Hacker News Reader

Comment by Auracle | Hacker News Reader

There’s an easy litmus test for news organizations - words. Do they use Latino or Latinx, for example? Illegal alien vs. undocumented immigrant vs refugee. Sex vs gender assigned at birth (usually when talking about a trans person).

NPR used to be fairly centrist, but these days they’re far to the left. If I turn on my car there’s about a 9/10 chance my local station will be talking about some form of identity politics.

That’s all the radio, though. I believe they at least try to approach the center in their online articles.

View on HN

"undocumented immigrant" isn't necessarily the same as "refugee", likewise sex vs assigned gender. if you're going to critique word choice you should know what those words mean

I know what the words mean, but "refugee" usually means "someone who shouldn't qualify as a refugee but is going to try to use it/lie to get in to an economically favorable country" nowadays, but that's a bit of a mouthful.

When you tune into public radio you're most likely not listening to NPR. Public radio stations draw their programming from many sources, including in many cases shows produced by the station. NPR does distribute more content to public radio stations than do APM, PRI/PRX, or WNYC, but their programs don't comprise a majority of public radio content.

Unfortunately your litmus test especially doesn't work that well for NPR, at least in one example. They distribute (but do not produce - partly because it wouldn't meet their editorial guidelines) a show about issues facing Latin Americans in the United States called Latino USA. Yet nobody who listens to it would deny the show takes quite a strong progressive stance on political issues.

I'd also add that NPR's most popular shows, the newscasts Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and Weekend Edition, are all remarkably boring politically and take a sort of weaker sauce version of the BBC's neutral and somewhat hostile approach to interviewing, regardless of political bent.

The hosts of All Things Considered regularly use latinx, but at least the last time I heard them use a Hispanic reporter they used the word latino. I don't know if that was a change in policy or if the reporter doesn't like the word themselves.

All Things Considered may be "boring" politically, but they are far from neutral - I don't listen to the other two very often. Easy example - for weeks, if not months, they called what was going on at the border "Trumps Family (sometimes Child) Separation Policy," even though anyone informed knew the very first day that it was not his policy. It wasn't until the story finally started to die down did they used the (at least somewhat) correct phrase "The increase in family separations due to Trump's zero tolerance policy."

Reply on news.ycombinator.com