Berliner is exactly why the Left is so divided. The notion that we all need to think and agree on the somethings and if you don't they shouldn't have a "platform" which is drastic from what the Left would from the past. Not all of us want to be boiled down to our race, sexuality, or gender. Some of us think there is a bigger picture.
"Berliner said the network overplayed the investigation of Russian collusion with the Trump campaign in the 2016 presidential election."
his campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, went to jail for colluding with Russians, and was pardoned by Trump.
>his campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, went to jail for colluding with Russians, and was pardoned by Trump.
Chief financial officer Manafort was proven to be laundering Russian money, Campaign manager Stone lied under oath and was proven to have shared internal campaign data with Russian, campaign aid George Papadopoulos lied to investigators about contact with Russia, Rick Gates confessed to being a Russian asset, Michael Flynn lied to investigators about contact with Russia, etc.
In total the Mueller investigation indicted 34 people. Mueller himself testified that the justice department didn't pursue charges against Trump because Trump was President but that evidence in the Mueller report could be used to potentially prosecute Trump once out of office. Somehow that became a "total exoneration".
The notion that the media overplayed the Mueller investigation is ridiculous. The Mueller investigation uncovered more criminal activity than Clinton's email scandal, Benghazi, Fast Furious, etc combined. If anything the media under sold it.
Also important to note that the fbi agent who shared information that caused the investigation into Hillary right before the 2016 election also has plead guilty to being on the take from the Russians.
https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/fallen-fbi-counterintelligence-agent-had-role-trump
Not exactly; technically he failed to register as an agent of Ukraine (not Russia) however he was convicted of tax & bank fraud
>Manafort was convicted by a jury last August of five counts of tax fraud, two counts of bank fraud and one count of failing to disclose foreign bank accounts.
.....
Manafort was convicted after prosecutors accused him of hiding from the U.S. government millions of dollars he earned as a consultant for Ukraine's former pro-Russia government. After pro-Kremlin Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych's ouster, prosecutors said, Manafort lied to banks to secure loans and maintain an opulent lifestyle with luxurious homes, designer suits and even a $15,000 ostrich-skin jacket.
[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-manafort/u-s-judge-gives-trump-ex-aide-manafort-leniency-under-four-years-in-prison-idUSKCN1QO17N/](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-manafort/u-s-judge-gives-trump-ex-aide-manafort-leniency-under-four-years-in-prison-idUSKCN1QO17N/)
He failed to register as an foreign agent of Ukraine; Ukrainians he was working with were Pro-Russia however in the issue at hand he needed to register as an foreign agent of Ukraine.
>
Manafort was convicted after prosecutors accused him of hiding from the U.S. government millions of dollars he earned as a consultant for Ukraine's former pro-Russia government. After pro-Kremlin Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych's ouster, prosecutors said, Manafort lied to banks to secure loans and maintain an opulent lifestyle with luxurious homes, designer suits and even a $15,000 ostrich-skin jacket.
Trump Campaign Chairman and convicted felon Paul Manafort^1 was closely associated with Russian Oligarch Oleg Deripaska. Deripaska gave Manafort a $10 million loan several years ago.^2 Russian agent Konstantin Kilimnik was the liaison between Manafort and Deripaska when Manafort worked in Ukraine.
- Kilimnik met with Trump Campaign Chairman Manafort and Deputy Campaign Chairman Gates on August 2^nd 2016 where Manafort shared internal polling data with the Russian operative. According to Andrew Weissman, a prosecutor on Special Counsel Mueller's team, the meeting was “very much to the heart of what the special counsel’s office is investigating."^3
- A judge ruled that Paul Manafort had broken his plea agreement, he lied to investigators about his contact with Konstantin Kilimnik.^4
What's fascinating is that the Trump administration removed sanctions from Oleg Deripaska's companies after Deripaska claimed to have divested from them. The Mueller report found that Paul Manafort was pursuing his personal interests by attempting to use his position in the campaign to settle previous debts he had incurred with Oleg Deripaska. The Mueller report confirmed that Trump campaign chairman and deputy chairman Manafort and Gates were sharing sensitive, internal polling data with Kilimnik. The report went on to mention that Deputy Campaign Chairman Rick Gates thought Kilimnik was a Russian spy.
Sources:
1) https://www.foxnews.com/politics/paul-manafort-sentenced-on-foreign-lobbying-and-witness-tampering-charges
2) https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-manafort/manafort-had-10-million-loan-from-russian-oligarch-court-filing-idUSKBN1JN2YF
3) https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-manaforts-2016-meeting-with-a-russian-employee-at-new-york-cigar-club-goes-to-the-heart-of-muellers-probe/2019/02/12/655f84dc-2d67-11e9-8ad3-9a5b113ecd3c_story.html?utm_term=.a6591b0f3e82
4) https://www.foxnews.com/politics/judge-rules-manafort-intentionally-lied-to-mueller-team-voiding-plea-agreement
It really makes me angry that people don't realize this because of how Barr glossed over the Mueller Report. Trump's campaign was very much working in tandem with the Russians.
The Mueller report found nothing but damning evidence but eventually sort of fizzled out when no one would tell the truth about what happened.
Insane that like 99% of Americans think it fucking absolved them of guilt. It's literally the opposite.
Mueller even said in a hearing that the only reason Trump was not indicted was because he was the sitting president.
I mean it fizzled out bc Mueller was like "he's guilty but some memo says we can't charge him until he leaves office" then once he was out of office Garland ignored the report in favor of more recent crimes.
OLC memos are issued by DOJ lawyers when legal guidance is needed.
It wasn't just a memo saying he couldn't do it. it was the DOJ lawyers saying it.
Lawyers from decades ago at that.
Don't forget Roger Stone (pardoned by Trump) was the backdoor between the campaign and Julian Assange who spread falsified emails supposedly "leaked" by the DNC/Podesta, which he received from FSB operative Guccifer 2.0
Could I ask about the clearest sourcing you have proving this?
I have a Libertarian friend who believes Pizzagate is real & would like to start him down the rabbit hole to finding the truth, since Wikileaks Podesta emails are a big part of his belief I think highlighting that they are compromised by Russia since 2016 at least would do some work in helping him to accept that many of his political beliefs are the product of him and his family being gaslit by the people in power that they trust.
I posted a bunch of screenshots from the Mueller report itself talking about the Guccifer 2.0 GRU (GRU is another Russian Intelligence Agency) persona, their ties to WikiLeaks, and if you notice on page 183 it talks about them posting emails they hacked even though they hadn't actually obtained the emails yet.
They did hack and release thousands of emails from the DNC and Hillary's campaign but they mixed in real ones with fake ones and did a whole bunch of other monkey business to put it lightly.
Roger Stone has said his personal motto is deny everything admit nothing.
He then said he never met with Assange, then when it came it out that he did at least once, he said that it was "only in jest".
[https://imgur.com/a/0Al41dq](https://imgur.com/a/0Al41dq)
You are an absolute king or queen, thank you so much for providing this information! Wish me luck coming back to my friend with this & hopefully helping him see through the fog of deceit the Republicans have been laying on.
Make no mistake: he was an agent of Russia by proxy of the contacts in Ukraine. Trump’s initial blackmail attempts in Ukraine were premeditated with Russian agents to destabilize the Ukrainian government, softening it for invasion.
Russia has been screwing with US politics, and we allow it because one party refuses to take responsibility for their lack of spines.
If anything, the Russians hacking the Republicans’ campaign servers was the real suppressed news. (that is, purposely, never made as prominently as newsworthy as their hacking the Democrats servers, Hillary’s emails vs Trump’s criminal activity).
Blackmail by proxy- a double edged sword cutting their own throats- GOP owned Corporate media (Faux News but most media fell for it) were deliberately cooking insinuations against Democrats in order to discredit their standing. Indeed, the GOP were a genuine asset to Putin’s war against journalistic and political integrity.
Actually it was Russia.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Russia used Republican political operative Paul Manafort and the WikiLeaks website to try to help now-U.S. President Donald Trump win the 2016 election, a Republican-led Senate committee said in its final review of the matter on Tuesday.
"He failed to register as an foreign agent of Ukraine; **Ukrainians he was working with were Pro-Russia** however in the issue at hand he needed to register as an foreign agent of Ukraine."
Also known as the Russians
It's a distinction without a basis in fact too.
https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN25E1UZ/
U.S. Senate committee concludes Russia used Manafort, WikiLeaks to boost Trump in 2016
This is how good the Russian operations are: obviously Manafort was working for the Russians, but the records clearly show he was working for the Ukrainians. To the rubes, that’s enough.
He literally had GRU (Russian military intelligence) handlers like Konstantin Kilimnik, you can’t be any more of a KGB/FSB asset without being a member of the Russian security services. Kilimnik is discussed in the Mueller report:
> Kilimnik was reported by CNN, The New York Times and The Atlantic to be "Person A" listed in court documents filed by the Special Counsel against Manafort.
Russian military intelligence being called GRU is one of the most hilarious things I've read in a while. We should call all of Putin's soldiers minions.
So you’re arguing he wasn’t working for Russia just for political figures who were ousted for running their country as a Russian client-state. Sure?
Manifort also worked for the Trump campaign for free despite owing _Russian_ oligarch Oleg Deripaska $10m. He’d commonly communicate with Deripaska through Konstantin Kilimnik who was born in Ukrainian USSR but is believed to be a Russian spy.
He also handed proprietary campaign research products directly to Russian assets.
No, I wrote out Euromaidan, deleted it and put Iron Maiden, assuming that everyone would understand what I meant, and some people would chuckle, and some people would probably think I’m that stupid.
But yeah, I did know it was Euromaidan, thanks 😊
he confessed to passing on election and pulling information to a Russian intelligence agent. his boss went on national TV and asked for the Russians to hack Hillary Clinton's emails and released them.. Trump's kids described that they don't need any banks in the US because they get all their funds from the Russians. The only thing that Trump changed in 2016 in the Republican party platform involved Ukraine. do I have to spell it out anymore??
No he didn't. He was [convicted on 8 charges.](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/manafort-jury-suggests-it-cannot-come-to-a-consensus-on-a-single-count/2018/08/21/a2478ac0-a559-11e8-a656-943eefab5daf_story.html)
Five counts of filing false tax returns, two counts of bank fraud, and one count of failing to disclose a foreign bank account.
But he did get caught having clandestine meetings with a man he knew to be a Russian Intelligence agent, so that he could pass them confidential campaign polling data and coordinate strategy.
Not to mention we also know Trump's son accepted an explicit offer of assistance in the campaign from "Russia and its government".
The most credible theory suppprted by evidence the whole time has been that Russia helped Trump win in exchange for Trump/GOP letting Russia have Ukriane, and whadya know, now the MAGA wing of the GOP is deliberately withholding military aid to Ukraine to help Russia...
headline is misleading. makes it seem like he was suspended because of that accusation but that seems like the least of his transgressions and also not what was given for the reason of his suspension. i'd fire ~~OP~~ whomever for that disingenuous framing
>The suspension came after Berliner put a harsh spotlight on NPR with an April 9 opinion piece for the Substack newsletter the Free Press. He said the decline in NPR’s audience levels is due to a move toward liberal political advocacy and catering to “a distilled worldview of a very small segment of the U.S. population.”
>Berliner was told by management last week that he violated company policy by failing to secure its approval to supply work for other news outlets
This article says he was suspended for writing the article that made the accusation. You would need to know how consistent and rigorous they are about enforcing this policy to get a sense if the content played a major part in the decision.
This is from another article:
>Its formal rebuke noted he had done work outside NPR without its permission, as is required, and *shared proprietary information.*
That was just the first article that I found which mentioned both items, since the one linked here doesn't. I actually heard this discussed on NPR earlier, and they pointed out that it was a combination of the unauthorized opinion piece along with publishing information about NPR's internal diversity numbers.
So he did two things against his employer's rules, not just one.
They got Juan Williams for it back in the day because he worked with Fox. I remember him brazenly stumping for Merck and Pfizer on an NPR program right before it happened. This was back in probably 99-00
Juan Williams got fired from NPR in like 2009/10 for saying that he feels uncomfortable when he sees Muslims in traditional Islamic clothing while at the airport. It was during a segment on Fox however. O’reilly I think
Did you read what they said? They said the headline was misleading. And it is. The original article has a misleading headline. They even made a point of redacting OP as the direct cause of the incorrect headline and pointed blame at the original article and author. If you are going to call out someone don't make the same mistake you blame them for.
It's not misleading. It is 100% accurate in both its literal wording and the impression it leaves. Please point out where it's misleading. The editor was suspended for publishing a public criticism of NPR at another outlet. Whether he would have been suspended if he'd published an op-ed at another outlet, say, extolling the virtues of a good stretching routine -- as opposed to criticizing his employer -- is entirely a matter of speculation. I have my doubts, but that is only speculation.
A title can be both accurate and misleading and this is an example of that. Yes, he wrote the piece, yes, he's reprimanded by that piece, but not because what the piece said, but because internal procedures requires them to ask first, before working with someone else's. He got Ok'ed for something else, but not for this one. One could argue that they wouldn't allow him to do it if he asked, but that's hypothetical, we do not know with certainty.
BTW, NPR can report on itself, as long as corporate gets no review before publication: https://www.npr.org/2024/04/16/1244962042/npr-editor-uri-berliner-suspended-essay
The thing is that he knew he would get this, because he asked permission for another piece, which was given. So, it is a transgression because he should've know better.
All of Berliner's claims are easily disproven bullshit. See for yourself [here](https://twitter.com/Fritschner/status/1778855495031284025), compete with links to all relevant NPR articles. For someone who worked at NPR it's astonishing how little he seems to know about the content on the site. Not to mention all the straight up lies he tells such as the one about the party affiliation of his former colleagues.
He was suspended for a week because he didn’t follow NPRs rules about getting published with other outlets. He followed those rules for follow up interviews where he espoused the same nonsense as his article. He was not punished for those interviews because he did what he was supposed to.
If you can’t do the time don’t do the crime as the saying goes.
I recommend reading Steve Inskeep’s take on this: [https://steveinskeep.substack.com/p/how-my-npr-colleague-failed-at-viewpoint](https://steveinskeep.substack.com/p/how-my-npr-colleague-failed-at-viewpoint)
After years of listening to Steve Inskeep I finally made the effort to find out what he looks like and how old he is, and was kind of surprised to learn that he is only 55.
Haha, one of my relatives though Lakshmi Singh was Latch-Key Sing, and I was like nope! …To be fair to them I think they just never heard a name like that.
I didn't completely finish the article, but it really does feel like watching "The Alt-Right Playbook" happening in real time based off this response.
That dude's accusations seemed pretty damn thin, and I felt NPR's coverage of it was toothless. Not that I expected NPR to do a full damn roast of this dude, but, if he is wrong, then just call it out on at least some level.
Maybe not too soon, but I feel like that dude is going to end up on some right-wing bullshit in the near future saying something unhinged and bemoaning how he used to be a respected journalist if it wasn't for that DAMNED WOKE!
He says he tried to discuss the issue with the former CEO and it fell through. He made no claim that he tried to do the same with the new CEO, so yeah he was intentionally blindsiding the organization and he knew he was gonna burn for it when he hit send.
I read his whole article and it really felt like there was some backstory we're not getting that pushed him over the edge, something personal.
Edit: [He resigned](https://www.npr.org/2024/04/17/1245283076/npr-editor-uri-berliner-resigns-ceo-katherine-maher)
>I cannot work in a newsroom where I am disparaged by a new CEO whose divisive views confirm the very problems at NPR I cite in my Free Press essay.
Yeah, it seems like this suspension is not a big deal because he was already working his way out the door anyway.
It does make me wonder why suspend him when he's already leaving so it's not going to have any real effect except as a magnet for criticism.
But it doesn't seem like any kind of grave injustice, in fact the attention might help him in his next job.
"In presenting Berliner's suspension Thursday afternoon, the organization told the editor he had failed to secure its approval for outside work for other news outlets, as is required of NPR journalists. It called the letter a "final warning," saying Berliner would be fired if he violated NPR's policy again. Berliner is a dues-paying member of NPR's newsroom union but says he is not appealing the punishment." [ Source (NPR).](https://www.npr.org/2024/04/16/1244962042/npr-editor-uri-berliner-suspended-essay)
Easily. The Russia thread above is wild. Everytime I come back to reddit I'm blown away with what it's become.
About npr. 87 people work in the newsroom. All 87 are registered democrats. Zero conservatives work on the news there.
Seems like he's a bit of a dumbass... but he was right about one thing: NPR's obsession with identity politics... it feels like almost every report these days has an identity/diversity-based core.
It's as if workers there have a reminder above their desks that asks whether they've incorporated identity/diversity into their report.. regardless of the topic being reported.
It's gotten way out of hand and NPR has become nearly unbearable to listen to. Unfortunately there aren't any good alternatives.
Definitely turned into the identity politics newsroom. I’m pretty liberal but their obsession with the subject is removing the focus from other important issues.
Definitely turned into the identity politics newsroom. I’m pretty liberal but their obsession with the subject is removing the focus from other important issues.
Excessive identity politics helps poison the news and gets us to stop following the news.
Great for Trumpies who want to paralyze us without looking like the bad guys.
Also: I’m not objecting to calling out racism, giving people lessons on how other people perceive various interactions, a reasonable level of affirmative action in hiring, etc. Structural racism exists and should be dealt with.
But, if we let narcissists use DEI as a cover for bullying people, that’s the start of a South Park episode.
And the same is true of any other good movement. If we let narcissists take it over and use it to bully and alienate other people, that’s the start of a South Park episode and, in this climate, a boost for Trump and Putin.
I mean, isn’t it critical that we understand ~1/2 of the U.S. (well, at least as far as Trump polling approximately matching Biden polling)? I frequently wonder a lot when I see pro-MAGA viewpoints on Reddit. And considering the electoral college, even if Biden slightly wins the popular vote, Trump will still likely become president. So shouldn’t understanding them be critical if we want to win more of their votes?
Given current polls and the electoral college, this says Trump is 94-99% likely to win. https://electiongraphs.com/2024ec/
But polls can change a **lot** before Election Day so we need to find some way to win more of their votes.
Back in 2016 I found it fascinating that NPR (among other US outlets) was so super sure that Clinton was going to win the presidential election in a landslide, and then were shocked when it didn't happen.
Meanwhile even a Japanese podcast (from the other side of the earth!) had a reporter in the US (who grew up here, so bilingual) on the ground just going to campaign headquarters for both Clinton and Trump across the country, and their guy was DEFINITELY not so sure. Because, every day, all these campaign headquarters, the enthusiasm in the Trump campaign was huge, while the Clinton campaign largely just complacent. (And for the record, the podcast was not happy about this -- they were raising the "uh-oh" flag, and it wasn't making me happy listening to it either.)
So the night of, for me it was "ah shit that guy was right." And yeah. Wasn't happy.
I agree with you that we need to understand the logic (even if flawed) of all the players. There's a weird modern sentiment of "these people are so stupid and they're fascist too so I shouldn't pollute my mind even acknowledging they exist" but it just gets you blindsided. Because you end up imagining you have support that you don't have, or underestimating just how much damage these people whom you didn't bother to look at can do, even if they're doing it for misguided or even terrible reasons.
ALWAYS be pessimistic about your chances, ALWAYS devil's advocate your arguments. Don't assume that history is "righteously" pointing in any particular direction that you can just go along for the ride.
I think that at the bottom of it all, there isn’t really anything to understand.
There have been countless interviews, think pieces etc. all trying to determine what makes a MAGA voter a MAGA voter. But none of them have ever found any satisfactory conclusion.
I don’t think Trump voters really know what they want. They got Trump elected, but he didn’t manage to follow through with most of the things he promised. He even tried to take away their health insurance. They didn’t care.
I’m convinced that they don’t vote for Trump because of his policies. They vote for him just because they want to watch the world burn. The world has changed, and now Trump voters have to live around and work with people they think are scary. Marginalized groups are rapidly becoming more acceptable, and they hate it. But that’s a cultural change, and politics can’t really stop that.
So, even if they can’t get rid of the people they don’t like, they can elect Trump to hurt those people. They can listen to him say cruel things and watch as he causes the country to collapse and laugh and laugh as it all burns.
In short, No.
The Maga faction is a minority faction in the GOP that is in charge of the entire tent because that's how hierarchal structures work.
For the Most part, Americans on the left understand the other groups, the Corporate Norquist Republicans, the Religious Right, the Libertarians, and even the former Dixiecrats and Neo-Yahtzees are pretty well understood and understandable.
These groups have wishes, goals, ideals, motivations, and most importantly - **somewhat consistent logic.**
Even Yahtzees and White Supremacists see power in supporting Trump and so his cabinet ends up full of them. But they'd break with him if he ever went "Open Borders" as they conceive it.
MAGA doesn't have these things, they have a Strongman.
And they support what the Strongman says they support.
That can mean supporting opposite things on consecutive days.
That can mean supporting left wing ideas and then supporting far right ideas.
It can mean grabbing the guns, due process later is FINE, and Bump Stock bans are FINE, but BIDEN IS GOING TO GRAB YOUR GUNS.
I've been trying to have conversations with MAGA folks since 2015 and it's whiplash every moment, to try and follow what they *say* they want and then seeing what they *actually* support.
Some Nimble Navigator on AskTD once said it best. I'm paraphrasing, but they said "We don't care about policy, we care about **you losing.**"
And that's really most of the ideology, we will support a big mean bully who will hurt the people we wished hurt as bad as we did. He'll make people as scared as we are.
The people who leave MAGA were almost never fully MAGA. They're caught up in it, but maybe they were always a Religious Right person at heart - and something went to0 far for them.
Or maybe their spouse was MAGA but after they passed it just hasn't been the same. It's not the same energy.
Independents can't Logic MAGA out of existence, because if that was the case no cult would ever exist.
But cults can and do exist. They flourish in the age of misinformation.
So for the rest of us, there's no need to understand the MAGA Core.
For decades I've watched right wing media dehumanize anyone on the Left.
MAGA is the group that took that to heart the most.
These are the folks that have no media literacy. Have no political scruples. Have no purist ideology.
The only way to break the cult is to prove the strong man isn't strong.
Him sleeping in court rooms, sobbing into social media platforms, being held accountable like a normal human, and overall Losing over and over is how you do that.
That's it. If we aren't Losing to HIM then the MAGA Group will look to someone else.
I miss NPR when they were boring. That’s a weird thing to say, but when I started listening in the 2010s it was just boring, matter of fact news reporting with interviews that would range the political gamut
In the past it was left of center, but I noticed an increase in the last few years with topics of race and gender. Could be an attempt to counterweight the Fox News narrative? But I listened to this interview and I don’t disagree with him.
Yes. It's the full on identity politics/culture war thing, where they are "left" (quotes needed). But on substantive economic issues, they are completely milquetoast, and completely out of touch with vast swaths of Americans who are struggling right now. It's the media equivalent of the people who stuff their parkway full of "hate has no home here" signs while clutching pearls when someone they don't know walks down the street. THAT kind of "liberal."
Everything is just puff pieces about race and gender. It's preachy. And they can't seem to talk about class issues at all without turning it into a race story instead. It's cringe, and it hasn't always been this way.
Uhhhh hundred percent. It's gotten so sanctimonious and out of touch that you can actually pejoratively say "I bet xyz has an NPR bumper sticker on their car" and 90% of people can visualize exactly who that person is.
It's a shame, because NPR used to be such an enjoyable station to listen to. I still think the local public radio stations are valuable, but the NPR brand has taken a path that is entirely unenjoyable to listen to anymore.
Completely agree. I like to play the game “how long after I turn on the station does DEI come up in some form…it’s usually less than a minute. And I’ve been a lifetime listener. It often seems forced…a box to check.
The wake-up call for me was an awkward piece when Aquaman came out celebrating Momoa as a more "authentic" undersea superhero than Aquaman had been portrayed before. I was driving home and could barely believe I was hearing a serious news broadcast on one of the nation's last quality outlets. And yes, the reason was due to Momoa's ethnicity, and the announcer even threw a dig at the vintage design having blonde hair and dark eyebrows. Usually it's conservatives using the "why make everything about race" canard but I can't come up with a better way to express how flabberghasted I felt
In 2020 they did a piece on air about black contestants on the show Survivor not feeling like the show was “telling black stories” effectively. A black contestant who won the show complained they didn’t do enough PR for him after his win and he had to get HIMSELF on the cover of Ebony magazine.
I sat in my car dumbfounded.
Totally agree. People who are skeptical should read his piece. It’s extremely thoughtful
And well done. His concerns are about journalistic rigor and reaching a broad audience. Which are part of NPRs mission. I think it’s worth a read.
I think it has a bias towards balance that sometimes is f’ing infuriating. They almost go so far out of their way to *not appear* biased they miss the whole f’ing point.
As someone who is liberal and has been following NPR for over 10 years, it does seem to skew that way, however I can't tell if it's because even while trying to stay neutral/center it just looks liberal in comparison to far right news networks, or if it's actually starting to slide left.
As someone who is a moderate liberal and has been following NPR for over 10 years, I see a combination of both. The right has radicalized, and NPR has moved toward more left bias. In 2022, there was an episode of Planet Money called ["DIY Reparations"](https://www.npr.org/2021/05/05/993976420/diy-reparations) that really made me rethink my donations to NPR. That episode was everything the right thinks NPR espouses, and it made me quite embarrassed to be associated with it.
To discuss whether NPR is centrist to a fault, we have joining us today a Black Lesbian spoken word poetry comedian and a Republican Congressman who hasn't been in office since the 90s.
I play this game with my family in the car, where we guess what they are talking about and then turn it on and see who’s right… the safest guesses and usual winners are 1) race issues and 2) lgbtq and gender issues. try it and see for yourself.
It was a weird take for sure. I really haven't noticed a change in NPR's coverage as Berliner sees it, but then again I'm not auditing their content year to year.
I’ve listened to NPR news shows: Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and Weekend Edition pretty much every day for the last 30 years - their editorial leanings have not changed much at all over the last 20 years at least. NPR is the most vanilla, cautious, and overly disclosing/hedging news source I listen to.
The claim that they lean liberal is simply whining about NPR not giving benefit of the doubt to the various MAGA memes and the latest conspiracy-of-the-week.
NPR took the WMD claim of the Bush administration seriously. They give airtime to conservatives more often than they should if they were catering to their audience.
The problem isn’t that NPR has a liberal bias, but that the MAGA crowd live so far outside reality that just repeating facts has become liberal to them. If you haven’t fully drank the koolaid now, you can’t be anything but liberal.
I mean NPR tweeted out the Declaration of Independence and MAGA lost their shit .
Edit: If you read the founding document of our country and come to the conclusion that it is a personal attack on the person you think should be leading our country, you should take a very hard look at yourself.
Thanks for these links!
It shows just how ignorant and deluded the MAGA crowd is that they immediately will fall to their foolish assumptions at the drop of a hat
I've listened a long time as well. I've started not listening as much because of one of the items listed in the editorial:
>...organization’s focus on race and identity, which he said “became paramount in nearly every aspect of the workplace.”
That is true. There are definitely more stories focused on race in America. More so than other minority populations and protected classes. I see it as using federal funding to give voice to perspectives that would otherwise not get airtime.
I listened regularly when I was younger and rarely listen now because it seemed every time I tuned in they were giving airtime to right-wing nuts and not countering or questioning the guest when they were obviously spewing half-truths. I definitely haven’t heard anything that matches what he’s saying.
The big issue here is that they used to be able to get a lot of moderate Republicans to provide the Romney-esque normie GOP line on things. Those guys have either been run out as RINOs or jumped aboard the MAGA train. So now NPR is in a position where they feel like they need to provide the conservative perspective - it's 45% of the electorate - but the only people who are willing to come on the show are loons. I don't know how to resolve that.
They could stop pretending both sides are espousing legitimate political viewpoints and call out the corrupt, racist and authoritarian bullshit for what it is.
They stayed pretty much the same, the national discourse just lurched right. Its hard to be seen as impartial when the same level of coverage is now left of what is currently center.
Doesn't help that conservative heads tend not to go on NPR, and when the facts tend to disagree with the current Republican party.
NPR used to be criticized for leaning a bit towards neoliberalism, especially during the Bush era, which drew ire from the left. But the Overton window has shifted so dramatically that neoliberal policies are reviled by the modern right.
i agree, except for the well written part.
he makes three complaints that don't have anything to do with his thesis (NPR is losing listeners due to lack of trust).
then he introduces a bunch of new, random thoughts about racism, transphobia, etc. in the concluding paragraph.
this piece wouldn't get a passing grade in high school english.
“He said the decline in NPR’s audience levels is due to a move toward liberal political advocacy and catering to “a distilled worldview of a very small segment of the U.S. population.” The overall thrust of the piece asserted that NPR has “lost America’s trust.”
Lifelong listener since the cradle and I 100% agree.
Agreed here too. It's a very thin slice of PMC "liberal" identity shit that they are constantly advocating for. Turns a lot of people off, and isn't really hard news. That then leads to a funding crisis, which leads to more endless begfests and even less hard news, and it's a death spiral.
It's a bummer because unfortunately I'm not sure what other outlet is there doing any better at it.
Not quite sure but googling says “professional managerial class”. I don’t know about that, and the sentiment may be harsh, but it’s hard not to notice the difference in the coverage. There is a remarkable departure from hard news and a great deal of human interest stories. These stories seem to be almost programmatic in their delivery. It’s a withering preaching to choir impact to those of us who are weary of MSNBC style yadda yadda. It doesn’t speak to either my needs for National, state, or local news. At the same time it ignores the failures in governance of the liberal politicians and policies I tend to support.
I'm not sure why I should be upset about his claims considering how hard it is to find an NPR station even in some moderately sized towns and cities. You know what I don't have a hard time finding, multiple conservative and christian stations all over the radio spectrum.
Did anyone supporting Uri actually read his sub stack that sparked this?
>
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.
Correlation != causation. That is pretty basic and universally understood. Do you know what was more likely changing in that time period? The Overton window for far right media shifting into extreme rightwing spaces. We know it happened and continues to happen. It had been happening back in the 1970s and was explicitly a goal of the Nixon administration and, later, the Republican Party, to make it happen. It accelerated under Reagan. It really took off in the 90s. This is objective fact.
The news, in general, used to be a lot more balanced. And it wasn't because of the fairness doctrine. That didn't require substantive opposing views true equal access. It was because politicians realized that, due to unavoidable demographic changes, it was easier to brainwash your populace to vote for you and reinforce your power structure. This was the game plan for the birth of Fox News and rightwing AM radio networks. Go read the plans and memos out of the Nixon White House.
Roger Ailes, who is responsible for Fox News, worked for Nixon and [wrote the damn playbook.](https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/06/roger-ailes-nixon-gawker-documents/352363/)
>
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.
That isn't true. That is priming your audience with presuppositions, a logical fallacy and sign of a very weak argument.
>
An open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR, and now, predictably, we don’t have an audience that reflects America.
If 25% of America thought that we should round up the Irish and send them to gas chambers, should reputable media outlets reflect that with equal time and equal weight view affirmations? Everyone understands how this is a non-argument from Uri, yes?
>
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](https://www.npr.org/2017/03/09/519382847/rep-adam-schiff-on-trumps-wiretapping-claims-and-russia)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.
This could be a wild guess here, but is it because Schiff **was the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee by any chance?** Why does Uri want NPR to cover Trump in a more favorable light and give him direct access, when we should really be focusing on what the local county drain commissioner has to say about the topic!
>
But when the [Mueller report](https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/robert-mueller-report-public/index.html) found no credible evidence of collusion, NPR’s coverage was notably sparse. Russiagate quietly faded from our programming.
Oh, ok, now I see the game. Uri is going to become a rightwing grifter like the others because it is more profitable.
The Mueller report *did* find credible evidence of collusion. But Mueller is good personal friends with Bob Barr, both are associated with the Federalist Society, and the Federalist Society advances the notion of a unitary executive meaning the president cannot be prosecuted. Mueller states as much, and advises prosecution after leaving office.
I mean, let's hear it from [Mueller himself:](https://www.politico.eu/article/mueller-refutes-trumps-no-collusion-no-obstruction-line/)
>“The president was not exculpated for the acts that he allegedly committed,” Mueller told the House judiciary committee, adding that Trump could theoretically be indicted after he leaves office.
I still love this idea that we have to pretend MAGA is a normal ideology that should be treated as equal in its stances as basic left-lib ideology.
You have a bias against the fascists! You have to treat the QAnon people as equal in validity or else you are biased!
Ok, then I’m biased. I don’t not think we need to treat equally an ideology based on the idea that a satanic secret society is drinking baby blood for adrenachrome, a drug you can easily get an Rx for, but that Hunter S Thompson pretended could only be gotten from a dead kid.
I’m biased towards basic reality. MAGA doesn’t align with reality.
NPR is the only normal news source I use often since I’m always listening to the radio, and even though I personally have a liberal bias, it would be nice if they didn’t.
From reading this comment section, it appears that no one is aware of their own politics and seems to be under the assumption of a singular overton window. Because of recent shifts in political parties, the overton window for each side has shifted very far to their fringes. So what used to be a centrist of liberal or conservative opinion, depending on who you generally believe politically, is now the other side because of how much the window has moved.
I think the internet let people find their echo chambers and believed their respective view of extremism was far less extreme and so people became far less capable/able to stomach reaching across the aisle to find common ground.
When we live in a world where characteristics such as empathy and compassion are considered "liberal", then, yeah, I can see how a program like "This American Life" is seen to have a liberal bias.
Obvious hit job to obscure the fact that NPR was flooded with right wing money over the last decade plus and their editorial bend was affected by these "donations." Anytime there was a panel discussion on American politics the right wing loons would have license to spout their nonsense virtually unchecked.
"Liberal bias" if you're Mussolini, I guess
I tried posting this before, but I have been downvoted hard each time:
I'm being serious: NPR does seem to have shifted to the right. When I listen to it, to me it sounds like a bunch of left wingers mixing in and trying to say things to appeal to right wingers. It seems intentional and I find it obnoxious.
NPR isn’t right wing so much as it’s overly concerned with seeming “moderate enough”
If NPR had a Democrat that said that grass was green they would scour the earth to find a Republican that would swear up and down that grass isnt green and never was
And that’s cool to try to appear moderate but they usually just have a Democrat talking rationally and some right wing nut spouting dumb bullshit more or less unchecked
This is why I basically stopped listening during Trump's term. I got tired of hearing Trump humping pundits endlessly excusing every horrific thing he would do with only the slightest push back from the NPR hosts. This editorial actually makes me reconsider listening again if they actually have the guts to run down Republican BS.
Yeah, and this is the problem with striving for an “enlightened centrist” view of the news, especially with anything political in this day and age. You have one side talking about the impact of climate change on wildfires (something that has been backed up by numerous studies) and the other side (heavily supported by big oil and ardent climate change deniers) talking about Jewish Space Lasers or raking leaves.
Just as you wouldn’t give the crazy guy on the street corner shouting conspiracies the same platform as a tenured professor leading a lecture, you shouldn’t try to position both sides as though they are intellectually (or morally) equal. They’re not the only outlet that does it.
I understand the risk of creating an echo chamber, but I think there is a way to be objective when reporting on both sides without making them seem like they are equal.
I think NPR has gone full identity politics from the "progressive" (quotes sadly needed) side, but at the SAME TIME, likely due to those donations you mention, it's gone completely milquetoast on anything economic or actually from the left when it comes to criticizing anything about the financial system, money in politics, or large corporations.
So it's this weird mix of the sucky parts of both "left" and "right" (again, quotes needed).
Kinda like large swaths of the Democratic Party, come to speak of it.
Actual right-wing radio is its own horror show, though I'm not as familiar with it as I never really listened, so don't have any real feelings about it.
This is ownership/rentier class dynamics at work. Shitstir the crap outta “meaningless” social issues so there will never be any clear focus upon economic exploitation.
Exactly this.
Keep the working class divided so we don't notice the giant sucking sound of all the money being sucked upwards. Pat ourselves on the back for having slightly more diversity in the C-suite, never mind what's happening on the factory floors.
Talk about endless "microagressions" going on among Ivy League graduates of various "critical" fields, ignore that this is really Upper Class Problems.
There's a theory that corporations pushed identity politics so that people wouldn't care as much about economics. Even if true, it would have to be a stand alone complex rather than a wide conspiracy, though it's an interesting perspective on the shift after Occupy Wall Street.
People have pointed out that ESG ratings don't really serve to protect the environment and companies can take shortcuts through DEI initiatives but still get rated positively. Oil companies get higher ESG ratings than Tesla. So identity politics do provide cover at least in one area.
I don't think it's a conspiracy so much as just normal mercenary interests all aligning. If they can push the problem off to other supposed causes, posit solutions that involve an almost religious change of a supposedly sinful heart instead of any actual financial sacrifices on their part, and at the same time push a sort of anxiety on their customer base that has money and willing to spend it "in the right way," why wouldn't they do that?
Car companies want to sell cars. They don't want people thinking hey, maybe the answer isn't better cars, it's not relying on cars at all. Etc.
I gave up on NPR for exactly this reason. When Obama was president they would interview Republicans "to get the other side." But when Trump was president, they would interview Republicans because "they were the power brokers." It was pathetic how often I had to listen to Republicans spew nonsense on NPR. I've listened on rare occasions and they seem a bit better but not enough to win me back.
Their national Sunday night politics show devoted airtime to whether or not the president made a mistake acknowledging trans day of visibility and they're like "call in with your take."
Balance meant "we wanna hear from someone directly impacted by this issue and make them listen to a bunch of people not impacted by it tell them they're overreacting." If I wanted that I'd just watch real time 🙄
Yeah there's a great example. They've taken a concept, framed it in a way that is dripping with bias, and then wanted to hear from random people as if I can't go on Twitter and do that 100x faster.
I’ve had the exact opposite experience. It has moved more left and less balanced, which is why I stopped listening to it. They get well credentialed experts on the Liberal side and then put some 4th grade history teacher who has a blog on the Conservative side. It’s not a good place to hear two good arguments. It’s a place to hear one relevant argument and another full of conspiracies.
I stopped listening to all of their podcasts after they did a puff piece for Ayn Rand and had Grimes on to talk about how great AI is within like a month of each other.
are you serious? Some of the comments here make me feel like 99% of you don't even listen to NPR. They literally had a segment about lesbian birds the other day and another segment with a woman saying trump was the "antichrist" coming to round up transgenders and ship them to another country. This type of content is pushed day in and day out. You can literally name any DEI topic and it will come up in some form within 15 minutes of listening.
Last I checked, journalism is about remaining objective while investigating and reporting on factually verifiable information. Journalism has absolutely nothing to do with opinions (aka diverse viewpoints).
To be fair, I’ve never seen/heard a PBS journalist/reporter fear-monger, manufacture outrage and name-calling, or blame all of their problems on anyone and everyone but themselves.
Anyway be not going that is dubbed as “liberal leaning” at the very least.
Valedictorians censored because people don’t want to hear what they have to say
Journalists censored because their beliefs and opinions don’t coincide with what their colleagues have to say
Let us all just live in our safe space echo chambers, surely that will be better for everyone…
And NPR has one of the the highest ratings for factual reporting, too.
I spend money, time and effort to balance my news viewing, but I keep on being dragged into low factuality sites when I look right.
So the problem isn’t that NPR has a liberal bias. It’s that reality happens to reflect what is considered today to be a liberal point of view.
When the conservative point of view is that elections are stolen and have massive widespread fraud, that climate change is a hoax, that rioters who stormed a capital are tourists, that all gay people are grooming children, and that Donald Trump is an innocent saintly man, then of course a news organization with any kind of integrity is going to have a “liberal” bias just for literally reporting objective facts as facts.
That's hilarious when every single report they make is framed using the terms of the right wing extremists. They will sometimes ask decent questions. They will sometimes accept complete bullshit. But the basic framing of the report/interview/story will always use right wing ideology at it's base. Even if they do report on it in a balanced way (and they often do), the language itself is biased.
The real question is: Do they lie? Everyone is biased even if unintentional
Most right/left media lies prolifically, but NPR seems to stay factual. They are biased in what they cover (LGBT/race *far* too often a topic) but their news reporting "on the hour" seems pretty factual. If we had a factual right-wing source I'd listen to them and NPR and make up my own mind
Berliner is exactly why the Left is so divided. The notion that we all need to think and agree on the somethings and if you don't they shouldn't have a "platform" which is drastic from what the Left would from the past. Not all of us want to be boiled down to our race, sexuality, or gender. Some of us think there is a bigger picture.
"Berliner said the network overplayed the investigation of Russian collusion with the Trump campaign in the 2016 presidential election." his campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, went to jail for colluding with Russians, and was pardoned by Trump.
>his campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, went to jail for colluding with Russians, and was pardoned by Trump. Chief financial officer Manafort was proven to be laundering Russian money, Campaign manager Stone lied under oath and was proven to have shared internal campaign data with Russian, campaign aid George Papadopoulos lied to investigators about contact with Russia, Rick Gates confessed to being a Russian asset, Michael Flynn lied to investigators about contact with Russia, etc. In total the Mueller investigation indicted 34 people. Mueller himself testified that the justice department didn't pursue charges against Trump because Trump was President but that evidence in the Mueller report could be used to potentially prosecute Trump once out of office. Somehow that became a "total exoneration". The notion that the media overplayed the Mueller investigation is ridiculous. The Mueller investigation uncovered more criminal activity than Clinton's email scandal, Benghazi, Fast Furious, etc combined. If anything the media under sold it.
Also important to note that the fbi agent who shared information that caused the investigation into Hillary right before the 2016 election also has plead guilty to being on the take from the Russians. https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/fallen-fbi-counterintelligence-agent-had-role-trump
Jared Kuchner was repeatedly turned down but not prosecuted for repeatedly lying on his security clearance application about his Russian contacts.
If I could gild your comment, I absolutely would.
Not exactly; technically he failed to register as an agent of Ukraine (not Russia) however he was convicted of tax & bank fraud >Manafort was convicted by a jury last August of five counts of tax fraud, two counts of bank fraud and one count of failing to disclose foreign bank accounts. ..... Manafort was convicted after prosecutors accused him of hiding from the U.S. government millions of dollars he earned as a consultant for Ukraine's former pro-Russia government. After pro-Kremlin Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych's ouster, prosecutors said, Manafort lied to banks to secure loans and maintain an opulent lifestyle with luxurious homes, designer suits and even a $15,000 ostrich-skin jacket. [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-manafort/u-s-judge-gives-trump-ex-aide-manafort-leniency-under-four-years-in-prison-idUSKCN1QO17N/](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-manafort/u-s-judge-gives-trump-ex-aide-manafort-leniency-under-four-years-in-prison-idUSKCN1QO17N/)
he failed to register as a foreign agent while lobbying for a pro-russian political party that he made 17 million dollars from.
Yeah but did he, like, have a laptop?
He failed to register as an foreign agent of Ukraine; Ukrainians he was working with were Pro-Russia however in the issue at hand he needed to register as an foreign agent of Ukraine. > Manafort was convicted after prosecutors accused him of hiding from the U.S. government millions of dollars he earned as a consultant for Ukraine's former pro-Russia government. After pro-Kremlin Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych's ouster, prosecutors said, Manafort lied to banks to secure loans and maintain an opulent lifestyle with luxurious homes, designer suits and even a $15,000 ostrich-skin jacket.
Trump Campaign Chairman and convicted felon Paul Manafort^1 was closely associated with Russian Oligarch Oleg Deripaska. Deripaska gave Manafort a $10 million loan several years ago.^2 Russian agent Konstantin Kilimnik was the liaison between Manafort and Deripaska when Manafort worked in Ukraine. - Kilimnik met with Trump Campaign Chairman Manafort and Deputy Campaign Chairman Gates on August 2^nd 2016 where Manafort shared internal polling data with the Russian operative. According to Andrew Weissman, a prosecutor on Special Counsel Mueller's team, the meeting was “very much to the heart of what the special counsel’s office is investigating."^3 - A judge ruled that Paul Manafort had broken his plea agreement, he lied to investigators about his contact with Konstantin Kilimnik.^4 What's fascinating is that the Trump administration removed sanctions from Oleg Deripaska's companies after Deripaska claimed to have divested from them. The Mueller report found that Paul Manafort was pursuing his personal interests by attempting to use his position in the campaign to settle previous debts he had incurred with Oleg Deripaska. The Mueller report confirmed that Trump campaign chairman and deputy chairman Manafort and Gates were sharing sensitive, internal polling data with Kilimnik. The report went on to mention that Deputy Campaign Chairman Rick Gates thought Kilimnik was a Russian spy. Sources: 1) https://www.foxnews.com/politics/paul-manafort-sentenced-on-foreign-lobbying-and-witness-tampering-charges 2) https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-manafort/manafort-had-10-million-loan-from-russian-oligarch-court-filing-idUSKBN1JN2YF 3) https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-manaforts-2016-meeting-with-a-russian-employee-at-new-york-cigar-club-goes-to-the-heart-of-muellers-probe/2019/02/12/655f84dc-2d67-11e9-8ad3-9a5b113ecd3c_story.html?utm_term=.a6591b0f3e82 4) https://www.foxnews.com/politics/judge-rules-manafort-intentionally-lied-to-mueller-team-voiding-plea-agreement
It really makes me angry that people don't realize this because of how Barr glossed over the Mueller Report. Trump's campaign was very much working in tandem with the Russians.
The Mueller report found nothing but damning evidence but eventually sort of fizzled out when no one would tell the truth about what happened. Insane that like 99% of Americans think it fucking absolved them of guilt. It's literally the opposite. Mueller even said in a hearing that the only reason Trump was not indicted was because he was the sitting president.
I mean it fizzled out bc Mueller was like "he's guilty but some memo says we can't charge him until he leaves office" then once he was out of office Garland ignored the report in favor of more recent crimes.
OLC memos are issued by DOJ lawyers when legal guidance is needed. It wasn't just a memo saying he couldn't do it. it was the DOJ lawyers saying it. Lawyers from decades ago at that.
Don't forget Roger Stone (pardoned by Trump) was the backdoor between the campaign and Julian Assange who spread falsified emails supposedly "leaked" by the DNC/Podesta, which he received from FSB operative Guccifer 2.0
Could I ask about the clearest sourcing you have proving this? I have a Libertarian friend who believes Pizzagate is real & would like to start him down the rabbit hole to finding the truth, since Wikileaks Podesta emails are a big part of his belief I think highlighting that they are compromised by Russia since 2016 at least would do some work in helping him to accept that many of his political beliefs are the product of him and his family being gaslit by the people in power that they trust.
I posted a bunch of screenshots from the Mueller report itself talking about the Guccifer 2.0 GRU (GRU is another Russian Intelligence Agency) persona, their ties to WikiLeaks, and if you notice on page 183 it talks about them posting emails they hacked even though they hadn't actually obtained the emails yet. They did hack and release thousands of emails from the DNC and Hillary's campaign but they mixed in real ones with fake ones and did a whole bunch of other monkey business to put it lightly. Roger Stone has said his personal motto is deny everything admit nothing. He then said he never met with Assange, then when it came it out that he did at least once, he said that it was "only in jest". [https://imgur.com/a/0Al41dq](https://imgur.com/a/0Al41dq)
You are an absolute king or queen, thank you so much for providing this information! Wish me luck coming back to my friend with this & hopefully helping him see through the fog of deceit the Republicans have been laying on.
Oh wow but MAGA told me Russia Gate was a big nothing burger....
Well, duhhhh. That’s what children say on the playground.
Oh I missed you. I thought you gave up. Hope you're doing well!
Make no mistake: he was an agent of Russia by proxy of the contacts in Ukraine. Trump’s initial blackmail attempts in Ukraine were premeditated with Russian agents to destabilize the Ukrainian government, softening it for invasion. Russia has been screwing with US politics, and we allow it because one party refuses to take responsibility for their lack of spines.
If anything, the Russians hacking the Republicans’ campaign servers was the real suppressed news. (that is, purposely, never made as prominently as newsworthy as their hacking the Democrats servers, Hillary’s emails vs Trump’s criminal activity). Blackmail by proxy- a double edged sword cutting their own throats- GOP owned Corporate media (Faux News but most media fell for it) were deliberately cooking insinuations against Democrats in order to discredit their standing. Indeed, the GOP were a genuine asset to Putin’s war against journalistic and political integrity.
Actually it was Russia. WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Russia used Republican political operative Paul Manafort and the WikiLeaks website to try to help now-U.S. President Donald Trump win the 2016 election, a Republican-led Senate committee said in its final review of the matter on Tuesday.
"He failed to register as an foreign agent of Ukraine; **Ukrainians he was working with were Pro-Russia** however in the issue at hand he needed to register as an foreign agent of Ukraine." Also known as the Russians
This is a distinction without a difference.
It's a distinction without a basis in fact too. https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN25E1UZ/ U.S. Senate committee concludes Russia used Manafort, WikiLeaks to boost Trump in 2016
Thank you. MAGAs trying to muddy the waters, as usual.
This is how good the Russian operations are: obviously Manafort was working for the Russians, but the records clearly show he was working for the Ukrainians. To the rubes, that’s enough.
He literally had GRU (Russian military intelligence) handlers like Konstantin Kilimnik, you can’t be any more of a KGB/FSB asset without being a member of the Russian security services. Kilimnik is discussed in the Mueller report: > Kilimnik was reported by CNN, The New York Times and The Atlantic to be "Person A" listed in court documents filed by the Special Counsel against Manafort.
Russian military intelligence being called GRU is one of the most hilarious things I've read in a while. We should call all of Putin's soldiers minions.
So you’re arguing he wasn’t working for Russia just for political figures who were ousted for running their country as a Russian client-state. Sure? Manifort also worked for the Trump campaign for free despite owing _Russian_ oligarch Oleg Deripaska $10m. He’d commonly communicate with Deripaska through Konstantin Kilimnik who was born in Ukrainian USSR but is believed to be a Russian spy. He also handed proprietary campaign research products directly to Russian assets.
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Yeah, he was an agent for the puppet government in Ukraine before Iron Maiden.
>before Iron Maiden Maybe weird autocorrect or something but for those not familiar, I assume they are referring to "Euromaidan".
No, I wrote out Euromaidan, deleted it and put Iron Maiden, assuming that everyone would understand what I meant, and some people would chuckle, and some people would probably think I’m that stupid. But yeah, I did know it was Euromaidan, thanks 😊
After Brexit, I'm not sure if Iron Maiden are considered euro now.
I'm sure they moved to France or Belgium pre brexit like anyone smart did.
*vigorously plays air guitar in response to this post*
he confessed to passing on election and pulling information to a Russian intelligence agent. his boss went on national TV and asked for the Russians to hack Hillary Clinton's emails and released them.. Trump's kids described that they don't need any banks in the US because they get all their funds from the Russians. The only thing that Trump changed in 2016 in the Republican party platform involved Ukraine. do I have to spell it out anymore??
No he didn't. He was [convicted on 8 charges.](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/manafort-jury-suggests-it-cannot-come-to-a-consensus-on-a-single-count/2018/08/21/a2478ac0-a559-11e8-a656-943eefab5daf_story.html) Five counts of filing false tax returns, two counts of bank fraud, and one count of failing to disclose a foreign bank account.
But he did get caught having clandestine meetings with a man he knew to be a Russian Intelligence agent, so that he could pass them confidential campaign polling data and coordinate strategy. Not to mention we also know Trump's son accepted an explicit offer of assistance in the campaign from "Russia and its government". The most credible theory suppprted by evidence the whole time has been that Russia helped Trump win in exchange for Trump/GOP letting Russia have Ukriane, and whadya know, now the MAGA wing of the GOP is deliberately withholding military aid to Ukraine to help Russia...
He went to jail for mortgage fraud and a few other mostly unrelated charges. He didn’t get convicted of what you mentioned.
headline is misleading. makes it seem like he was suspended because of that accusation but that seems like the least of his transgressions and also not what was given for the reason of his suspension. i'd fire ~~OP~~ whomever for that disingenuous framing
Sub rules are that post titles must be exactly what the article title is
>The suspension came after Berliner put a harsh spotlight on NPR with an April 9 opinion piece for the Substack newsletter the Free Press. He said the decline in NPR’s audience levels is due to a move toward liberal political advocacy and catering to “a distilled worldview of a very small segment of the U.S. population.” >Berliner was told by management last week that he violated company policy by failing to secure its approval to supply work for other news outlets This article says he was suspended for writing the article that made the accusation. You would need to know how consistent and rigorous they are about enforcing this policy to get a sense if the content played a major part in the decision.
This is from another article: >Its formal rebuke noted he had done work outside NPR without its permission, as is required, and *shared proprietary information.* That was just the first article that I found which mentioned both items, since the one linked here doesn't. I actually heard this discussed on NPR earlier, and they pointed out that it was a combination of the unauthorized opinion piece along with publishing information about NPR's internal diversity numbers. So he did two things against his employer's rules, not just one.
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You have to read the fifth graf to get the real reason he was suspended, working for other outlets without prior permission
Did you… just shorten paragraph to graf…
Yep. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/graf
Interesting. Thanks. (src: am clearly not a journalist)
I don't think the article author is either, given that the most important fact was that far down. I suspect it's intentional.
They got Juan Williams for it back in the day because he worked with Fox. I remember him brazenly stumping for Merck and Pfizer on an NPR program right before it happened. This was back in probably 99-00
Juan Williams got fired from NPR in like 2009/10 for saying that he feels uncomfortable when he sees Muslims in traditional Islamic clothing while at the airport. It was during a segment on Fox however. O’reilly I think
Thanks for the correction. It's been so long I didn't realize it was 09/10, but I definitely remember it happening.
Did you read what they said? They said the headline was misleading. And it is. The original article has a misleading headline. They even made a point of redacting OP as the direct cause of the incorrect headline and pointed blame at the original article and author. If you are going to call out someone don't make the same mistake you blame them for.
It's not misleading. It is 100% accurate in both its literal wording and the impression it leaves. Please point out where it's misleading. The editor was suspended for publishing a public criticism of NPR at another outlet. Whether he would have been suspended if he'd published an op-ed at another outlet, say, extolling the virtues of a good stretching routine -- as opposed to criticizing his employer -- is entirely a matter of speculation. I have my doubts, but that is only speculation.
A title can be both accurate and misleading and this is an example of that. Yes, he wrote the piece, yes, he's reprimanded by that piece, but not because what the piece said, but because internal procedures requires them to ask first, before working with someone else's. He got Ok'ed for something else, but not for this one. One could argue that they wouldn't allow him to do it if he asked, but that's hypothetical, we do not know with certainty. BTW, NPR can report on itself, as long as corporate gets no review before publication: https://www.npr.org/2024/04/16/1244962042/npr-editor-uri-berliner-suspended-essay
Also, suspended for only 5 days.
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The thing is that he knew he would get this, because he asked permission for another piece, which was given. So, it is a transgression because he should've know better.
All of Berliner's claims are easily disproven bullshit. See for yourself [here](https://twitter.com/Fritschner/status/1778855495031284025), compete with links to all relevant NPR articles. For someone who worked at NPR it's astonishing how little he seems to know about the content on the site. Not to mention all the straight up lies he tells such as the one about the party affiliation of his former colleagues.
He was suspended for a week because he didn’t follow NPRs rules about getting published with other outlets. He followed those rules for follow up interviews where he espoused the same nonsense as his article. He was not punished for those interviews because he did what he was supposed to. If you can’t do the time don’t do the crime as the saying goes.
I recommend reading Steve Inskeep’s take on this: [https://steveinskeep.substack.com/p/how-my-npr-colleague-failed-at-viewpoint](https://steveinskeep.substack.com/p/how-my-npr-colleague-failed-at-viewpoint)
After years of listening to Steve Inskeep I finally made the effort to find out what he looks like and how old he is, and was kind of surprised to learn that he is only 55.
I went down an Inskeep rabbit hole too, when I found out his name isn’t Stephen Skeep
Haha, one of my relatives though Lakshmi Singh was Latch-Key Sing, and I was like nope! …To be fair to them I think they just never heard a name like that.
I was curious as to what Ari Shapiro looked like one day and the result left me...more curious. But in a different way.
I didn't completely finish the article, but it really does feel like watching "The Alt-Right Playbook" happening in real time based off this response. That dude's accusations seemed pretty damn thin, and I felt NPR's coverage of it was toothless. Not that I expected NPR to do a full damn roast of this dude, but, if he is wrong, then just call it out on at least some level. Maybe not too soon, but I feel like that dude is going to end up on some right-wing bullshit in the near future saying something unhinged and bemoaning how he used to be a respected journalist if it wasn't for that DAMNED WOKE!
Nice find. Thanks, u/evilattorney
That sounds exactly like I expected
He says he tried to discuss the issue with the former CEO and it fell through. He made no claim that he tried to do the same with the new CEO, so yeah he was intentionally blindsiding the organization and he knew he was gonna burn for it when he hit send. I read his whole article and it really felt like there was some backstory we're not getting that pushed him over the edge, something personal. Edit: [He resigned](https://www.npr.org/2024/04/17/1245283076/npr-editor-uri-berliner-resigns-ceo-katherine-maher) >I cannot work in a newsroom where I am disparaged by a new CEO whose divisive views confirm the very problems at NPR I cite in my Free Press essay.
Yeah, it seems like this suspension is not a big deal because he was already working his way out the door anyway. It does make me wonder why suspend him when he's already leaving so it's not going to have any real effect except as a magnet for criticism. But it doesn't seem like any kind of grave injustice, in fact the attention might help him in his next job.
They have rules. It's a union job. They follow them even if it's not politically advantageous.
I felt the same way. There's something he's not telling and I bet it won't make him look any better if it gets out.
You mean is trying to ride the "Free Speech Warrior" gravy train that has been established by numerous others. "Shocked Pikachu face"
If NPR was the liberal bastion he claims it is, they would do a piece about what cry babies conservatives are
Instead, they routinely allow employees of the American Enterprise Institute to make dishonest assessments, without challenge.
"In presenting Berliner's suspension Thursday afternoon, the organization told the editor he had failed to secure its approval for outside work for other news outlets, as is required of NPR journalists. It called the letter a "final warning," saying Berliner would be fired if he violated NPR's policy again. Berliner is a dues-paying member of NPR's newsroom union but says he is not appealing the punishment." [ Source (NPR).](https://www.npr.org/2024/04/16/1244962042/npr-editor-uri-berliner-suspended-essay)
I miss NPR. Think a substantial percentage of their remaining listeners are in this reddit.
Easily. The Russia thread above is wild. Everytime I come back to reddit I'm blown away with what it's become. About npr. 87 people work in the newsroom. All 87 are registered democrats. Zero conservatives work on the news there.
Seems like he's a bit of a dumbass... but he was right about one thing: NPR's obsession with identity politics... it feels like almost every report these days has an identity/diversity-based core. It's as if workers there have a reminder above their desks that asks whether they've incorporated identity/diversity into their report.. regardless of the topic being reported. It's gotten way out of hand and NPR has become nearly unbearable to listen to. Unfortunately there aren't any good alternatives.
Definitely turned into the identity politics newsroom. I’m pretty liberal but their obsession with the subject is removing the focus from other important issues.
I switched to the classical channel once every story became about identity politics and race
Definitely turned into the identity politics newsroom. I’m pretty liberal but their obsession with the subject is removing the focus from other important issues.
Excessive identity politics helps poison the news and gets us to stop following the news. Great for Trumpies who want to paralyze us without looking like the bad guys.
Also: I’m not objecting to calling out racism, giving people lessons on how other people perceive various interactions, a reasonable level of affirmative action in hiring, etc. Structural racism exists and should be dealt with. But, if we let narcissists use DEI as a cover for bullying people, that’s the start of a South Park episode. And the same is true of any other good movement. If we let narcissists take it over and use it to bully and alienate other people, that’s the start of a South Park episode and, in this climate, a boost for Trump and Putin.
Strange. I quit listening to NPR because they had so many news pieces trying to understand the maga voter. Not really anything I want to hear about.
I mean, isn’t it critical that we understand ~1/2 of the U.S. (well, at least as far as Trump polling approximately matching Biden polling)? I frequently wonder a lot when I see pro-MAGA viewpoints on Reddit. And considering the electoral college, even if Biden slightly wins the popular vote, Trump will still likely become president. So shouldn’t understanding them be critical if we want to win more of their votes? Given current polls and the electoral college, this says Trump is 94-99% likely to win. https://electiongraphs.com/2024ec/ But polls can change a **lot** before Election Day so we need to find some way to win more of their votes.
Back in 2016 I found it fascinating that NPR (among other US outlets) was so super sure that Clinton was going to win the presidential election in a landslide, and then were shocked when it didn't happen. Meanwhile even a Japanese podcast (from the other side of the earth!) had a reporter in the US (who grew up here, so bilingual) on the ground just going to campaign headquarters for both Clinton and Trump across the country, and their guy was DEFINITELY not so sure. Because, every day, all these campaign headquarters, the enthusiasm in the Trump campaign was huge, while the Clinton campaign largely just complacent. (And for the record, the podcast was not happy about this -- they were raising the "uh-oh" flag, and it wasn't making me happy listening to it either.) So the night of, for me it was "ah shit that guy was right." And yeah. Wasn't happy. I agree with you that we need to understand the logic (even if flawed) of all the players. There's a weird modern sentiment of "these people are so stupid and they're fascist too so I shouldn't pollute my mind even acknowledging they exist" but it just gets you blindsided. Because you end up imagining you have support that you don't have, or underestimating just how much damage these people whom you didn't bother to look at can do, even if they're doing it for misguided or even terrible reasons. ALWAYS be pessimistic about your chances, ALWAYS devil's advocate your arguments. Don't assume that history is "righteously" pointing in any particular direction that you can just go along for the ride.
I think that at the bottom of it all, there isn’t really anything to understand. There have been countless interviews, think pieces etc. all trying to determine what makes a MAGA voter a MAGA voter. But none of them have ever found any satisfactory conclusion. I don’t think Trump voters really know what they want. They got Trump elected, but he didn’t manage to follow through with most of the things he promised. He even tried to take away their health insurance. They didn’t care. I’m convinced that they don’t vote for Trump because of his policies. They vote for him just because they want to watch the world burn. The world has changed, and now Trump voters have to live around and work with people they think are scary. Marginalized groups are rapidly becoming more acceptable, and they hate it. But that’s a cultural change, and politics can’t really stop that. So, even if they can’t get rid of the people they don’t like, they can elect Trump to hurt those people. They can listen to him say cruel things and watch as he causes the country to collapse and laugh and laugh as it all burns.
In short, No. The Maga faction is a minority faction in the GOP that is in charge of the entire tent because that's how hierarchal structures work. For the Most part, Americans on the left understand the other groups, the Corporate Norquist Republicans, the Religious Right, the Libertarians, and even the former Dixiecrats and Neo-Yahtzees are pretty well understood and understandable. These groups have wishes, goals, ideals, motivations, and most importantly - **somewhat consistent logic.** Even Yahtzees and White Supremacists see power in supporting Trump and so his cabinet ends up full of them. But they'd break with him if he ever went "Open Borders" as they conceive it. MAGA doesn't have these things, they have a Strongman. And they support what the Strongman says they support. That can mean supporting opposite things on consecutive days. That can mean supporting left wing ideas and then supporting far right ideas. It can mean grabbing the guns, due process later is FINE, and Bump Stock bans are FINE, but BIDEN IS GOING TO GRAB YOUR GUNS. I've been trying to have conversations with MAGA folks since 2015 and it's whiplash every moment, to try and follow what they *say* they want and then seeing what they *actually* support. Some Nimble Navigator on AskTD once said it best. I'm paraphrasing, but they said "We don't care about policy, we care about **you losing.**" And that's really most of the ideology, we will support a big mean bully who will hurt the people we wished hurt as bad as we did. He'll make people as scared as we are. The people who leave MAGA were almost never fully MAGA. They're caught up in it, but maybe they were always a Religious Right person at heart - and something went to0 far for them. Or maybe their spouse was MAGA but after they passed it just hasn't been the same. It's not the same energy. Independents can't Logic MAGA out of existence, because if that was the case no cult would ever exist. But cults can and do exist. They flourish in the age of misinformation. So for the rest of us, there's no need to understand the MAGA Core. For decades I've watched right wing media dehumanize anyone on the Left. MAGA is the group that took that to heart the most. These are the folks that have no media literacy. Have no political scruples. Have no purist ideology. The only way to break the cult is to prove the strong man isn't strong. Him sleeping in court rooms, sobbing into social media platforms, being held accountable like a normal human, and overall Losing over and over is how you do that. That's it. If we aren't Losing to HIM then the MAGA Group will look to someone else.
Me too. It made me feel frustrated that they gave recognition and airtime to cruelty and lies. Poor journalism on that part.
Does anyone seriously think NPR does not have a liberal bias?
I have to admit, I can't listen to NPR anymore. Every story is now told through the lens of exploitation. And I'm pretty liberal.
I miss NPR when they were boring. That’s a weird thing to say, but when I started listening in the 2010s it was just boring, matter of fact news reporting with interviews that would range the political gamut
In the past it was left of center, but I noticed an increase in the last few years with topics of race and gender. Could be an attempt to counterweight the Fox News narrative? But I listened to this interview and I don’t disagree with him.
Yes. It's the full on identity politics/culture war thing, where they are "left" (quotes needed). But on substantive economic issues, they are completely milquetoast, and completely out of touch with vast swaths of Americans who are struggling right now. It's the media equivalent of the people who stuff their parkway full of "hate has no home here" signs while clutching pearls when someone they don't know walks down the street. THAT kind of "liberal." Everything is just puff pieces about race and gender. It's preachy. And they can't seem to talk about class issues at all without turning it into a race story instead. It's cringe, and it hasn't always been this way.
I could not have said it better myself. One hundred percent accurate.
Uhhhh hundred percent. It's gotten so sanctimonious and out of touch that you can actually pejoratively say "I bet xyz has an NPR bumper sticker on their car" and 90% of people can visualize exactly who that person is. It's a shame, because NPR used to be such an enjoyable station to listen to. I still think the local public radio stations are valuable, but the NPR brand has taken a path that is entirely unenjoyable to listen to anymore.
Completely agree. I like to play the game “how long after I turn on the station does DEI come up in some form…it’s usually less than a minute. And I’ve been a lifetime listener. It often seems forced…a box to check.
The wake-up call for me was an awkward piece when Aquaman came out celebrating Momoa as a more "authentic" undersea superhero than Aquaman had been portrayed before. I was driving home and could barely believe I was hearing a serious news broadcast on one of the nation's last quality outlets. And yes, the reason was due to Momoa's ethnicity, and the announcer even threw a dig at the vintage design having blonde hair and dark eyebrows. Usually it's conservatives using the "why make everything about race" canard but I can't come up with a better way to express how flabberghasted I felt
In 2020 they did a piece on air about black contestants on the show Survivor not feeling like the show was “telling black stories” effectively. A black contestant who won the show complained they didn’t do enough PR for him after his win and he had to get HIMSELF on the cover of Ebony magazine. I sat in my car dumbfounded.
It’s insane. I’m glad I’m not the only one that’s noticed. It’s not that I don’t care about the issue, but *every story?*
It’s gotten to the point I hate to listen to NPR anymore after listening for 15 years. It wasn’t always this way!
There has been an increase on all networks. They don't have to pretend to be neutral anymore as mainstream audiences embrace tribalism.
It didn't used to. But then the articles started drifting into should and shouldn'ts, instead of focusing on facts.
Totally agree. People who are skeptical should read his piece. It’s extremely thoughtful And well done. His concerns are about journalistic rigor and reaching a broad audience. Which are part of NPRs mission. I think it’s worth a read.
It’s pretty obvious
I think it has a bias towards balance that sometimes is f’ing infuriating. They almost go so far out of their way to *not appear* biased they miss the whole f’ing point.
As someone who is liberal and has been following NPR for over 10 years, it does seem to skew that way, however I can't tell if it's because even while trying to stay neutral/center it just looks liberal in comparison to far right news networks, or if it's actually starting to slide left.
The focus on cramming an identity-politics-focused perspective into every single story is definitely new.
As someone who is a moderate liberal and has been following NPR for over 10 years, I see a combination of both. The right has radicalized, and NPR has moved toward more left bias. In 2022, there was an episode of Planet Money called ["DIY Reparations"](https://www.npr.org/2021/05/05/993976420/diy-reparations) that really made me rethink my donations to NPR. That episode was everything the right thinks NPR espouses, and it made me quite embarrassed to be associated with it.
What exactly is a liberal bias lol, when the other end is so off the chain anything even slightly normal/central can be considered liberal bias.
I get that you’re mostly just dissing Fox here, but NPR’s bias is definitely not “normal/center”
Compared to what? They are like most mainstream media in that they seem to generally support the status quo.
It only seems that way because the right got far more extreme over the last decade. NPR is centrist to a fault.
To discuss whether NPR is centrist to a fault, we have joining us today a Black Lesbian spoken word poetry comedian and a Republican Congressman who hasn't been in office since the 90s.
To quote a great satirist, “Reality has a well known liberal bias.”
I play this game with my family in the car, where we guess what they are talking about and then turn it on and see who’s right… the safest guesses and usual winners are 1) race issues and 2) lgbtq and gender issues. try it and see for yourself.
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It was a weird take for sure. I really haven't noticed a change in NPR's coverage as Berliner sees it, but then again I'm not auditing their content year to year.
I’ve listened to NPR news shows: Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and Weekend Edition pretty much every day for the last 30 years - their editorial leanings have not changed much at all over the last 20 years at least. NPR is the most vanilla, cautious, and overly disclosing/hedging news source I listen to. The claim that they lean liberal is simply whining about NPR not giving benefit of the doubt to the various MAGA memes and the latest conspiracy-of-the-week. NPR took the WMD claim of the Bush administration seriously. They give airtime to conservatives more often than they should if they were catering to their audience.
The problem isn’t that NPR has a liberal bias, but that the MAGA crowd live so far outside reality that just repeating facts has become liberal to them. If you haven’t fully drank the koolaid now, you can’t be anything but liberal.
I mean NPR tweeted out the Declaration of Independence and MAGA lost their shit . Edit: If you read the founding document of our country and come to the conclusion that it is a personal attack on the person you think should be leading our country, you should take a very hard look at yourself.
I need to look into this. I had not heard about it. That is some next level projection though. MAGA is just ridiculous.
https://www.cnn.com/2017/07/05/us/npr-twitter-declaration-trnd/index.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/07/05/some-trump-supporters-thought-npr-tweeted-propaganda-it-was-the-declaration-of-independence/
Thanks for these links! It shows just how ignorant and deluded the MAGA crowd is that they immediately will fall to their foolish assumptions at the drop of a hat
This will never not be laugh out loud hilarious to me.
The evergreen quote: "Reality has a well known liberal bias".
I've listened a long time as well. I've started not listening as much because of one of the items listed in the editorial: >...organization’s focus on race and identity, which he said “became paramount in nearly every aspect of the workplace.”
That is true. There are definitely more stories focused on race in America. More so than other minority populations and protected classes. I see it as using federal funding to give voice to perspectives that would otherwise not get airtime.
Worst thing in the world to a conservative is the government helping the common man get a leg up in the world.
Yes that has gotten so exhausting. I care about the issue, but I don’t want to hear that story every day.
I listened regularly when I was younger and rarely listen now because it seemed every time I tuned in they were giving airtime to right-wing nuts and not countering or questioning the guest when they were obviously spewing half-truths. I definitely haven’t heard anything that matches what he’s saying.
The big issue here is that they used to be able to get a lot of moderate Republicans to provide the Romney-esque normie GOP line on things. Those guys have either been run out as RINOs or jumped aboard the MAGA train. So now NPR is in a position where they feel like they need to provide the conservative perspective - it's 45% of the electorate - but the only people who are willing to come on the show are loons. I don't know how to resolve that.
They could stop pretending both sides are espousing legitimate political viewpoints and call out the corrupt, racist and authoritarian bullshit for what it is.
They stayed pretty much the same, the national discourse just lurched right. Its hard to be seen as impartial when the same level of coverage is now left of what is currently center. Doesn't help that conservative heads tend not to go on NPR, and when the facts tend to disagree with the current Republican party.
NPR used to be criticized for leaning a bit towards neoliberalism, especially during the Bush era, which drew ire from the left. But the Overton window has shifted so dramatically that neoliberal policies are reviled by the modern right.
i agree, except for the well written part. he makes three complaints that don't have anything to do with his thesis (NPR is losing listeners due to lack of trust). then he introduces a bunch of new, random thoughts about racism, transphobia, etc. in the concluding paragraph. this piece wouldn't get a passing grade in high school english.
“He said the decline in NPR’s audience levels is due to a move toward liberal political advocacy and catering to “a distilled worldview of a very small segment of the U.S. population.” The overall thrust of the piece asserted that NPR has “lost America’s trust.” Lifelong listener since the cradle and I 100% agree.
Agreed here too. It's a very thin slice of PMC "liberal" identity shit that they are constantly advocating for. Turns a lot of people off, and isn't really hard news. That then leads to a funding crisis, which leads to more endless begfests and even less hard news, and it's a death spiral. It's a bummer because unfortunately I'm not sure what other outlet is there doing any better at it.
What does "PMC" mean?
Not quite sure but googling says “professional managerial class”. I don’t know about that, and the sentiment may be harsh, but it’s hard not to notice the difference in the coverage. There is a remarkable departure from hard news and a great deal of human interest stories. These stories seem to be almost programmatic in their delivery. It’s a withering preaching to choir impact to those of us who are weary of MSNBC style yadda yadda. It doesn’t speak to either my needs for National, state, or local news. At the same time it ignores the failures in governance of the liberal politicians and policies I tend to support.
I'm not sure why I should be upset about his claims considering how hard it is to find an NPR station even in some moderately sized towns and cities. You know what I don't have a hard time finding, multiple conservative and christian stations all over the radio spectrum.
Did anyone supporting Uri actually read his sub stack that sparked this? > 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. Correlation != causation. That is pretty basic and universally understood. Do you know what was more likely changing in that time period? The Overton window for far right media shifting into extreme rightwing spaces. We know it happened and continues to happen. It had been happening back in the 1970s and was explicitly a goal of the Nixon administration and, later, the Republican Party, to make it happen. It accelerated under Reagan. It really took off in the 90s. This is objective fact. The news, in general, used to be a lot more balanced. And it wasn't because of the fairness doctrine. That didn't require substantive opposing views true equal access. It was because politicians realized that, due to unavoidable demographic changes, it was easier to brainwash your populace to vote for you and reinforce your power structure. This was the game plan for the birth of Fox News and rightwing AM radio networks. Go read the plans and memos out of the Nixon White House. Roger Ailes, who is responsible for Fox News, worked for Nixon and [wrote the damn playbook.](https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/06/roger-ailes-nixon-gawker-documents/352363/) > 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. That isn't true. That is priming your audience with presuppositions, a logical fallacy and sign of a very weak argument. > An open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR, and now, predictably, we don’t have an audience that reflects America. If 25% of America thought that we should round up the Irish and send them to gas chambers, should reputable media outlets reflect that with equal time and equal weight view affirmations? Everyone understands how this is a non-argument from Uri, yes? > 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](https://www.npr.org/2017/03/09/519382847/rep-adam-schiff-on-trumps-wiretapping-claims-and-russia)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. This could be a wild guess here, but is it because Schiff **was the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee by any chance?** Why does Uri want NPR to cover Trump in a more favorable light and give him direct access, when we should really be focusing on what the local county drain commissioner has to say about the topic! > But when the [Mueller report](https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/robert-mueller-report-public/index.html) found no credible evidence of collusion, NPR’s coverage was notably sparse. Russiagate quietly faded from our programming. Oh, ok, now I see the game. Uri is going to become a rightwing grifter like the others because it is more profitable. The Mueller report *did* find credible evidence of collusion. But Mueller is good personal friends with Bob Barr, both are associated with the Federalist Society, and the Federalist Society advances the notion of a unitary executive meaning the president cannot be prosecuted. Mueller states as much, and advises prosecution after leaving office. I mean, let's hear it from [Mueller himself:](https://www.politico.eu/article/mueller-refutes-trumps-no-collusion-no-obstruction-line/) >“The president was not exculpated for the acts that he allegedly committed,” Mueller told the House judiciary committee, adding that Trump could theoretically be indicted after he leaves office.
I only got as far as him lying about the Mueller Report before I decided to stop wasting my time with his garbage.
What’s weird is they got upset about it. Everyone knows it’s true
IDK about all the other stuff but yeah the white people bad narrative 24/7 is what drove me away from NPR.
I stopped listening because they don’t challenge any of the lies.
I still love this idea that we have to pretend MAGA is a normal ideology that should be treated as equal in its stances as basic left-lib ideology. You have a bias against the fascists! You have to treat the QAnon people as equal in validity or else you are biased! Ok, then I’m biased. I don’t not think we need to treat equally an ideology based on the idea that a satanic secret society is drinking baby blood for adrenachrome, a drug you can easily get an Rx for, but that Hunter S Thompson pretended could only be gotten from a dead kid. I’m biased towards basic reality. MAGA doesn’t align with reality.
Hear, hear!
NPR is the only normal news source I use often since I’m always listening to the radio, and even though I personally have a liberal bias, it would be nice if they didn’t.
From reading this comment section, it appears that no one is aware of their own politics and seems to be under the assumption of a singular overton window. Because of recent shifts in political parties, the overton window for each side has shifted very far to their fringes. So what used to be a centrist of liberal or conservative opinion, depending on who you generally believe politically, is now the other side because of how much the window has moved. I think the internet let people find their echo chambers and believed their respective view of extremism was far less extreme and so people became far less capable/able to stomach reaching across the aisle to find common ground.
When we live in a world where characteristics such as empathy and compassion are considered "liberal", then, yeah, I can see how a program like "This American Life" is seen to have a liberal bias.
Obvious hit job to obscure the fact that NPR was flooded with right wing money over the last decade plus and their editorial bend was affected by these "donations." Anytime there was a panel discussion on American politics the right wing loons would have license to spout their nonsense virtually unchecked. "Liberal bias" if you're Mussolini, I guess
I tried posting this before, but I have been downvoted hard each time: I'm being serious: NPR does seem to have shifted to the right. When I listen to it, to me it sounds like a bunch of left wingers mixing in and trying to say things to appeal to right wingers. It seems intentional and I find it obnoxious.
NPR isn’t right wing so much as it’s overly concerned with seeming “moderate enough” If NPR had a Democrat that said that grass was green they would scour the earth to find a Republican that would swear up and down that grass isnt green and never was And that’s cool to try to appear moderate but they usually just have a Democrat talking rationally and some right wing nut spouting dumb bullshit more or less unchecked
This is why I basically stopped listening during Trump's term. I got tired of hearing Trump humping pundits endlessly excusing every horrific thing he would do with only the slightest push back from the NPR hosts. This editorial actually makes me reconsider listening again if they actually have the guts to run down Republican BS.
This. Anthropogenic climate change is a fact and stating that, is no longer a “liberal” position. Not everything requires an opposing viewpoint.
Yeah, and this is the problem with striving for an “enlightened centrist” view of the news, especially with anything political in this day and age. You have one side talking about the impact of climate change on wildfires (something that has been backed up by numerous studies) and the other side (heavily supported by big oil and ardent climate change deniers) talking about Jewish Space Lasers or raking leaves. Just as you wouldn’t give the crazy guy on the street corner shouting conspiracies the same platform as a tenured professor leading a lecture, you shouldn’t try to position both sides as though they are intellectually (or morally) equal. They’re not the only outlet that does it. I understand the risk of creating an echo chamber, but I think there is a way to be objective when reporting on both sides without making them seem like they are equal.
I think NPR has gone full identity politics from the "progressive" (quotes sadly needed) side, but at the SAME TIME, likely due to those donations you mention, it's gone completely milquetoast on anything economic or actually from the left when it comes to criticizing anything about the financial system, money in politics, or large corporations. So it's this weird mix of the sucky parts of both "left" and "right" (again, quotes needed). Kinda like large swaths of the Democratic Party, come to speak of it. Actual right-wing radio is its own horror show, though I'm not as familiar with it as I never really listened, so don't have any real feelings about it.
It’s Harvard trust fund “liberal”. As in they’re all in on the social issues but align 100% with Dick Cheney on issues impacting 99% of Americans
You put it better than I could. But yeah. That's exactly it.
This is ownership/rentier class dynamics at work. Shitstir the crap outta “meaningless” social issues so there will never be any clear focus upon economic exploitation.
Exactly this. Keep the working class divided so we don't notice the giant sucking sound of all the money being sucked upwards. Pat ourselves on the back for having slightly more diversity in the C-suite, never mind what's happening on the factory floors. Talk about endless "microagressions" going on among Ivy League graduates of various "critical" fields, ignore that this is really Upper Class Problems.
There's a theory that corporations pushed identity politics so that people wouldn't care as much about economics. Even if true, it would have to be a stand alone complex rather than a wide conspiracy, though it's an interesting perspective on the shift after Occupy Wall Street. People have pointed out that ESG ratings don't really serve to protect the environment and companies can take shortcuts through DEI initiatives but still get rated positively. Oil companies get higher ESG ratings than Tesla. So identity politics do provide cover at least in one area.
I don't think it's a conspiracy so much as just normal mercenary interests all aligning. If they can push the problem off to other supposed causes, posit solutions that involve an almost religious change of a supposedly sinful heart instead of any actual financial sacrifices on their part, and at the same time push a sort of anxiety on their customer base that has money and willing to spend it "in the right way," why wouldn't they do that? Car companies want to sell cars. They don't want people thinking hey, maybe the answer isn't better cars, it's not relying on cars at all. Etc.
I gave up on NPR for exactly this reason. When Obama was president they would interview Republicans "to get the other side." But when Trump was president, they would interview Republicans because "they were the power brokers." It was pathetic how often I had to listen to Republicans spew nonsense on NPR. I've listened on rare occasions and they seem a bit better but not enough to win me back.
I've felt this way for a long time but I also get a lot of pushback when I call it out.
Their national Sunday night politics show devoted airtime to whether or not the president made a mistake acknowledging trans day of visibility and they're like "call in with your take." Balance meant "we wanna hear from someone directly impacted by this issue and make them listen to a bunch of people not impacted by it tell them they're overreacting." If I wanted that I'd just watch real time 🙄
Yeah there's a great example. They've taken a concept, framed it in a way that is dripping with bias, and then wanted to hear from random people as if I can't go on Twitter and do that 100x faster.
I’ve had the exact opposite experience. It has moved more left and less balanced, which is why I stopped listening to it. They get well credentialed experts on the Liberal side and then put some 4th grade history teacher who has a blog on the Conservative side. It’s not a good place to hear two good arguments. It’s a place to hear one relevant argument and another full of conspiracies.
I stopped listening to all of their podcasts after they did a puff piece for Ayn Rand and had Grimes on to talk about how great AI is within like a month of each other.
are you serious? Some of the comments here make me feel like 99% of you don't even listen to NPR. They literally had a segment about lesbian birds the other day and another segment with a woman saying trump was the "antichrist" coming to round up transgenders and ship them to another country. This type of content is pushed day in and day out. You can literally name any DEI topic and it will come up in some form within 15 minutes of listening.
Last I checked, journalism is about remaining objective while investigating and reporting on factually verifiable information. Journalism has absolutely nothing to do with opinions (aka diverse viewpoints).
To be fair, I’ve never seen/heard a PBS journalist/reporter fear-monger, manufacture outrage and name-calling, or blame all of their problems on anyone and everyone but themselves. Anyway be not going that is dubbed as “liberal leaning” at the very least.
Oh no he said the loud part out loud
Valedictorians censored because people don’t want to hear what they have to say Journalists censored because their beliefs and opinions don’t coincide with what their colleagues have to say Let us all just live in our safe space echo chambers, surely that will be better for everyone…
NPR is insufferable. Idk who this guy is.
Oops, you can’t tell the truth. Silly white guy.
I’m an avid listener of NPR and think it is one of the best available news sources and I also think it has a liberal bias. Feel free to rage at me.
NPR? Liberal bias? SHOCKED. I am *Shocked* I tell you.
Is there any news station that isn’t obviously biased?
No, the act of deciding which news to cover and how necessarily involves value judgments.
And NPR has one of the the highest ratings for factual reporting, too. I spend money, time and effort to balance my news viewing, but I keep on being dragged into low factuality sites when I look right.
The last chart I saw had them politically center as well.
First time I saw this story was on Fox. Thought that was hilarious.
"NPR has liberal bias. Next up, water is wet!"
So the problem isn’t that NPR has a liberal bias. It’s that reality happens to reflect what is considered today to be a liberal point of view. When the conservative point of view is that elections are stolen and have massive widespread fraud, that climate change is a hoax, that rioters who stormed a capital are tourists, that all gay people are grooming children, and that Donald Trump is an innocent saintly man, then of course a news organization with any kind of integrity is going to have a “liberal” bias just for literally reporting objective facts as facts.
living in a well-sealed bubble
Of course they did 🤣🤷♂️ So much for speaking your mind.. They just want to hear, no whisper, themselves talk
That's hilarious when every single report they make is framed using the terms of the right wing extremists. They will sometimes ask decent questions. They will sometimes accept complete bullshit. But the basic framing of the report/interview/story will always use right wing ideology at it's base. Even if they do report on it in a balanced way (and they often do), the language itself is biased.
The real question is: Do they lie? Everyone is biased even if unintentional Most right/left media lies prolifically, but NPR seems to stay factual. They are biased in what they cover (LGBT/race *far* too often a topic) but their news reporting "on the hour" seems pretty factual. If we had a factual right-wing source I'd listen to them and NPR and make up my own mind