I’ve Been at NPR for 25 Years. Here’s How We Lost America’s Trust.

Whatever this is, it is not objective journalism.

"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."

EDIT: NPR is presenting to us information, masquerading as objective journalism, that is not. There is a certain amount of groupthink that maintains this functional fascade.

I feel this is a refreshingly accurate take on NPR. I appreciate that a senior editor and reporter at NPR published this self-reflective portrait of his employer. It's good to consider all things/viewpoints as a journalist. Otherwise you end up in an echo-chamber (à la Reddit and to a certain degree, HN). I don't necessarily agree with a lot of conservative/Republican policies and viewpoints, but I think it's good to hear about them and to also challenge liberal/Democratic policies. No one party or side has it completely right and I want as fair and unbiased a news source as possible.

>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?”

This is me. I'm a political conservative who has listened to NPR for most of my life. Just like the New York Times—which I've read for most of my life—I knew where it was coming from, and enjoyed the content accordingly. But, as Berliner wrote, something changed:

>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.

I challenge anyone nowadays to listen to Morning Edition or All Things Considered for more than 30 minutes and not find a story about only "supposed racism, transphobia", let alone the other categories. Then start reducing the window to 15 minutes, then 5 minutes.

It's interesting that the current CEO of NPR came from Voice of America. VOA is literally a US propaganda outlet. I've been talking about them since 2013, when the Smith-Mundt Act was amended to allow them to disseminate their programming within the US.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_of_America#Smith%E2%80%9...

>From 1948 until its amendment in 2013, Voice of America was forbidden to broadcast directly to American citizens, pursuant to § 501 of the Smith–Mundt Act.[94] The intent of the 1948 legislation was to protect the American public from propaganda by its own government and to avoid any competition with private American companies.[95] The act was amended via the passage of the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act provision of the National Defense Authorization Act for 2013.[96] The amendment was intended to adapt the law to the Internet and to allow American citizens access to VOA content.[97]

According to a post _about_ NPR's 2022 listener report [0] (the report itself is paywalled, AFAICT), 32% identify Republican, 24% Democrat, and 24% Independent, so this opinion piece doesn't match up with the listenership. Or the listeners who do not define themselves as left-leaning do not appear to impart great importance that NPR is doing so, if they are.

Pew Research also did a study [1] which put the R/D split at 38%/57% respectively. Take a look at the education disparity between NPR and Fox News listeners...

The other thing to balance this on is that life is in and of itself progressive. The world around us is progressive. There is no stopping progress. Given conservation is always fighting a battle that simply cannot be won, it makes sense that media would reflect reality.

[0] https://blog.marketenginuity.com/by-the-numbers-who-is-actua...

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/04/01/americans...

Actual title:

I’ve Been at NPR for 25 Years. Here’s How We Lost America’s Trust.

I used to listen to NPR to clean my palette so to speak. Now it is just MSM audio. And it does the opposite its just an extension of the MSM/ state sponsored media blob. are the 42 questions on juror questionnaire important than covering the unbridled Meth flows from China to Mexico and to US ? Who in US is making the money ?

https://www.npr.org/2024/04/09/1243711228/jury-questionnaire...

https://www.npr.org/2024/04/08/1243498311/truth-social-share...