions.”

    He declared that diversity—on our staff and in our audience—was the overriding mission, the “North Star” of the organization. Phrases like “that’s part of the North Star” became part of meetings and more casual conversation.

    Race and identity became paramount in nearly every aspect of the workplace. Journalists were required to ask everyone we interviewed their race, gender, and ethnicity (among other questions), and had to enter it in a centralized tracking system. We were given unconscious bias training sessions. A growing DEI staff offered regular meetings imploring us to “start talking about race.” Monthly dialogues were offered for “women of color” and “men of color.” Nonbinary people of color were included, too.

    These initiatives, bolstered by a $1 million grant from the NPR Foundation, came from management, from the top down. Crucially, they were in sync culturally with what was happening at the grassroots—among producers, reporters, and other staffers. Most visible was a burgeoning number of employee resource (or affinity) groups based on identity.

    They included MGIPOC (Marginalized Genders and Intersex People of Color mentorship program); Mi Gente (Latinx employees at NPR); NPR Noir (black employees at NPR); Southwest Asians and North Africans at NPR; Ummah (for Muslim-identifying employees); Women, Gender-Expansive, and Transgender People in Technology Throughout Public Media; Khevre (Jewish heritage and culture at NPR); and NPR Pride (LGBTQIA employees at NPR).

    All this reflected a broader movement in the culture of people clustering together based on ideology or a characteristic of birth. If, as NPR’s internal website suggested, the groups were simply a “great way to meet like-minded colleagues” and “help new employees feel included,” it would have been one thing.

    But the role and standing of affinity groups, including those outside NPR, were more than that. They became a priority for NPR’s union, SAG-AFTRA—an item in collective bargaining. The current contract, in a section on DEI, requires NPR management to “keep up to date with current language and style guidance from journalism affinity groups” and to inform employees if language differs from the diktats of those groups. In such a case, the dispute could go before the DEI Accountability Committee.

    In essence, this means the NPR union, of which I am a dues-paying member, has ensured that advocacy groups are given a seat at the table in determining the terms and vocabulary of our news coverage.

    Conflicts between workers and bosses, between labor and management, are common in workplaces. NPR has had its share. But what’s notable is the extent to which people at every level of NPR have comfortably coalesced around the progressive worldview.

    And this, I believe, is the most damaging development at NPR: the absence of viewpoint diversity.

    * * * * * * * * * *

    There’s an unspoken consensus about the stories we should pursue and how they should be framed. It’s frictionless—one story after another about instances of supposed racism, transphobia, signs of the climate apocalypse, Israel doing something bad, and the dire threat of Republican policies. It’s almost like an assembly line.

    The mindset prevails in choices about language. In a document called NPR Transgender Coverage Guidance—disseminated by news management—we’re asked to avoid the term biological sex. (The editorial guidance was prepared with the help of a former staffer of the National Center for Transgender Equality.) The mindset animates bizarre stories—on how The Beatles and bird names are racially problematic, and others that are alarmingly divisive; justifying looting, with claims that fears about crime are racist; and suggesting that Asian Americans who oppose affirmative action have been manipulated by white conservatives.

    More recently, we have approached the Israel-Hamas war and its spillover onto streets and campuses through the “intersectional” lens that has jumped from the faculty lounge to newsrooms. Oppressor versus oppressed. That’s meant highlighting the suffering of Palestinians at almost every turn while downplaying the atrocities of October 7, overlooking how Hamas intentionally puts Palestinian civilians in peril, and giving little weight to the explosion of antisemitic hate around the world.

    For nearly all my career, working at NPR has been a source of great pride. It’s a privilege to work in the newsroom at a crown jewel of American journalism. My colleagues are congenial and hardworking.

    I can’t count the number of times I would meet someone, describe what I do, and they’d say, “I love NPR!”

    And they wouldn’t stop there. They would mention their favorite host or one of those “driveway moments” where a story was so good you’d stay in your car until it finished.

    It still happens, but often now the trajectory of the conversation is different. After the initial “I love NPR,” there’s a pause and a person will acknowledge, “I don’t listen as much as I used to.” Or, with some chagrin: “What’s happening there? Why is NPR telling me what to think?”

    In recent years I’ve struggled to answer that question. Concerned by the lack of viewpoint diversity, I looked at voter registration for our newsroom. In D.C., where NPR is headquartered and many of us live, I found 87 registered Democrats working in editorial positions and zero Republicans. None.

    So on May 3, 2021, I presented the findings at an all-hands editorial staff meeting. When I suggested we had a diversity problem with a score of 87 Democrats and zero Republicans, the response wasn’t hostile. It was worse. It was met with profound indifference. I got a few messages from surprised, curious colleagues. But the messages were of the “oh wow, that’s weird” variety, as if the lopsided tally was a random anomaly rather than a critical failure of our diversity North Star.

    In a follow-up email exchange, a top NPR news executive told me that she had been “skewered” for bringing up diversity of thought when she arrived at NPR. So, she said, “I want to be careful how we discuss this publicly.”

    For years, I have been persistent. When I believe our coverage has gone off the rails, I have written regular emails to top news leaders, sometimes even having one-on-one sessions with them. On March 10, 2022, I wrote to a top news executive about the numerous times we described the controversial education bill in Florida as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill when it didn’t even use the word gay. I pushed to set the record straight, and wrote another time to ask why we keep using that word that many Hispanics hate—Latinx. On March 31, 2022, I was invited to a managers’ meeting to present my observations.

    Throughout these exchanges, no one has ever trashed me. That’s not the NPR way. People are polite. But nothing changes. So I’ve become a visible wrong-thinker at a place I love. It’s uncomfortable, sometimes heartbreaking.

    Even so, out of frustration, on November 6, 2022, I wrote to the captain of ship North Star—CEO John Lansing—about the lack of viewpoint diversity and asked if we could have a conversation about it. I got no response, so I followed up four days later. He said he would appreciate hearing my perspective and copied his assistant to set up a meeting. On December 15, the morning of the meeting, Lansing’s assistant wrote back to cancel our conversation because he was under the weather. She said he was looking forward to chatting and a new meeting invitation would be sent. But it never came.

    I won’t speculate about why our meeting never happened. Being CEO of NPR is a demanding job with lots of constituents and headaches to deal with. But what’s indisputable is that no one in a C-suite or upper management position has chosen to deal with the lack of viewpoint diversity at NPR and how that affects our journalism.

    Which is a shame. Because for all the emphasis on our North Star, NPR’s news audience in recent years has become less diverse, not more so. Back in 2011, our audience leaned a bit to the left but roughly reflected America politically; now, the audience is cramped into a smaller, progressive silo.

    Despite all the resources we’d devoted to building up our news audience among blacks and Hispanics, the numbers have barely budged. In 2023, according to our demographic research, 6 percent of our news audience was black, far short of the overall U.S. adult population, which is 14.4 percent black. And Hispanics were only 7 percent, compared to the overall Hispanic adult population, around 19 percent. Our news audience doesn’t come close to reflecting America. It’s overwhelmingly white and progressive, and clustered around coastal cities and college towns.

    These are perilous times for news organizations. Last year, NPR laid off or bought out 10 percent of its staff and canceled four podcasts following a slump in advertising revenue. Our radio audience is dwindling and our podcast downloads are down from 2020. The digital stories on our website rarely have national impact. They aren’t conversation starters. Our competitive advantage in audio—where for years NPR had no peer—is vanishing. There are plenty of informative and entertaining podcasts to choose from.

    Even within our diminished audience, there’s evidence of trouble at the most basic level: trust.

    In February, our audience insights team sent an email proudly announcing that we had a higher trustworthy score than CNN or The New York Times. But the research from Harris Poll is hardly reassuring. It found that “3-in-10 audience members familiar with NPR said they associate NPR with the characteristic ‘trustworthy.’ ” Only in a world where media credibility has completely imploded would a 3-in-10 trustworthy score be something to boast about.

    With declining ratings, sorry levels of trust, and an audience that has become less diverse over time, the trajectory for NPR is not promising. Two paths seem clear. We can keep doing what we’re doing, hoping it will all work out. Or we could start over, with the basic building blocks of journalism. We could face up to where we’ve gone wrong. News organizations don’t go in for that kind of reckoning. But there’s a good reason for NPR to be the first: we’re the ones with the word public in our name.

    Despite our missteps at NPR, defunding isn’t the answer. As the country becomes more fractured, there’s still a need for a public institution where stories are told and viewpoints exchanged in good faith. Defunding, as a rebuke from Congress, wouldn’t change the journalism at NPR. That needs to come from within.

    A few weeks ago, NPR welcomed a new CEO, Katherine Maher, who’s been a leader in tech. She doesn’t have a news background, which could be an asset given where things stand. I’ll be rooting for her. It’s a tough job. Her first rule could be simple enough: don’t tell people how to think. It could even be the new North Star.
    The Bastiat Collection · FREE PDF · FREE EPUB · PAPER
    Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850)

    • "When law and morality are in contradiction to each other, the citizen finds himself in the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense, or of losing his respect for the law."
      -- The Law (p. 54)
    • "Government is that great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
      -- Government (p. 99)
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      -- Economic Sophisms - Second Series (p. 312)
    • "There are two principles that can never be reconciled - Liberty and Constraint."
      -- Harmonies of Political Economy - Book One (p. 447)

    · tu ne cede malis sed contra audentior ito ·



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  3. #2
    Quote Originally Posted by Occam's Banana View Post
    https://twitter.com/JesseBWatters/st...61866124927043
    NPR, a taxpayer-funded news organization, used to be trusted but now, they’ve gone rogue. One senior editor, a classic liberal, says NPR corrupted itself in 2016. He admits NPR coped with Hillary’s loss by getting into bed with Adam Schiff. He says NPR pretended like the Trump-Russia collusion story never happened once it was debunked, he says they tried to kill the lab leak theory and ignored Hunter’s laptop bombshell. This was all fueled by former NPR CEO, John Lansing, who thought white people had to atone for their skin color.
    CNN hack is big mad:

    NPR faces right-wing revolt and calls for defunding after editor claims left-wing bias
    https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/11/media...dia/index.html
    {Oliver Darcy | 11 April 2024}

    National Public Radio is being battered by a right-wing storm.

    A day after NPR senior business editor Uri Berliner penned a scathing piece for Bari Weiss’ Free Press, pointedly critiquing the publicly funded outlet and portraying it as an institution that has descended into the depths of wokeism, the network finds itself under siege.

    Donald Trump, Fox News, and the other organs in the right-wing universe are holding up Berliner’s 3,500-word piece to demonize the outlet. And they are not stopping with a simple verbal assault, openly demanding that lawmakers strip the newsroom of its government funding. Trump on Wednesday, calling NPR a “LIBERAL DISINFORMATION MACHINE,” said that “NOT ONE DOLLAR” of government funds should be sent into its coffers moving forward.

    “NO MORE FUNDING FOR NPR, A TOTAL SCAM!” Trump ranted on his Truth Social platform.

    While Trump has pushed to defund the outlet before, the rage present in his post reflected the larger backlash in the right-wing media universe, where top figures have lambasted the public radio broadcaster as nothing more than a liberal propaganda mouthpiece and questioned why taxpayer dollars are funding the outlet. The NPR editor’s allegations of network bias has been billed as a top story, with right-wing outlets and personalities portraying Berliner as a “whistleblower” who has shined a bright light on a sinister operation aimed at indoctrinating Americans.

    “WOKE NPR EXPOSED,” declared an on-screen banner Wednesday on Fox News’ most-watched program, “The Five.”

    “NPR PUMPED OUT AN ASSEMBLY LINE OF PROPAGANDA,” blared a separate banner on Fox News host Jesse Watters’ primetime program.

    Berliner, however, did not go nearly that far in his piece. And he stressed in his essay that defunding the broadcaster “isn’t the answer.” In an email on Wednesday, Berliner also told CNN that he rejects the notion that NPR is a “liberal disinformation machine,” as Trump stated.

    “I have not seen Trump’s comments, but the quote you cite is not the first time he has attacked the media,” he wrote. “He has done it countless times before and will no doubt do it many times again.”

    While Berliner is not entirely on board with how his essay is being interpreted by Trump and his MAGA Media allies, the piece did validate a number of complaints the right has had about NPR and the press at large. Berliner ridiculed the outlet’s coverage of “Russiagate,” the Covid-19 lab-leak theory and the New York Post’s Hunter Biden story. And he used his complaints about how those individual stories were covered by his colleagues to draw a sweeping conclusion. NPR, he asserted, had “lost America’s trust” by embracing a “progressive worldview,” rejecting “viewpoint diversity,” and “telling listeners how to think.”

    Berliner, who cited data showing that in 2023 self-identifying conservatives consumed NPR in fewer numbers than they had in 2011, strangely failed to identify the elephant in the room: by 2023, Trump and the MAGA Media machine had spent years waging a brutal war on truth and the media organizations that espouse it. That war, unquestionably, is responsible for many Republicans losing trust in newsrooms, including NPR’s. Additionally, those who identified as a Republican in 2011 may have, after the chaotic Trump presidency, changed how they identify politically.

    But when CNN asked Berliner why his essay neglected to mention the impact Trump’s war on the media has had on the public’s trust, he declined to comment.

    “That’s all from me now,” Berliner wrote, strangely disinterested in a topic that cuts to the very heart of his essay’s central thesis.

    In a follow-up email, Berliner sent a link to a Gallup poll conducted last year showing trust in media had fallen, writing, “Confidence in the media has tanked, including among Democrats. It’s a good time for us to look in the mirror.”

    Regardless of the questionable merits of Berliner’s sweeping conclusions, his piece has been nothing short of a massive gift to the right, which has made vilifying the news media its top priority in recent years. If Berliner had hoped that his essay would generate a conversation that would increase trust from conservatives, he was sorely mistaken. Ironically, it is doing the very opposite.

    NPR’s response, meanwhile, has been rather muted. Editor-In-Chief Edith Chapin pushed back against Berliner’s characterization of the outlet in a Tuesday memo to staffers. Chapin said that NPR management “strongly disagree with Uri’s assessment of the quality of our journalism and the integrity of our newsroom processes.”

    But the outlet remained silent on Wednesday. A spokesperson did not respond to questions about attacks on the outlet or how management could expect its staffers to collaborate with Berliner, given how he openly spurned colleagues in his Free Press essay.

    Berliner declined to comment when asked what he would say to colleagues who have concerns that he can no longer be trusted. But the editor said that, for now, he is still employed by NPR.

  4. #3
    I finally stopped completely because I can't stand the climate change propaganda they inject into everything, even travel videos.

    I gave up on NPR long ago, but am about to abandon classical music radio because they have gone over to 75% lame Ukrainian composers. Though the warm and absolutely loving way Fred Child flutes the word "pandemic", as if it was the greatest thing to ever happen, is amusing.

    Neither network will ever undo the damage.

    They're completely expending the reputations of all the legacy media. It's like spending the trust fund. If the investment works, we're their slaves. If it doesn't, we start from scratch, because these devils have compromised nearly everything.
    Last edited by acptulsa; 04-12-2024 at 06:48 AM.

  5. #4
    NPR Editor Blasts the Public-Funded Company for Political Bias and Activism
    https://jonathanturley.org/2024/04/1...-and-activism/
    {Jonathan Turley | 10 April 2024}

    In a scathing account from within National Public Radio (NPR), Senior Editor Uri Berliner blasted the company for open political bias and activism. Berliner, who says that he is liberal politically, wrote about how NPR went from a left-leaning media outlet to a virtual Democratic operation echoing narratives from figures like Rep. Adam Schiff (D., Cal.). The objections have long been voiced, including on this blog, but this account is coming from a long-standing and respected editor from within the company.

    Beliner details how NPR, like many media outlets, became openly activist after the election of Donald Trump to the point that the company now employs 87 registered Democrats in editorial positions but not a single Republican in its Washington, DC, headquarters.

    In his essay for The Free Press, [see this post - OB] Berliner notes that after Trump’s election in 2016, the most notable change was shutting down any skepticism or even curiosity about the truth of Democratic talking points in scandals like Russiagate. Berliner said that NPR “hitched our wagon” to Schiff and his now debunked claims.

    Berliner says that he was rebuffed in seeking a modicum of balance in the coverage about the coronavirus “lab leak theory,” the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, Hunter Biden’s laptop, and the 2016 Russia hoax.

    As discussed on this blog, NPR repeated false stories like the claims from the Lafayette Park riot. Berliner gives an account that is strikingly familiar for many of us who have raised the purging of conservative or libertarian voices from our faculties in higher education:

    “So on May 3, 2021, I presented the findings at an all-hands editorial staff meeting. When I suggested we had a diversity problem with a score of 87 Democrats and zero Republicans, the response wasn’t hostile. It was worse. It was met with profound indifference. I got a few messages from surprised, curious colleagues. But the messages were of the “oh wow, that’s weird” variety, as if the lopsided tally was a random anomaly rather than a critical failure of our diversity North Star.

    In a follow-up email exchange, a top NPR news executive told me that she had been “skewered” for bringing up diversity of thoughtwhen she arrived at NPR. So, she said, “I want to be careful how we discuss this publicly.”

    For years, I have been persistent. When I believe our coverage has gone off the rails, I have written regular emails to top news leaders, sometimes even having one-on-one sessions with them. On March 10, 2022, I wrote to a top news executive about the numerous times we described the controversial education bill in Florida as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill when it didn’t even use the word gay. I pushed to set the record straight, and wrote another time to ask why we keep using that word that many Hispanics hate—Latinx. On March 31, 2022, I was invited to a managers’ meeting to present my observations”

    Former NPR analyst Juan Williams stated in an interview this week that, as a strong liberal voice (now at Fox), he found the same bias at NPR. Williams was fired by NPR as this shift seemed to go into high gear toward greater intolerance for opposing views.

    Despite these criticisms, NPR has doubled down on its activism. For example, when it came time to select a new CEO, NPR could have tacked to the center to address the growing criticism. Instead, the new CEO became instant news over social media postings that she deleted before the recent announcement of her selection. Katherine Maher is the former CEO of Wikipedia and sought to remove controversial postings on subjects ranging from looters to Trump. Those deleted postings included a 2018 declaration that “Donald Trump is a racist” and a variety of race-based commentary. They also included a statement that appeared to excuse looting.

    NPR has abandoned core policies on neutrality as its newsroom has become more activist and strident. For example, NPR declared that it would allow employees to participate in political protests when the editors believe the causes advance the “freedom and dignity of human beings.”

    The rule itself shows how impressionistic and unprofessional media has become in the woke era. NPR does not try to define what causes constitute advocacy for the “freedom and dignity of human beings.” How about climate change and environmental protection? Would it be prohibited to protest for a forest but okay if it is framed as “environmental justice”?

    NPR seems to intentionally keep such questions vague while only citing such good causes as Black Lives Matter and gay rights:

    “Is it OK to march in a demonstration and say, ‘Black lives matter’? What about a Pride parade? In theory, the answer today is, “Yes.” But in practice, NPR journalists will have to discuss specific decisions with their bosses, who in turn will have to ask a lot of questions.”

    So the editors will have the power to choose between acceptable and unacceptable causes.

    The bias seemed to snowball into a type of willful blindness in the coverage of the outlet, which is supported by federal funds.

    After the New York Post first reported on Hunter Biden’s laptop in 2020, NPR declared that it would not cover the story. It actually issued a statement that seemed to proudly refuse to pursue the story, which was found to be legitimate:

    “We don’t want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don’t want to waste the listeners’ and readers’ time on stories that are just pure distractions.”

    Berliner’s account is reminiscent of the recent disclosures from within the New York Times. Former editors have described that same open intolerance for opposing views and a refusal to balance coverage.

    Former New York Times editorial page editor James Bennet has finally spoken publicly about his role in one of the most disgraceful chapters in American journalism: the Times’ cringing apology for running a 2020 column by Sen. Tom Cotton. Bennet said publisher AG Sulzberger “set me on fire and threw me in the garbage” to appease the mob.

    Former New York Times editor Adam Rubenstein also wrote a lengthy essay at The Atlantic that pulled back the curtain on the newspaper and its alleged bias in its coverage. The essay follows similar pieces from former editors and writers that range from Bari Weiss to his former colleague James Bennet. The essay describes a similar work environment where even his passing reference to liking Chick-Fil-A sandwiches led to a condemnation of shocked colleagues.

    None of this is likely to change the culture at NPR any more than such discussions have changed faculties in higher education. Raising the virtual elimination of conservative or Republican voices on faculties is met by the same forced expressions of disbelief. While mild concern is expressed, it is often over the “perception” of those of us who view universities as intolerant or orthodox.

    Of course, there remains the question of why the public should give huge amounts of money to a media outlet that is so politically biased. News outlets have every right to pursue such political agendas, but none but NPR claim public support, including from half of the country that embraces the viewpoints that it routinely omits from its airways.

  6. #5
    NPR defends its journalism after senior editor says it has lost the public's trust
    https://www.npr.org/2024/04/09/12437...rust-diversity
    {David Folkenflik | 10 April 2024}

    NPR's top news executive defended its journalism and its commitment to reflecting a diverse array of views on Tuesday after a senior NPR editor wrote a broad critique of how the network has covered some of the most important stories of the age.

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

    A strategic emphasis on diversity and inclusion on the basis of race, ethnicity and sexual orientation, promoted by NPR's former CEO, John Lansing, has fed "the absence of viewpoint diversity," Berliner writes.

    NPR's chief news executive, Edith Chapin, wrote in a memo to staff Tuesday afternoon that she and the news leadership team strongly reject Berliner's assessment.

    "We're proud to stand behind the exceptional work that our desks and shows do to cover a wide range of challenging stories," she wrote. "We believe that inclusion — among our staff, with our sourcing, and in our overall coverage — is critical to telling the nuanced stories of this country and our world."

    She added, "None of our work is above scrutiny or critique. We must have vigorous discussions in the newsroom about how we serve the public as a whole."

    A spokesperson for NPR said Chapin, who also serves as the network's chief content officer, would have no further comment.

    Praised by NPR's critics

    Berliner is a senior editor on NPR's Business Desk. (Disclosure: I, too, am part of the Business Desk, and Berliner has edited many of my past stories. He did not see any version of this article or participate in its preparation before it was posted publicly.)

    Berliner's essay, titled "I've Been at NPR for 25 years. Here's How We Lost America's Trust," [see this post - OB] was published by The Free Press, a website that has welcomed journalists who have concluded that mainstream news outlets have become reflexively liberal.

    Berliner writes that as a Subaru-driving, Sarah Lawrence College graduate who "was raised by a lesbian peace activist mother," he fits the mold of a loyal NPR fan.

    Yet Berliner says NPR's news coverage has fallen short on some of the most controversial stories of recent years, from the question of whether former President Donald Trump colluded with Russia in the 2016 election, to the origins of the virus that causes COVID-19, to the significance and provenance of emails leaked from a laptop owned by Hunter Biden weeks before the 2020 election. In addition, he blasted NPR's coverage of the Israel-Hamas conflict.

    On each of these stories, Berliner asserts, NPR has suffered from groupthink due to too little diversity of viewpoints in the newsroom.

    The essay ricocheted Tuesday around conservative media, with some labeling Berliner a whistleblower. Others picked it up on social media, including Elon Musk, who has lambasted NPR for leaving his social media site, X. (Musk emailed another NPR reporter a link to Berliner's article with a gibe that the reporter was a "quisling" — a World War II reference to someone who collaborates with the enemy.)

    When asked for further comment late Tuesday, Berliner declined, saying the essay spoke for itself.

    The arguments he raises — and counters — have percolated across U.S. newsrooms in recent years. The #MeToo sexual harassment scandals of 2016 and 2017 forced newsrooms to listen to and heed more junior colleagues. The social justice movement prompted by the killing of George Floyd in 2020 inspired a reckoning in many places. Newsroom leaders often appeared to stand on shaky ground.

    Leaders at many newsrooms, including top editors at The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, lost their jobs. Legendary Washington Post Executive Editor Martin Baron wrote in his memoir that he feared his bonds with the staff were "frayed beyond repair," especially over the degree of self-expression his journalists expected to exert on social media, before he decided to step down in early 2021.

    Since then, Baron and others — including leaders of some of these newsrooms — have suggested that the pendulum has swung too far.

    New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger warned last year against journalists embracing a stance of what he calls "one-side-ism": "where journalists are demonstrating that they're on the side of the righteous."

    "I really think that that can create blind spots and echo chambers," he said.

    Internal arguments at The Times over the strength of its reporting on accusations that Hamas engaged in sexual assaults as part of a strategy for its Oct. 7 attack on Israel erupted publicly. The paper conducted an investigation to determine the source of a leak over a planned episode of the paper's podcast The Daily on the subject, which months later has not been released. The newsroom guild accused the paper of "targeted interrogation" of journalists of Middle Eastern descent.

    Heated pushback in NPR's newsroom

    Given Berliner's account of private conversations, several NPR journalists question whether they can now trust him with unguarded assessments about stories in real time. Others express frustration that he had not sought out comment in advance of publication. Berliner acknowledged to me that for this story, he did not seek NPR's approval to publish the piece, nor did he give the network advance notice.

    Some of Berliner's NPR colleagues are responding heatedly. Fernando Alfonso, a senior supervising editor for digital news, wrote that he wholeheartedly rejected Berliner's critique of the coverage of the Israel-Hamas conflict, for which NPR's journalists, like their peers, periodically put themselves at risk.

    Alfonso also took issue with Berliner's concern over the focus on diversity at NPR.

    "As a person of color who has often worked in newsrooms with little to no people who look like me, the efforts NPR has made to diversify its workforce and its sources are unique and appropriate given the news industry's long-standing lack of diversity," Alfonso says. "These efforts should be celebrated and not denigrated as Uri has done."

    After this story was first published, Berliner contested Alfonso's characterization, saying his criticism of NPR is about the lack of diversity of viewpoints, not its diversity itself.

    "I never criticized NPR's priority of achieving a more diverse workforce in terms of race, ethnicity and sexual orientation. I have not 'denigrated' NPR's newsroom diversity goals," Berliner said. "That's wrong."

    Questions of diversity

    Under former CEO John Lansing, NPR made increasing diversity, both of its staff and its audience, its "North Star" mission. Berliner says in the essay that NPR failed to consider broader diversity of viewpoint, noting, "In D.C., where NPR is headquartered and many of us live, I found 87 registered Democrats working in editorial positions and zero Republicans."

    Berliner cited audience estimates that suggested a concurrent falloff in listening by Republicans. (The number of people listening to NPR broadcasts and terrestrial radio broadly has declined since the start of the pandemic.)

    Former NPR vice president for news and ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin tweeted, "I know Uri. He's not wrong."

    Others questioned Berliner's logic. "This probably gets causality somewhat backward," tweeted Semafor Washington editor Jordan Weissmann. "I'd guess that a lot of NPR listeners who voted for [Mitt] Romney have changed how they identify politically."

    Similarly, Nieman Lab founder Joshua Benton suggested the rise of Trump alienated many NPR-appreciating Republicans from the GOP.

    In recent years, NPR has greatly enhanced the percentage of people of color in its workforce and its executive ranks. Four out of 10 staffers are people of color; nearly half of NPR's leadership team identifies as Black, Asian or Latino.

    "The philosophy is: Do you want to serve all of America and make sure it sounds like all of America, or not?" Lansing, who stepped down last month, says in response to Berliner's piece. "I'd welcome the argument against that."

    "On radio, we were really lagging in our representation of an audience that makes us look like what America looks like today," Lansing says. The U.S. looks and sounds a lot different than it did in 1971, when NPR's first show was broadcast, Lansing says.

    A network spokesperson says new NPR CEO Katherine Maher supports Chapin and her response to Berliner's critique.

    The spokesperson says that Maher "believes that it's a healthy thing for a public service newsroom to engage in rigorous consideration of the needs of our audiences, including where we serve our mission well and where we can serve it better."

    Disclosure: This story was reported and written by NPR Media Correspondent David Folkenflik and edited by Deputy Business Editor Emily Kopp and Managing Editor Gerry Holmes. Under NPR's protocol for reporting on itself, no NPR corporate official or news executive reviewed this story before it was posted publicly.

  7. #6
    Should NPR rely on listeners rather than taxpayers like you?
    https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/...yers-like-you/
    {Jonathan Turley | 13 April 2024}

    It has been a rough week for the National Public Radio (NPR) after a respected editor, Uri Berliner, wrote a scathing account of the political bias at the media outlet [see this post - OB].

    Although NPR responded [see this post - OB] by denying the allegations, the controversy has rekindled the debate over the danger of the government selectively funding media outlets. That is a debate that does not simply turn on the question of bias, but more fundamentally on why the public should support this particular media company to the exclusion of others.

    The Biden administration and Congress continue to struggle with a massive budget deficit and growing national debt, which stands at $34 trillion debt and is approximately 99 percent of Gross Domestic Product.

    Despite the need to make tough cuts in core public programs, the public subsidy for NPR has been protected as sacrosanct for decades.

    NPR insists that only roughly 1 percent of its budget comes from the government. But that is misleading due to a federal law that distributes funds through local stations and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been set aside for CPB in fiscal year 2026, a sizable increase from 2025.

    In the meantime, NPR’s audience has been declining. Indeed, that trend has been most pronounced since 2017 — the period when Berliner said the company began to openly pursue a political narrative and agenda to counter Donald Trump. The company has reported falling advertising revenue and, like many outlets, has made deep staff cuts to deal with budget shortfalls.

    For the record, despite the growing political bias shown by NPR news programs, I still view it to be unmatched in its quality and some of its programming. But the budget fight again raises a longstanding constitutional concern over subsidies for media by the federal government. It is not unconstitutional per se, but it continues to be an anomaly in a system that tries to separate government from the press.

    The U.S. has never had a true “wall of separation” for media like the one Thomas Jefferson once referenced between church and state. Indeed, in 1791, Madison declared that Congress had an obligation to improve the “circulation of newspapers through the entire body of the people” and sponsored the Post Office Act of 1791, which offered newspapers cut-rate prices for reaching subscribers. For many years, newspapers would account for more than 95 percent of the weight of mail transported by the post office. It was a direct subsidy of the media, and it resulted in an explosion in the number of newspapers in the country.

    Still, that subsidy benefited all newspapers regardless of their content or ownership. For decades, Congress has paid billions to the CPB and Voice of America. There is a valid debate over whether Voice of America is an outmoded Cold War-era federal program, but at least VOA is an actual federal program that explicitly carries programming for the government.

    CPB and NPR are different. In a competitive media market, the government has elected to subsidize a selective media outlet. Moreover, this is not the media organization that many citizens would choose. While tacking aggressively to the left and openly supporting narratives (including some false stories) from Democratic sources, NPR and its allies still expect citizens to subsidize its work. That includes roughly half of the country with viewpoints now effectively banished from its airwaves

    NPR is precisely the type of press outlet that the framers sought to protect through the First Amendment. It is also the very sort of thing that should not be funded as part of a de facto state media.

    While local PBS stations are supported “by listeners like you,” NPR itself continues to maintain that “federal funding is essential” to its work. If NPR is truly relying on federal funds for only 1 percent of its budget, why not make a clean break from the public dole? NPR would then have to compete with every other radio and media outlet on equal terms. And it would likely do well in such a competition, given its loyal base and excellent programming.

    However, the funding of NPR has always imposed a different cost in terms of constitutional values as a media organization funded in part by taxpayers, including many who view the outlet as extremely biased. Such bias would not make NPR a standout among other news organizations. However, NPR is not like the others. While NPR prides itself on annual pledge drives, conservative taxpayers are not given a choice of whether to fund it. Congress effectively forces them to pledge every year, and they do not even get a tote bag in return.

    This debate over the state-funding of NPR has developed an added concern recently due to changes in the media. There is a shift in recent years toward advocacy journalism as leading figures denounce the very concept of “objectivity” in the media.

    Kathleen Carroll, former executive editor at the Associated Press, declared “It’s objective by whose standard? …That standard seems to be white, educated, and fairly wealthy.”

    Ironically, that happens to be the main demographic of the NPR audience. According to surveys, that also includes a largely liberal audience that’s less racially diverse than…wait for it…Fox News.

    NPR has been on the forefront of the advocacy journalism debate. Indeed, it has at times seemed to move toward dispensing with the journalism part altogether. NPR announced that reporters could participate in activities that advocate for “freedom and dignity of human beings” on social media and in real life. Reporters just need approval over what are deemed freedom or dignity enhancing causes. Presumably, that does not include pro-life or gun rights rallies.

    While NPR is not alone in moving toward an advocacy model, it certainly makes the state-funding of NPR more and more problematic. Criticism of the obvious bias has not deterred NPR, which has doubled down on its exclusion of conservative voices. Berliner noted that NPR’s Washington headquarters has 87 registered Democrats among its editors and zero Republicans.

    That includes its Chief Executive Officer Katherine Maher. After years of criticism over NPR’s political bias, the search for a new CEO was viewed as an opportunity to select someone without such partisan baggage. Instead, it selected Maher, who has been criticized for controversial postings on subjects ranging from looters to Trump. Those now-deleted postings included a 2018 declaration that “Donald Trump is a racist” and a variety of political commentary.

    Maher lashed out at Berliner, calling his criticism and call for greater diversity in the newsroom “profoundly disrespectful, hurtful, and demeaning.”

    That one-sided division of the editors is increasingly reflected in its audience. Berliner noted that in 2011, 26 percent of the audience was still conservative. Now that is down to just 11 percent. At some point, that percentage is likely to reflect mere momentary dial confusion as NPR chases away its last conservative listeners. In the meantime, its audience is now approaching an estimated 70 percent liberal listeners, but it still expects 100 percent of taxpayers to fund its programming and bias.

    The market tends to favor those products and programming that the public wants. If the demand for NPR is insufficient to support its budget, then Congress should not make up the shortfall and prop up the programming. If it is sufficient, then there is no need for the subsidy.

    This debate should not turn on whether you agree with the slant of NPR programming. NPR clearly wants to maintain a liberal advocacy in its programming, and it has every right to do so. It does not have a right to federal funding.

  8. #7
    From NPR President and CEO Katherine Maher: Thoughts on our mission and our work
    The message below was sent by NPR's President and CEO to all staff.
    https://www.npr.org/sections/npr-ext...n-and-our-work
    {Katherine Maher | 12 April 2024}

    Dear all,

    This has been a long week. I'll apologize in advance for the length of this note, and for it being the first way so many of you hear from me on more substantive issues. Thanks for bearing with me, as there's a lot that should be said.

    I joined this organization because public media is essential for an informed public. At its best, our work can help shape and illuminate the very sense of what it means to have a shared public identity as fellow Americans in this sprawling and enduringly complex nation.

    NPR's service to this aspirational mission was called in question this week, in two distinct ways. The first was a critique of the quality of our editorial process and the integrity of our journalists. The second was a criticism of our people on the basis of who we are.

    Asking a question about whether we're living up to our mission should always be fair game: after all, journalism is nothing if not hard questions. Questioning whether our people are serving our mission with integrity, based on little more than the recognition of their identity, is profoundly disrespectful, hurtful, and demeaning.

    It is deeply simplistic to assert that the diversity of America can be reduced to any particular set of beliefs, and faulty reasoning to infer that identity is determinative of one's thoughts or political leanings. Each of our colleagues are here because they are excellent, accomplished professionals with an intense commitment to our work: we are stronger because of the work we do together, and we owe each other our utmost respect. We fulfill our mission best when we look and sound like the country we serve.

    NPR has some of the finest reporters, editors, and producers in journalism. Our reporting and programming is not only consistently recognized and rewarded for its quality, depth, and nuance; but at its best, it makes a profound difference in people's lives. Parents, patients, veterans, students, and so many more have directly benefited from the impact of our journalism. People come to work here because they want to report, and report deeply, in service to an informed public, and to do work that makes a difference.

    This is the work of our people, and our people represent America, our irreducibly complex nation. Given the very real challenges of covering the myriad perspectives, motivations, and interests of a nation of more than 330 million very different people, we succeed through our diversity. This is a bedrock institutional commitment, hard-won, and hard-protected.

    We recognize that this work is a public trust, one established by Congress more than 50 years ago with the creation of the public broadcasting system. In order to hold that trust, we owe it our continued, rigorous accountability. When we are asked questions about who we serve and how that influences our editorial choices, we should be prepared to respond. It takes great strength to be comfortable with turning the eye of journalistic accountability inwards, but we are a news organization built on a foundation of robust editorial standards and practices, well-constructed to withstand the hardest of gazes.

    It is true that our audiences have unquestionably changed over the course of the past two decades. There is much to be proud of here: through difficult, focused work, we have earned new trust from younger, more diverse audiences, particularly in our digital experiences. These audiences constitute new generations of listeners, are more representative of America, and our changing patterns of listening, viewing, and reading.

    At the same time, we've seen some concerning changes: the diffusion of drivetime, an audience skewing further away in age from the general population, and significant changes in political affiliations have all been reflected in the changing composition of our broadcast radio audiences. Of course, some of these changes are representative of trends outside our control — but we owe it to our mission and public interest mandate to ask, what levers do we hold?

    A common quality of exceptional organizations is humility and the ability to learn. We owe it to our public interest mandate to ask ourselves: could we serve more people, from broader audiences across America? Years ago we began asking this question as part of our North Star work to earn the trust of new audiences. And more recently, this is why the organization has taken up the call of audience data, awareness, and research: so we can better understand who we are serving, and who we are not.

    Our initial research has shown that curiosity is the unifying throughline for people who enjoy NPR's journalism and programming. Curiosity to know more, to learn, to experience, to change. This is a compelling insight, as curiosity only further expands the universe of who we might serve. It's a cross-cutting trait, pretty universal to all people, and found in just about every demographic in every part of the nation.

    As an organization, we must invest in the resources that will allow us to be as curious as the audiences we serve, and expand our efforts to understand how to serve our nation better. We recently completed in-depth qualitative research with a wide range of listeners across the country, learning in detail what they think about NPR and how they view our journalism. Over the next two years we plan to conduct audience research across our entire portfolio of programming, in order to give ourselves the insight we need to extend the depth and breadth of our service to the American public.

    It is also essential that we listen closely to the insights and experiences of our colleagues at our 248 Member organizations. Their presence across America is foundational to our mission: serving and engaging audiences that are as diverse as our nation: urban and rural, liberal and conservative, rich and poor, often together in one community.

    We will begin by implementing an idea that has been proposed for some time: establishing quarterly NPR Network-wide editorial planning and review meetings, as a complement to our other channels for Member station engagement. These will serve as a venue for NPR newsroom leadership to hear directly from Member organization editorial leaders on how our journalism serves the needs of audiences in their communities, and a coordination mechanism for Network-wide editorial planning and newsgathering. We're starting right away: next week we plan to invite Members to join us for an initial scoping conversation.

    And in the spirit of learning from our own work, we will introduce regular opportunities to connect what our research is telling us about our audiences to the practical application of how we're serving them. As part of the ongoing unification of our Content division, Interim Chief Content Officer, Edith Chapin, will establish a broad-based, rotating group that will meet monthly to review our coverage across all platforms. Some professions call this a retro, a braintrust, a 'crit,' or tuning session — this is an opportunity to take a break from the relentless pressure of the clock in order to reflect on how we're meeting our mandate, what we're catching and what we're missing, and learn from our colleagues in a climate of respectful, open-minded discussion.

    The spirit of our founding newsroom and network was one of experimentation, creativity, and direct connection with our listeners across America. Our values are a direct outgrowth of this moment: the independence of a public trust, the responsibility to capture the voice and spirit of a nation, a willingness to push boundaries to tell the stories that matter. We're no strangers to change, continuously evolving as our network has grown, our programming has expanded, and our audiences have diversified — and as we look to a strategy that captures these values and opportunities, the future holds more change yet.

    Two final thoughts on our mission:

    I once heard missions like ours described as asymptotic — we can see our destination and we strive for it, but may never fully meet it. The value is in the continued effort: the challenge stretches on toward infinity and we follow, ever closer. Some people might find that exhausting. I suspect they don't work here. I suspect that you do because you find that challenge a means to constantly renew your work, and to reinfuse our mission with meaning as our audiences and world continues to change.

    The strongest, most effective, and enduring missions are those that are owned far beyond the walls of their institution. Our staff, our Member stations, our donors, our listeners and readers, our ardent fans, even our loyal opposition all have a part to play: each of us come to the work because we believe in it, even as we each may have different perspectives on how we succeed. Every person I have met so far in my three weeks here has shown me how they live our mission every day, in their work and in their contributions to the community.

    Continuing to uphold our excellence with confidence, having inclusive conversations that bridge perspectives, and learning more about the audiences we serve in order to continue to grow and thrive, adding more light to the illumination of who we are as a shared body public: I look forward to how we will do this work together.

    Warmly,

    Katherine

  9. #8
    https://twitter.com/JonathanTurley/s...52801812222168


    https://twitter.com/JonathanTurley/s...53061263434062


    “Profoundly Disrespectful, Hurtful, and Demeaning”: NPR CEO Strikes Out at Editor Who Exposed the Bias of Company
    https://jonathanturley.org/2024/04/1...as-of-company/
    {Jonathan Turley | 14 April 2024}

    This weekend, I wrote a column [see this post - OB] on the continuing controversy at NPR and the bias detailed in a recent bombshell essay by respected editor Uri Berliner [see this post - OB]. The company has long been criticized for its partisan coverage, including running debunked stories. Now NPR CEO Katherine Maher has responded and appeared to confirm that the publicly supported media company has no intention to bring greater balance to its coverage or editorial staff.

    Berliner detailed the complete exclusion of any Republicans among the editors of NPR’s Washington office and various examples of raw bias in favor of Democratic narratives and claims.

    Maher responded to none of these specific points in substance. Instead, she attacks Berliner as “profoundly disrespectful, hurtful, and demeaning” to his colleagues by calling out the company for its political bias.

    In a memo Friday [see this post - OB], Maher told the staff that Berliner attacked not only “the quality of our editorial process and the integrity of our journalists” but “our people on the basis of who we are.”

    In dismissing the criticism of bias, Maher adopted a spin common on law faculties where Republicans and conservatives have been largely purged. When confronted on the lack of ideological diversity, faculty often express disbelief that anyone would assume that they are biased simply because they continue to effectively bar republicans, libertarians, or conservatives.

    Many also insist that there are more important forms of diversity than ideological or political perspectives. The result is the faculties today largely stretch from the left to the far left in terms of diversity.

    Maher offered a similar spin while suggesting (falsely) that Berliner was somehow opposed to a diverse workplace:

    “It is deeply simplistic to assert that the diversity of America can be reduced to any particular set of beliefs, and faulty reasoning to infer that identity is determinative of one’s thoughts or political leanings. Each of our colleagues are here because they are excellent, accomplished professionals with an intense commitment to our work: we are stronger because of the work we do together, and we owe each other our utmost respect. We fulfill our mission best when we look and sound like the country we serve.”

    Maher’s response was hardly surprising. She was a controversial hire at NPR. Many had hoped that NPR would seek a CEO who could steer the company away from its partisan and activistic trend. The prospect could have brought moderates and conservatives back into NPR’s listening audience. Maher, however, was part of that trend.

    Shannon Thaler at the New York Post reassembled Maher’s deleted postings including a 2018 declaration that “Donald Trump is a racist” and a variety of race-based commentary. That included a statement that appeared to excuse looting.

    She is also quoted for saying that “white silence is complicity.” She has described her own “hysteric white woman voice.” She further stated: “I was taught to do it. I’ve done it. It’s a disturbing recognition. While I don’t recall ever using it to deliberately expose another person to immediate physical harm on my own cognizance, it’s not impossible. That is whiteness.”

    She further stated “I grew up feeling superior (hah, how white of me) because I was from New England and my part of the country didn’t have slaves, or so I’d been taught.”

    In her latest message, Maher refers to the unique (and controversial) status of being a state-supported media outlet. She noted “We recognize that this work is a public trust, one established by Congress more than 50 years ago with the creation of the public broadcasting system. In order to hold that trust, we owe it our continued, rigorous accountability.”

    Yet, she made it clear that both she and NPR will not change or alter the course of the company. Despite a falling audience (that is now composed of almost 70 percent self-identified liberals), Maher made clear that she sees no problem in its exclusion of Republicans as editors or its slanted coverage. Reducing the size and diversity of your audience can be a good thing for editors or reporters if you have the government supporting your budget. You can then play to your smaller audience without any push back on coverage or accuracy.

    As discussed in this weekend’s column [see this post - OB], the question is why the public should finance this one media outlet over any of its competitors. NPR’s take on the news is largely the same as MSNBC or CNN. That is within its editorial judgment and NPR has every right to slant coverage like many news outlets today from the left or the right. Personally, I wish it would have retained a modicum of balance because I have been a fan of some of its shows. Yet, the media market has changed with consumer demands in favor of more opinion in coverage.

    However, unlike those other outlets, NPR is being funded by tax dollars. While dismissing concerns over the exclusion of conservative or dissenting viewpoints, Maher suggests that NPR is still fulfilling its “public trust” with its largely one-sided reporting.

    In the end, the real question is not the bias of NPR but the fundamental question of why we should be subsidizing any media outlet. NPR has long held a curious position as America’s de facto state media outlet (with Voice of America). The recent controversy should allow us to have a meaningful debate over the need and danger of a state-funded media.



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  11. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by Occam's Banana View Post
    A quote-tweeted reply to the tweet quoted above:

    https://twitter.com/wesyang/status/1779555690492608805
    to: https://twitter.com/wesyang/status/1779679867795042410
    {Wesley Yang @wesyang | 14 April 2024}

    It's only very recently that it became high status for women who look like this to indulge in signaling like this. Such scathing contempt for high-end retail consumption! Such heartfelt concern for the expressive rights of the marginalized! It's how you get to be CEO of NPR.

    [images hidden to save space]
     




    It's so easy to understand why the BLM grifters used the tens of millions in donations to buy vacations houses when you understand the milieu into which they had grifted -- surrounded by white socialites and scions of the country's great fortunes paying rhetorical obeisance to them.

    Of course they came to feel entitled to live in the same manner.

    What concern does Maher for the the grubby Persian and Chinese LA merchants whose shops were ransacked? She buys luxury goods that don't have brand names.

    Of course she supports all the things and is doing the work to be better

    [image hidden to save space]
     

    On the James Bennett firing

    The Bennett thing means that the Dexter Rule applies to her

    I didn't know this when I posted the first tweet, but you can't look like she looks without something of this order being true. You can become a movie star and have a stylist and you won't replicate it-- you can only absorb it by osmosis from infancy.

  12. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by acptulsa View Post
    I finally stopped completely because I can't stand the climate change propaganda they inject into everything, even travel videos.

    I gave up on NPR long ago, but am about to abandon classical music radio because they have gone over to 75% lame Ukrainian composers. Though the warm and absolutely loving way Fred Child flutes the word "pandemic", as if it was the greatest thing to ever happen, is amusing.

    Neither network will ever undo the damage.

    They're completely expending the reputations of all the legacy media. It's like spending the trust fund. If the investment works, we're their slaves. If it doesn't, we start from scratch, because these devils have compromised nearly everything.
    Maine had a three station classical music network WBQQ or W-Bach. I knew the program director and CEO, Scott Hooper, a little bit, we were both volunteer streetcar conductors at the Seacoast Trolley Museum in Kennebunkport.

    He had an ear for programming the very best classical playlists I have ever heard.

    This was a wholly privately run radio network, with no government funding at all.

    About ten years ago NPR started a competing network in Maine, that blew WBQQ out of the water financially, as the listener base of classical music is tiny.

    At first their playlist was listenable, now it is mostly modern rubbish and atonal garbage.
    “It is not true that all creeds and cultures are equally assimilable in a First World nation born of England, Christianity, and Western civilization. Race, faith, ethnicity and history leave genetic fingerprints no ‘proposition nation’ can erase." -- Pat Buchanan

    If America is only an idea, then there is no need for masses of immigrants to come here since they can just create the idea in their own countries. - Random Thought from the Interwebs.

  13. #11
    Seems to me The Chosen Ones are having a hard time controlling this golem of their own creation.

    Maybe engaging in a little self reflection on an atmosphere they created, by taking over newsrooms and institutions throughout the West, where now Islamic invaders and weak, white Marxists, march side by side chanting Death to America, Death to Israel and Death to Jews, might be in order.
    Last edited by Anti Federalist; 04-15-2024 at 09:27 PM.
    “It is not true that all creeds and cultures are equally assimilable in a First World nation born of England, Christianity, and Western civilization. Race, faith, ethnicity and history leave genetic fingerprints no ‘proposition nation’ can erase." -- Pat Buchanan

    If America is only an idea, then there is no need for masses of immigrants to come here since they can just create the idea in their own countries. - Random Thought from the Interwebs.

  14. #12
    “It is not true that all creeds and cultures are equally assimilable in a First World nation born of England, Christianity, and Western civilization. Race, faith, ethnicity and history leave genetic fingerprints no ‘proposition nation’ can erase." -- Pat Buchanan

    If America is only an idea, then there is no need for masses of immigrants to come here since they can just create the idea in their own countries. - Random Thought from the Interwebs.

  15. #13
    Good points made in this discussion
    . I really like Tiabbi and Kirn...

    https://www.racket.news/p/america-th...m_medium=email

  16. #14
    they FKED Ron over every chance they got
    FLIP THOSE FLAGS, THE NATION IS IN DISTRESS!


    why I should worship the state (who apparently is the only party that can possess guns without question).
    The state's only purpose is to kill and control. Why do you worship it? - Sola_Fide

    Baptiste said.
    At which point will Americans realize that creating an unaccountable institution that is able to pass its liability on to tax-payers is immoral and attracts sociopaths?

  17. #15
    "And now that the legislators and do-gooders have so futilely inflicted so many systems upon society, may they finally end where they should have begun: May they reject all systems, and try liberty; for liberty is an acknowledgment of faith in God and His works." - Bastiat

    "It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere." - Voltaire

  18. #16
    Quote Originally Posted by CaptUSA View Post
    When the next post it falls off, it will reveal a hammer and sickle.
    “It is not true that all creeds and cultures are equally assimilable in a First World nation born of England, Christianity, and Western civilization. Race, faith, ethnicity and history leave genetic fingerprints no ‘proposition nation’ can erase." -- Pat Buchanan

    If America is only an idea, then there is no need for masses of immigrants to come here since they can just create the idea in their own countries. - Random Thought from the Interwebs.



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  20. #17
    Of all the lies NPR and other leftists peddled, this is the one I find the most shocking.

    Politics also intruded into NPR’s Covid coverage, most notably in reporting on the origin of the pandemic. One of the most dismal aspects of Covid journalism is how quickly it defaulted to ideological story lines. For example, there was Team Natural Origin—supporting the hypothesis that the virus came from a wild animal market in Wuhan, China. And on the other side, Team Lab Leak, leaning into the idea that the virus escaped from a Wuhan lab.

    The lab leak theory came in for rough treatment almost immediately, dismissed as racist or a right-wing conspiracy theory. Anthony Fauci and former NIH head Francis Collins, representing the public health establishment, were its most notable critics. And that was enough for NPR. We became fervent members of Team Natural Origin, even declaring that the lab leak had been debunked by scientists.

    But that wasn’t the case.

    When word first broke of a mysterious virus in Wuhan, a number of leading virologists immediately suspected it could have leaked from a lab there conducting experiments on bat coronaviruses. This was in January 2020, during calmer moments before a global pandemic had been declared, and before fear spread and politics intruded.

    Reporting on a possible lab leak soon became radioactive. Fauci and Collins apparently encouraged the March publication of an influential scientific paper known as “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2.” Its authors wrote they didn’t believe “any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible.”

    But the lab leak hypothesis wouldn’t die. And understandably so. In private, even some of the scientists who penned the article dismissing it sounded a different tune. One of the authors, Andrew Rambaut, an evolutionary biologist from Edinburgh University, wrote to his colleagues, “I literally swivel day by day thinking it is a lab escape or natural.”

    Over the course of the pandemic, a number of investigative journalists made compelling, if not conclusive, cases for the lab leak. But at NPR, we weren’t about to swivel or even tiptoe away from the insistence with which we backed the natural origin story. We didn’t budge when the Energy Department—the federal agency with the most expertise about laboratories and biological research—concluded, albeit with low confidence, that a lab leak was the most likely explanation for the emergence of the virus.

    Instead, we introduced our coverage of that development on February 28, 2023, by asserting confidently that “the scientific evidence overwhelmingly points to a natural origin for the virus.”

    When a colleague on our science desk was asked why they were so dismissive of the lab leak theory, the response was odd. The colleague compared it to the Bush administration’s unfounded argument that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, apparently meaning we won’t get fooled again. But these two events were not even remotely related. Again, politics were blotting out the curiosity and independence that ought to have been driving our work.

    How is it more racist to think that COVID was caused by a lab leak from handful of Chinese scientists doing research in collusion with Dr. Fauci than it is to believe that COVID came from Chinese eating the same strange stuff they've been eating for thousands of years? That NEVER made sense to me.
    9/11 Thermate experiments

    Winston Churchhill on why the U.S. should have stayed OUT of World War I

    "I am so %^&*^ sick of this cult of Ron Paul. The Paulites. What is with these %^&*^ people? Why are there so many of them?" YouTube rant by "TheAmazingAtheist"

    "We as a country have lost faith and confidence in freedom." -- Ron Paul

    "It can be a challenge to follow the pronouncements of President Trump, as he often seems to change his position on any number of items from week to week, or from day to day, or even from minute to minute." -- Ron Paul
    Quote Originally Posted by Brian4Liberty View Post
    The road to hell is paved with good intentions. No need to make it a superhighway.
    Quote Originally Posted by osan View Post
    The only way I see Trump as likely to affect any real change would be through martial law, and that has zero chances of success without strong buy-in by the JCS at the very minimum.

  21. #18
    Quote Originally Posted by jmdrake View Post
    That NEVER made sense to me.
    It's not supposed to make sense my brother.

    Check this out:

    The Shocking Truth of Wuhan
    Last edited by Anti Federalist; 04-15-2024 at 10:27 AM.
    “It is not true that all creeds and cultures are equally assimilable in a First World nation born of England, Christianity, and Western civilization. Race, faith, ethnicity and history leave genetic fingerprints no ‘proposition nation’ can erase." -- Pat Buchanan

    If America is only an idea, then there is no need for masses of immigrants to come here since they can just create the idea in their own countries. - Random Thought from the Interwebs.

  22. #19

  23. #20
    “It is not true that all creeds and cultures are equally assimilable in a First World nation born of England, Christianity, and Western civilization. Race, faith, ethnicity and history leave genetic fingerprints no ‘proposition nation’ can erase." -- Pat Buchanan

    If America is only an idea, then there is no need for masses of immigrants to come here since they can just create the idea in their own countries. - Random Thought from the Interwebs.

  24. #21
    NPR suspends veteran editor as it grapples with his public criticism
    This is being reported by several conservative outlets, but I had to include this link to the report by NPR itself. The suspension started last Friday, but they're finally getting around to 'splainin' it today

    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.

    Yet the public radio network is grappling in other ways with the fallout from Berliner's essay for the online news site The Free Press. It angered many of his colleagues, led NPR leaders to announce monthly internal reviews of the network's coverage, and gave fresh ammunition to conservative and partisan Republican critics of NPR, including former President Donald Trump.

    Conservative activist Christopher Rufo is among those now targeting NPR's new chief executive, Katherine Maher, for messages she posted to social media years before joining the network. Among others, those posts include a 2020 tweet that called Trump racist and another that appeared to minimize rioting during social justice protests that year. Maher took the job at NPR last month — her first at a news organization.

    In a statement Monday about the messages she had posted, Maher praised the integrity of NPR's journalists and underscored the independence of their reporting.

    "In America everyone is entitled to free speech as a private citizen," she said. "What matters is NPR's work and my commitment as its CEO: public service, editorial independence, and the mission to serve all of the American public. NPR is independent, beholden to no party, and without commercial interests."

    The network noted that "the CEO is not involved in editorial decisions."

    In an interview with me later on Monday, 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."

    He said that he tried repeatedly to make his concerns over NPR's coverage known to news leaders and to Maher's predecessor as chief executive before publishing his essay.

    Berliner has singled out coverage of several issues dominating the 2020s for criticism, including trans rights, the Israel-Hamas war and COVID. Berliner says he sees the same problems at other news organizations, but argues NPR, as a mission-driven institution, has a greater obligation to fairness.

    "I love NPR and feel it's a national trust," Berliner says. "We have great journalists here. If they shed their opinions and did the great journalism they're capable of, this would be a much more interesting and fulfilling organization for our listeners."
    My choice of third person pronouns for myself is generally irrelevant. I'm not typically involved in the conversations that use them. It's other people referring to me in the third person, usually from a distance. I'm not a conversational partner in those exchanges. Those people could be referring to me as "That A$$hole" or "That Motherfukker" for all I know.

  25. #22
    "In America everyone is entitled to free speech as a private citizen,"
    Unless you suggest that one of the premier government media organs is somehow being dishonest.

    Then you get sent home.
    “It is not true that all creeds and cultures are equally assimilable in a First World nation born of England, Christianity, and Western civilization. Race, faith, ethnicity and history leave genetic fingerprints no ‘proposition nation’ can erase." -- Pat Buchanan

    If America is only an idea, then there is no need for masses of immigrants to come here since they can just create the idea in their own countries. - Random Thought from the Interwebs.

  26. #23
    Quote Originally Posted by Anti Federalist View Post
    Unless you suggest that one of the premier government media organs is somehow being dishonest.

    Then you get sent home.
    It's not a violation of the First if a "corporation" does it. Even if the first two words in the name are "National" and "Public" because tax dollars built the thing.

  27. #24
    Quote Originally Posted by acptulsa View Post
    It's not a violation of the First if a "corporation" does it. Even if the first two words in the name are "National" and "Public" because tax dollars built the thing.
    Then the CEO should not have said that employees of NPR have free speech rights.

    I've been in this long enough to be perfectly aware that free speech right do not apply to your employer or employment.

    But I didn't say that, Maher did.

    I'm just calling out her hypocrisy.
    “It is not true that all creeds and cultures are equally assimilable in a First World nation born of England, Christianity, and Western civilization. Race, faith, ethnicity and history leave genetic fingerprints no ‘proposition nation’ can erase." -- Pat Buchanan

    If America is only an idea, then there is no need for masses of immigrants to come here since they can just create the idea in their own countries. - Random Thought from the Interwebs.



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  29. #25
    Quote Originally Posted by Anti Federalist View Post

    I'm just calling out her hypocrisy.
    Pack a lunch. It's going to take a while.

  30. #26
    “It is not true that all creeds and cultures are equally assimilable in a First World nation born of England, Christianity, and Western civilization. Race, faith, ethnicity and history leave genetic fingerprints no ‘proposition nation’ can erase." -- Pat Buchanan

    If America is only an idea, then there is no need for masses of immigrants to come here since they can just create the idea in their own countries. - Random Thought from the Interwebs.

  31. #27
    So I'm two margaritas to the wind.

    Pop Quiz (Self Introspection)

    Uri Berliner is a senior business editor and reporter at NPR. His work has been recognized with a Peabody Award, a Loeb Award, an Edward R. Murrow Award, and a Society of Professional Journalists New America Award, among others.

    Given that; when was the last time, outside of this thread, that "Uri Berliner," or his prestigious work, was mentioned on this site? What does he normally write about? What are his positions? Is he anyone that we would be talking about if it were not for his recent essay in The Free Press?

    Outside of the most recent hub-bub, his wiki page only mentions:
    Berliner was born in 1956 as the only child of lesbian rights activist Eva Kollisch and photographer and artist Gert Berliner, who married in 1948 and divorced in 1959.[1] Gert's parents were captured by the Gestapo, sent to Auschwitz concentration camp, and executed in 1943. Uri graduated from Sarah Lawrence College.
    Who is this guy?
    My choice of third person pronouns for myself is generally irrelevant. I'm not typically involved in the conversations that use them. It's other people referring to me in the third person, usually from a distance. I'm not a conversational partner in those exchanges. Those people could be referring to me as "That A$$hole" or "That Motherfukker" for all I know.

  32. #28
    Quote Originally Posted by Voluntarist View Post
    Who is this guy?
    Just a standard-issue, garden-variety left-liberal who's "old school" enough to recognize, object to, and complain about what progressivism has become. His remarks are of interest primarily insofar as they come from "the horse's mouth".

  33. #29
    Quote Originally Posted by Occam's Banana View Post
    Just a standard-issue, garden-variety left-liberal who's "old school" enough to recognize, object to, and complain about what progressivism has become. His remarks are of interest primarily insofar as they come from "the horse's mouth".
    Exactly. An anachronistic relic from a time when American liberal orthodoxy did not require so very many hypocrisies and denials of reality as modern woke theology demands.

  34. #30
    Berliner has resigned.

    https://twitter.com/uberliner/status...10524411048183

    “It is not true that all creeds and cultures are equally assimilable in a First World nation born of England, Christianity, and Western civilization. Race, faith, ethnicity and history leave genetic fingerprints no ‘proposition nation’ can erase." -- Pat Buchanan

    If America is only an idea, then there is no need for masses of immigrants to come here since they can just create the idea in their own countries. - Random Thought from the Interwebs.

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