NPR’s Brilliant Self-Own – By Matt Taibbi

taibbi.substack.com

9 points·leephillips··4 comments

This is piece is a media company (TK News by Matt Taibii) whining about NPR whining about some conservative news show called 'The Daily Wire'. It then lists a number of articles / stories to show that NPR has an agenda and shouldn't whine about other outlets not presenting both sides of the issues.

TK News, by the way, does not present both sides of any issue here either. I guess it is turtles all the way down, man.

If you think there is an issue here with another side that is worthy of consideration, why not present that other side? Explain how NPR is not a tedious, humorless, trend-following sack of buzzword-dependent fake journalism. Taibbi had a point of view, and laid it out. I don’t see that as a problem. It’s presented as opinion. Of course it’s exaggerated for effect—that’s just good rhetoric. I haven’t heard their broadcast in two years, but I’m sure there must have been at least one non-moronic story mixed in with the typical NPR pablum. I remember hearing some excellent stuff, in past years. I hope it’s not all gone.

EDIT: What I see as his larger point is more interesting than the NPR stuff: how their being lapped by non-traditional media is some kind of unfathomable mystery to the folks at the Times and NPR, but dead obvious to anyone outside their journalism school bubble.

I think you're on to the real point: they have a brand and a platform to protect. Substack and TDW are threats to those platforms, the existing players cannot understand why, and are using their only real tool (near-slander, instead of providing a better more honest product) to execute.

I agree. Instead of, “how can we do better,” it’s “how can we discredit our new competition.” It’s a course doomed to fail.

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