badgolferman
2024-04-09 15:30:27 UTC
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-how-npr-lost-americas-trust
-----------------
[Excerpts]
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.
An open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR, and now,
predictably, we don’t have an audience that reflects America.
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.
But when the Mueller report found no credible evidence of collusion,
NPR’s coverage was notably sparse. Russiagate quietly faded from our
programming.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
network lost its way when it started telling listeners how to think.
https://www.thefp.com/p/npr-editor-how-npr-lost-americas-trust
-----------------
[Excerpts]
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.
An open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR, and now,
predictably, we don’t have an audience that reflects America.
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.
But when the Mueller report found no credible evidence of collusion,
NPR’s coverage was notably sparse. Russiagate quietly faded from our
programming.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.