You know the stereotype of the NPR listener: an EV-driving, Wordle-
playing, tote bag-carrying coastal elite. It doesn't precisely describe
me, but it's not far off. I'm Sarah Lawrence-educated, was raised by a
lesbian peace activist mother, I drive a Subaru, and Spotify says my
listening habits are most similar to people in Berkeley.

I fit the NPR mold. I'll cop to that.

So when I got a job here 25 years ago, I never looked back. As a senior
editor on the business desk where news is always breaking, we've
covered upheavals in the workplace, supermarket prices, social media,
and AI.

It's true NPR has always had a liberal bent, but during most of my
tenure here, an open-minded, curious culture prevailed. We were nerdy,
but not knee-jerk, activist, or scolding.

In recent years, however, that has changed. Today, those who listen to
NPR or read its coverage online find something different: the distilled
worldview of a very small segment of the U.S. population.

If you are conservative, you will read this and say, duh, it's always
been this way.

But it hasn't.

For decades, since its founding in 1970, a wide swath of America tuned
in to NPR for reliable journalism and gorgeous audio pieces with birds
singing in the Amazon. Millions came to us for conversations that
exposed us to voices around the country and the world radically
different from our own-engaging precisely because they were unguarded
and unpredictable. No image generated more pride within NPR than the
farmer listening to Morning Edition from his or her tractor at sunrise.

Back in 2011, although NPR's audience tilted a bit to the left, it
still bore a resemblance to America at large. Twenty-six percent of
listeners described themselves as conservative, 23 percent as middle of
the road, and 37 percent as liberal.

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.

An open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR, and now,
predictably, we don't have an audience that reflects America.

That wouldn't be a problem for an openly polemical news outlet serving
a niche audience. But for NPR, which purports to consider all things,
it's devastating both for its journalism and its business model.

Like many unfortunate things, the rise of advocacy took off with Donald
Trump. As in many newsrooms, his election in 2016 was greeted at NPR
with a mixture of disbelief, anger, and despair. (Just to note, I
eagerly voted against Trump twice but felt we were obliged to cover him
fairly.) But what began as tough, straightforward coverage of a
belligerent, truth-impaired president veered toward efforts to damage
or topple Trump's presidency.

Persistent rumors that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia over the
election became the catnip that drove reporting. At NPR, we hitched our
wagon to Trump's most visible antagonist, Representative Adam Schiff.

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 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.

But when the Mueller report found no credible evidence of collusion,
NPR's coverage was notably sparse. Russiagate quietly faded from our
programming.

It is one thing to swing and miss on a major story. Unfortunately, it
happens. You follow the wrong leads, you get misled by sources you
trusted, you're emotionally invested in a narrative, and bits of
circumstantial evidence never add up. It's bad to blow a big story.

What's worse is to pretend it never happened, to move on with no mea
culpas, no self-reflection. Especially when you expect high standards
of transparency from public figures and institutions, but don't
practice those standards yourself. That's what shatters trust and
engenders cynicism about the media.

Russiagate was not NPR's only miscue.

In October 2020, the New York Post published the explosive report about
the laptop Hunter Biden abandoned at a Delaware computer shop
containing emails about his sordid business dealings. With the election
only weeks away, NPR turned a blind eye. Here's how NPR's managing
editor for news at the time explained the thinking: "We don't want to
waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don't
want to waste the listeners' and readers' time on stories that are just
pure distractions."

But it wasn't a pure distraction, or a product of Russian
disinformation, as dozens of former and current intelligence officials
suggested. The laptop did belong to Hunter Biden. Its contents revealed
his connection to the corrupt world of multimillion-dollar influence
peddling and its possible implications for his father.

The laptop was newsworthy. But the timeless journalistic instinct of
following a hot story lead was being squelched. During a meeting with
colleagues, I listened as one of NPR's best and most fair-minded
journalists said it was good we weren't following the laptop story
because it could help Trump.

When the essential facts of the Post's reporting were confirmed and the
emails verified independently about a year and a half later, we could
have fessed up to our misjudgment. But, like Russia collusion, we
didn't make the hard choice of transparency.

Politics also intruded into NPR's Covid coverage, most notably in
reporting on the origin of the pandemic. One of the most dismal aspects
of Covid journalism is how quickly it defaulted to ideological story
lines. For example, there was Team Natural Origin-supporting the
hypothesis that the virus came from a wild animal market in Wuhan,
China. And on the other side, Team Lab Leak, leaning into the idea that
the virus escaped from a Wuhan lab.

The lab leak theory came in for rough treatment almost immediately,
dismissed as racist or a right-wing conspiracy theory. Anthony Fauci
and former NIH head Francis Collins, representing the public health
establishment, were its most notable critics. And that was enough for
NPR. We became fervent members of Team Natural Origin, even declaring
that the lab leak had been debunked by scientists.

But that wasn't the case.

When word first broke of a mysterious virus in Wuhan, a number of
leading virologists immediately suspected it could have leaked from a
lab there conducting experiments on bat coronaviruses. This was in
January 2020, during calmer moments before a global pandemic had been
declared, and before fear spread and politics intruded.

Reporting on a possible lab leak soon became radioactive. Fauci and
Collins apparently encouraged the March publication of an influential
scientific paper known as "The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2." Its
authors wrote they didn't believe "any type of laboratory-based
scenario is plausible."

But the lab leak hypothesis wouldn't die. And understandably so. In
private, even some of the scientists who penned the article dismissing
it sounded a different tune. One of the authors, Andrew Rambaut, an
evolutionary biologist from Edinburgh University, wrote to his
colleagues, "I literally swivel day by day thinking it is a lab escape
or natural."

Over the course of the pandemic, a number of investigative journalists
made compelling, if not conclusive, cases for the lab leak. But at NPR,
we weren't about to swivel or even tiptoe away from the insistence with
which we backed the natural origin story. We didn't budge when the
Energy Department-the federal agency with the most expertise about
laboratories and biological research-concluded, albeit with low
confidence, that a lab leak was the most likely explanation for the
emergence of the virus.

Instead, we introduced our coverage of that development on February 28,
2023, by asserting confidently that "the scientific evidence
overwhelmingly points to a natural origin for the virus."

When a colleague on our science desk was asked why they were so
dismissive of the lab leak theory, the response was odd. The colleague
compared it to the Bush administration's unfounded argument that Iraq
possessed weapons of mass destruction, apparently meaning we won't get
fooled again. But these two events were not even remotely related.
Again, politics were blotting out the curiosity and independence that
ought to have been driving our work.

I'm offering three examples of widely followed stories where I believe
we faltered. Our coverage is out there in the public domain. Anyone can
read or listen for themselves and make their own judgment. But to truly
understand how independent journalism suffered at NPR, you need to step
inside the organization.

Ubiquitous <weberm@polaris.net> wrote:
>
> You know the stereotype of the NPR listener: an EV-driving, Wordle-
> playing, tote bag-carrying coastal elite. It doesn't precisely describe
> me, but it's not far off. I'm Sarah Lawrence-educated, was raised by a
> lesbian peace activist mother, I drive a Subaru, and Spotify says my
> listening habits are most similar to people in Berkeley.
>
> I fit the NPR mold. I'll cop to that.
>
> So when I got a job here 25 years ago, I never looked back. As a senior
> editor on the business desk where news is always breaking, we've
> covered upheavals in the workplace, supermarket prices, social media,
> and AI.
>
> It's true NPR has always had a liberal bent, but during most of my
> tenure here, an open-minded, curious culture prevailed. We were nerdy,
> but not knee-jerk, activist, or scolding.
>
> In recent years, however, that has changed. Today, those who listen to
> NPR or read its coverage online find something different: the distilled
> worldview of a very small segment of the U.S. population.
>
> If you are conservative, you will read this and say, duh, it's always
> been this way.
>
> But it hasn't.

Yes, it has. As far back as I can remember which is pretty much 1970 in
this case.

Now I’m told that NPR varies wildly location to location, but the one in
Phoenix has always been Commie pinko propaganda. The only thing I ever
listened to it, for was click and clack.

>
> --
> Let's go Brandon!
>
>

--
The last thing I want to do is hurt you, but it is still on my list.

In article <uvb69k$2b6g4$3@dont-email.me>,
Ubiquitous <weberm@polaris.net> wrote:

Excellent analysis of the pervasiveness of 'progressive' bias and
enforcement of ideological rigor in the legacy media. And coming from a
liberal at NPR, it cuts off the typical blame-the-messenger tactic
employed by the Effas of the world at the knees.

> You know the stereotype of the NPR listener: an EV-driving, Wordle-
> playing, tote bag-carrying coastal elite. It doesn't precisely describe
> me, but it's not far off. I'm Sarah Lawrence-educated, was raised by a
> lesbian peace activist mother, I drive a Subaru, and Spotify says my
> listening habits are most similar to people in Berkeley.
>
> I fit the NPR mold. I'll cop to that.
>
> So when I got a job here 25 years ago, I never looked back. As a senior
> editor on the business desk where news is always breaking, we've
> covered upheavals in the workplace, supermarket prices, social media,
> and AI.
>
> It's true NPR has always had a liberal bent, but during most of my
> tenure here, an open-minded, curious culture prevailed. We were nerdy,
> but not knee-jerk, activist, or scolding.
>
> In recent years, however, that has changed. Today, those who listen to
> NPR or read its coverage online find something different: the distilled
> worldview of a very small segment of the U.S. population.
>
> If you are conservative, you will read this and say, duh, it's always
> been this way.
>
> But it hasn't.
>
> For decades, since its founding in 1970, a wide swath of America tuned
> in to NPR for reliable journalism and gorgeous audio pieces with birds
> singing in the Amazon. Millions came to us for conversations that
> exposed us to voices around the country and the world radically
> different from our own-engaging precisely because they were unguarded
> and unpredictable. No image generated more pride within NPR than the
> farmer listening to Morning Edition from his or her tractor at sunrise.
>
> Back in 2011, although NPR's audience tilted a bit to the left, it
> still bore a resemblance to America at large. Twenty-six percent of
> listeners described themselves as conservative, 23 percent as middle of
> the road, and 37 percent as liberal.
>
> 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.
>
> An open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR, and now,
> predictably, we don't have an audience that reflects America.
>
> That wouldn't be a problem for an openly polemical news outlet serving
> a niche audience. But for NPR, which purports to consider all things,
> it's devastating both for its journalism and its business model.
>
>
> Like many unfortunate things, the rise of advocacy took off with Donald
> Trump. As in many newsrooms, his election in 2016 was greeted at NPR
> with a mixture of disbelief, anger, and despair. (Just to note, I
> eagerly voted against Trump twice but felt we were obliged to cover him
> fairly.) But what began as tough, straightforward coverage of a
> belligerent, truth-impaired president veered toward efforts to damage
> or topple Trump's presidency.
>
> Persistent rumors that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia over the
> election became the catnip that drove reporting. At NPR, we hitched our
> wagon to Trump's most visible antagonist, Representative Adam Schiff.
>
> 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 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.
>
> But when the Mueller report found no credible evidence of collusion,
> NPR's coverage was notably sparse. Russiagate quietly faded from our
> programming.
>
> It is one thing to swing and miss on a major story. Unfortunately, it
> happens. You follow the wrong leads, you get misled by sources you
> trusted, you're emotionally invested in a narrative, and bits of
> circumstantial evidence never add up. It's bad to blow a big story.
>
> What's worse is to pretend it never happened, to move on with no mea
> culpas, no self-reflection. Especially when you expect high standards
> of transparency from public figures and institutions, but don't
> practice those standards yourself. That's what shatters trust and
> engenders cynicism about the media.
>
> Russiagate was not NPR's only miscue.
>
> In October 2020, the New York Post published the explosive report about
> the laptop Hunter Biden abandoned at a Delaware computer shop
> containing emails about his sordid business dealings. With the election
> only weeks away, NPR turned a blind eye. Here's how NPR's managing
> editor for news at the time explained the thinking: "We don't want to
> waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don't
> want to waste the listeners' and readers' time on stories that are just
> pure distractions."
>
> But it wasn't a pure distraction, or a product of Russian
> disinformation, as dozens of former and current intelligence officials
> suggested. The laptop did belong to Hunter Biden. Its contents revealed
> his connection to the corrupt world of multimillion-dollar influence
> peddling and its possible implications for his father.
>
> The laptop was newsworthy. But the timeless journalistic instinct of
> following a hot story lead was being squelched. During a meeting with
> colleagues, I listened as one of NPR's best and most fair-minded
> journalists said it was good we weren't following the laptop story
> because it could help Trump.
>
> When the essential facts of the Post's reporting were confirmed and the
> emails verified independently about a year and a half later, we could
> have fessed up to our misjudgment. But, like Russia collusion, we
> didn't make the hard choice of transparency.
>
> Politics also intruded into NPR's Covid coverage, most notably in
> reporting on the origin of the pandemic. One of the most dismal aspects
> of Covid journalism is how quickly it defaulted to ideological story
> lines. For example, there was Team Natural Origin-supporting the
> hypothesis that the virus came from a wild animal market in Wuhan,
> China. And on the other side, Team Lab Leak, leaning into the idea that
> the virus escaped from a Wuhan lab.
>
> The lab leak theory came in for rough treatment almost immediately,
> dismissed as racist or a right-wing conspiracy theory. Anthony Fauci
> and former NIH head Francis Collins, representing the public health
> establishment, were its most notable critics. And that was enough for
> NPR. We became fervent members of Team Natural Origin, even declaring
> that the lab leak had been debunked by scientists.
>
> But that wasn't the case.

I've never understood why the American media was so invested in
protecting the Chinese Communist Party from responsibility and
much-deserved criticism over its creation of and release of that virus.

> When word first broke of a mysterious virus in Wuhan, a number of
> leading virologists immediately suspected it could have leaked from a
> lab there conducting experiments on bat coronaviruses. This was in
> January 2020, during calmer moments before a global pandemic had been
> declared, and before fear spread and politics intruded.
>
> Reporting on a possible lab leak soon became radioactive.

Talking about it was radioactive on rec.arts.tv, also. And much like the
leftists at NPR, there have never been any mea culpas or admissions of
error from Effa and Hutt and moviePig over the Wuhan Lab, the Biden
laptop, or the fake Russia collusion conspiracy.

> Fauci and Collins apparently encouraged the March publication of an
> influential scientific paper known as "The Proximal Origin of
> SARS-CoV-2." Its authors wrote they didn't believe "any type of
> laboratory-based scenario is plausible."
>
> But the lab leak hypothesis wouldn't die. And understandably so. In
> private, even some of the scientists who penned the article dismissing
> it sounded a different tune. One of the authors, Andrew Rambaut, an
> evolutionary biologist from Edinburgh University, wrote to his
> colleagues, "I literally swivel day by day thinking it is a lab escape
> or natural."
>
> Over the course of the pandemic, a number of investigative journalists
> made compelling, if not conclusive, cases for the lab leak. But at NPR,
> we weren't about to swivel or even tiptoe away from the insistence with
> which we backed the natural origin story. We didn't budge when the
> Energy Department-the federal agency with the most expertise about
> laboratories and biological research-concluded, albeit with low
> confidence, that a lab leak was the most likely explanation for the
> emergence of the virus.
>
> Instead, we introduced our coverage of that development on February 28,
> 2023, by asserting confidently that "the scientific evidence
> overwhelmingly points to a natural origin for the virus."
>
> When a colleague on our science desk was asked why they were so
> dismissive of the lab leak theory, the response was odd. The colleague
> compared it to the Bush administration's unfounded argument that Iraq
> possessed weapons of mass destruction, apparently meaning we won't get
> fooled again. But these two events were not even remotely related.
> Again, politics were blotting out the curiosity and independence that
> ought to have been driving our work.
>
> I'm offering three examples of widely followed stories where I believe
> we faltered. Our coverage is out there in the public domain. Anyone can
> read or listen for themselves and make their own judgment. But to truly
> understand how independent journalism suffered at NPR, you need to step
> inside the organization.
>
> You need to start with former CEO John Lansing. Lansing came to NPR in
> 2019 from the federally funded agency that oversees Voice of America.
> Like others who have served in the top job at NPR, he was hired
> primarily to raise money and to ensure good working relations with
> hundreds of member stations that acquire NPR's programming.
>
> After working mostly behind the scenes, Lansing became a more visible
> and forceful figure after the killing of George Floyd in May 2020. It
> was an anguished time in the newsroom, personally and professionally so
> for NPR staffers. Floyd's murder, captured on video, changed both the
> conversation and the daily operations at NPR.
>
> Given the circumstances of Floyd's death, it would have been an ideal
> moment to tackle a difficult question: Is America, as progressive
> activists claim, beset by systemic racism in the 2020s-in law
> enforcement, education, housing, and elsewhere? We happen to have a
> very powerful tool for answering such questions: journalism. Journalism
> that lets evidence lead the way.
>
> But the message from the top was very different. America's infestation
> with systemic racism was declared loud and clear: it was a given. Our
> mission was to change it.
>
> "When it comes to identifying and ending systemic racism," Lansing
> wrote in a companywide article, "we can be agents of change. Listening
> and deep reflection are necessary but not enough. They must be followed
> by constructive and meaningful steps forward. I will hold myself
> accountable for this."
>
> And we were told that NPR itself was part of the problem. In
> confessional language he said the leaders of public media, "starting
> with me-must be aware of how we ourselves have benefited from white
> privilege in our careers. We must understand the unconscious bias we
> bring to our work and interactions. And we must commit ourselves-body
> and soul-to profound changes in ourselves and our institutions."
>
> He declared that diversity-on our staff and in our audience-was the
> overriding mission, the "North Star" of the organization. Phrases like
> "that's part of the North Star" became part of meetings and more casual
> conversation.
>
> Race and identity became paramount in nearly every aspect of the
> workplace. Journalists were required to ask everyone we interviewed
> their race, gender, and ethnicity (among other questions), and had to
> enter it in a centralized tracking system. We were given unconscious
> bias training sessions. A growing DEI staff offered regular meetings
> imploring us to "start talking about race." Monthly dialogues were
> offered for "women of color" and "men of color." Nonbinary people of
> color were included, too.
>
> These initiatives, bolstered by a $1 million grant from the NPR
> Foundation, came from management, from the top down. Crucially, they
> were in sync culturally with what was happening at the grassroots-among
> producers, reporters, and other staffers. Most visible was a burgeoning
> number of employee resource (or affinity) groups based on identity.
>
> They included MGIPOC (Marginalized Genders and Intersex People of Color
> mentorship program); Mi Gente (Latinx employees at NPR); NPR Noir
> (black employees at NPR); Southwest Asians and North Africans at NPR;
> Ummah (for Muslim-identifying employees); Women, Gender-Expansive, and
> Transgender People in Technology Throughout Public Media; Khevre
> (Jewish heritage and culture at NPR); and NPR Pride (LGBTQIA employees
> at NPR).
>
> All this reflected a broader movement in the culture of people
> clustering together based on ideology or a characteristic of birth. If,
> as NPR's internal website suggested, the groups were simply a "great
> way to meet like-minded colleagues" and "help new employees feel
> included," it would have been one thing.
>
> But the role and standing of affinity groups, including those outside
> NPR, were more than that. They became a priority for NPR's union, SAG-
> AFTRA-an item in collective bargaining. The current contract, in a
> section on DEI, requires NPR management to "keep up to date with
> current language and style guidance from journalism affinity groups"
> and to inform employees if language differs from the diktats of those
> groups. In such a case, the dispute could go before the DEI
> Accountability Committee.
>
> In essence, this means the NPR union, of which I am a dues-paying
> member, has ensured that advocacy groups are given a seat at the table
> in determining the terms and vocabulary of our news coverage.
>
> Conflicts between workers and bosses, between labor and management, are
> common in workplaces. NPR has had its share. But what's notable is the
> extent to which people at every level of NPR have comfortably coalesced
> around the progressive worldview.
>
> And this, I believe, is the most damaging development at NPR: the
> absence of viewpoint diversity.
>
> There's an unspoken consensus about the stories we should pursue and
> how they should be framed. It's frictionless-one story after another
> about instances of supposed racism, transphobia, signs of the climate
> apocalypse, Israel doing something bad, and the dire threat of
> Republican policies. It's almost like an assembly line.
>
> The mindset prevails in choices about language. In a document called
> NPR Transgender Coverage Guidance-disseminated by news management-we're
> asked to avoid the term biological sex. (The editorial guidance was
> prepared with the help of a former staffer of the National Center for
> Transgender Equality.) The mindset animates bizarre stories-on how The
> Beatles and bird names are racially problematic, and others that are
> alarmingly divisive; justifying looting, with claims that fears about
> crime are racist; and suggesting that Asian Americans who oppose
> affirmative action have been manipulated by white conservatives.
>
> More recently, we have approached the Israel-Hamas war and its
> spillover onto streets and campuses through the "intersectional" lens
> that has jumped from the faculty lounge to newsrooms. Oppressor versus
> oppressed. That's meant highlighting the suffering of Palestinians at
> almost every turn while downplaying the atrocities of October 7,
> overlooking how Hamas intentionally puts Palestinian civilians in
> peril, and giving little weight to the explosion of antisemitic hate
> around the world.
>
> For nearly all my career, working at NPR has been a source of great
> pride. It's a privilege to work in the newsroom at a crown jewel of
> American journalism. My colleagues are congenial and hardworking.
>
> I can't count the number of times I would meet someone, describe what I
> do, and they'd say, "I love NPR!"
>
> And they wouldn't stop there. They would mention their favorite host or
> one of those "driveway moments" where a story was so good you'd stay in
> your car until it finished.
>
> It still happens, but often now the trajectory of the conversation is
> different. After the initial "I love NPR," there's a pause and a person
> will acknowledge, "I don't listen as much as I used to." Or, with some
> chagrin: "What's happening there? Why is NPR telling me what to think?"
>
> In recent years I've struggled to answer that question. Concerned by
> the lack of viewpoint diversity, I looked at voter registration for our
> newsroom. In D.C., where NPR is headquartered and many of us live, I
> found 87 registered Democrats working in editorial positions and zero
> Republicans. None.
>
> So on May 3, 2021, I presented the findings at an all-hands editorial
> staff meeting. When I suggested we had a diversity problem with a score
> of 87 Democrats and zero Republicans, the response wasn't hostile. It
> was worse. It was met with profound indifference. I got a few messages
> from surprised, curious colleagues. But the messages were of the "oh
> wow, that's weird" variety, as if the lopsided tally was a random
> anomaly rather than a critical failure of our diversity North Star.
>
> In a follow-up email exchange, a top NPR news executive told me that
> she had been "skewered" for bringing up diversity of thought when she
> arrived at NPR. So, she said, "I want to be careful how we discuss this
> publicly."
>
> For years, I have been persistent. When I believe our coverage has gone
> off the rails, I have written regular emails to top news leaders,
> sometimes even having one-on-one sessions with them. On March 10, 2022,
> I wrote to a top news executive about the numerous times we described
> the controversial education bill in Florida as the "Don't Say Gay" bill
> when it didn't even use the word gay.

BTR1701 <atropos@mac.com> wrote:
> In article <uvb69k$2b6g4$3@dont-email.me>,
> Ubiquitous <weberm@polaris.net> wrote:
>
> Excellent analysis of the pervasiveness of 'progressive' bias and
> enforcement of ideological rigor in the legacy media. And coming from a
> liberal at NPR, it cuts off the typical blame-the-messenger tactic
> employed by the Effas of the world at the knees.
>
>> You know the stereotype of the NPR listener: an EV-driving, Wordle-
>> playing, tote bag-carrying coastal elite. It doesn't precisely describe
>> me, but it's not far off. I'm Sarah Lawrence-educated, was raised by a
>> lesbian peace activist mother, I drive a Subaru, and Spotify says my
>> listening habits are most similar to people in Berkeley.
>>
>> I fit the NPR mold. I'll cop to that.
>>
>> So when I got a job here 25 years ago, I never looked back. As a senior
>> editor on the business desk where news is always breaking, we've
>> covered upheavals in the workplace, supermarket prices, social media,
>> and AI.
>>
>> It's true NPR has always had a liberal bent, but during most of my
>> tenure here, an open-minded, curious culture prevailed. We were nerdy,
>> but not knee-jerk, activist, or scolding.
>>
>> In recent years, however, that has changed. Today, those who listen to
>> NPR or read its coverage online find something different: the distilled
>> worldview of a very small segment of the U.S. population.
>>
>> If you are conservative, you will read this and say, duh, it's always
>> been this way.
>>
>> But it hasn't.
>>
>> For decades, since its founding in 1970, a wide swath of America tuned
>> in to NPR for reliable journalism and gorgeous audio pieces with birds
>> singing in the Amazon. Millions came to us for conversations that
>> exposed us to voices around the country and the world radically
>> different from our own-engaging precisely because they were unguarded
>> and unpredictable. No image generated more pride within NPR than the
>> farmer listening to Morning Edition from his or her tractor at sunrise.
>>
>> Back in 2011, although NPR's audience tilted a bit to the left, it
>> still bore a resemblance to America at large. Twenty-six percent of
>> listeners described themselves as conservative, 23 percent as middle of
>> the road, and 37 percent as liberal.
>>
>> 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.
>>
>> An open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR, and now,
>> predictably, we don't have an audience that reflects America.
>>
>> That wouldn't be a problem for an openly polemical news outlet serving
>> a niche audience. But for NPR, which purports to consider all things,
>> it's devastating both for its journalism and its business model.
>>
>>
>> Like many unfortunate things, the rise of advocacy took off with Donald
>> Trump. As in many newsrooms, his election in 2016 was greeted at NPR
>> with a mixture of disbelief, anger, and despair. (Just to note, I
>> eagerly voted against Trump twice but felt we were obliged to cover him
>> fairly.) But what began as tough, straightforward coverage of a
>> belligerent, truth-impaired president veered toward efforts to damage
>> or topple Trump's presidency.
>>
>> Persistent rumors that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia over the
>> election became the catnip that drove reporting. At NPR, we hitched our
>> wagon to Trump's most visible antagonist, Representative Adam Schiff.
>>
>> 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 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.
>>
>> But when the Mueller report found no credible evidence of collusion,
>> NPR's coverage was notably sparse. Russiagate quietly faded from our
>> programming.
>>
>> It is one thing to swing and miss on a major story. Unfortunately, it
>> happens. You follow the wrong leads, you get misled by sources you
>> trusted, you're emotionally invested in a narrative, and bits of
>> circumstantial evidence never add up. It's bad to blow a big story.
>>
>> What's worse is to pretend it never happened, to move on with no mea
>> culpas, no self-reflection. Especially when you expect high standards
>> of transparency from public figures and institutions, but don't
>> practice those standards yourself. That's what shatters trust and
>> engenders cynicism about the media.
>>
>> Russiagate was not NPR's only miscue.
>>
>> In October 2020, the New York Post published the explosive report about
>> the laptop Hunter Biden abandoned at a Delaware computer shop
>> containing emails about his sordid business dealings. With the election
>> only weeks away, NPR turned a blind eye. Here's how NPR's managing
>> editor for news at the time explained the thinking: "We don't want to
>> waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don't
>> want to waste the listeners' and readers' time on stories that are just
>> pure distractions."
>>
>> But it wasn't a pure distraction, or a product of Russian
>> disinformation, as dozens of former and current intelligence officials
>> suggested. The laptop did belong to Hunter Biden. Its contents revealed
>> his connection to the corrupt world of multimillion-dollar influence
>> peddling and its possible implications for his father.
>>
>> The laptop was newsworthy. But the timeless journalistic instinct of
>> following a hot story lead was being squelched. During a meeting with
>> colleagues, I listened as one of NPR's best and most fair-minded
>> journalists said it was good we weren't following the laptop story
>> because it could help Trump.
>>
>> When the essential facts of the Post's reporting were confirmed and the
>> emails verified independently about a year and a half later, we could
>> have fessed up to our misjudgment. But, like Russia collusion, we
>> didn't make the hard choice of transparency.
>>
>> Politics also intruded into NPR's Covid coverage, most notably in
>> reporting on the origin of the pandemic. One of the most dismal aspects
>> of Covid journalism is how quickly it defaulted to ideological story
>> lines. For example, there was Team Natural Origin-supporting the
>> hypothesis that the virus came from a wild animal market in Wuhan,
>> China. And on the other side, Team Lab Leak, leaning into the idea that
>> the virus escaped from a Wuhan lab.
>>
>> The lab leak theory came in for rough treatment almost immediately,
>> dismissed as racist or a right-wing conspiracy theory. Anthony Fauci
>> and former NIH head Francis Collins, representing the public health
>> establishment, were its most notable critics. And that was enough for
>> NPR. We became fervent members of Team Natural Origin, even declaring
>> that the lab leak had been debunked by scientists.
>>
>> But that wasn't the case.
>
> I've never understood why the American media was so invested in
> protecting the Chinese Communist Party from responsibility and
> much-deserved criticism over its creation of and release of that virus.
>

Hey, I just got back from the grocery store and the Chinese food counter,
all the Chinese people behind it are wearing the Covid masks again. What
the hell?

>> When word first broke of a mysterious virus in Wuhan, a number of
>> leading virologists immediately suspected it could have leaked from a
>> lab there conducting experiments on bat coronaviruses. This was in
>> January 2020, during calmer moments before a global pandemic had been
>> declared, and before fear spread and politics intruded.
>>
>> Reporting on a possible lab leak soon became radioactive.
>
> Talking about it was radioactive on rec.arts.tv, also. And much like the
> leftists at NPR, there have never been any mea culpas or admissions of
> error from Effa and Hutt and moviePig over the Wuhan Lab, the Biden
> laptop, or the fake Russia collusion conspiracy.
>
>> Fauci and Collins apparently encouraged the March publication of an
>> influential scientific paper known as "The Proximal Origin of
>> SARS-CoV-2." Its authors wrote they didn't believe "any type of
>> laboratory-based scenario is plausible."
>>
>> But the lab leak hypothesis wouldn't die. And understandably so. In
>> private, even some of the scientists who penned the article dismissing
>> it sounded a different tune. One of the authors, Andrew Rambaut, an
>> evolutionary biologist from Edinburgh University, wrote to his
>> colleagues, "I literally swivel day by day thinking it is a lab escape
>> or natural."
>>
>> Over the course of the pandemic, a number of investigative journalists
>> made compelling, if not conclusive, cases for the lab leak. But at NPR,
>> we weren't about to swivel or even tiptoe away from the insistence with
>> which we backed the natural origin story. We didn't budge when the
>> Energy Department-the federal agency with the most expertise about
>> laboratories and biological research-concluded, albeit with low
>> confidence, that a lab leak was the most likely explanation for the
>> emergence of the virus.
>>
>> Instead, we introduced our coverage of that development on February 28,
>> 2023, by asserting confidently that "the scientific evidence
>> overwhelmingly points to a natural origin for the virus."
>>
>> When a colleague on our science desk was asked why they were so
>> dismissive of the lab leak theory, the response was odd. The colleague
>> compared it to the Bush administration's unfounded argument that Iraq
>> possessed weapons of mass destruction, apparently meaning we won't get
>> fooled again. But these two events were not even remotely related.
>> Again, politics were blotting out the curiosity and independence that
>> ought to have been driving our work.
>>
>> I'm offering three examples of widely followed stories where I believe
>> we faltered. Our coverage is out there in the public domain. Anyone can
>> read or listen for themselves and make their own judgment. But to truly
>> understand how independent journalism suffered at NPR, you need to step
>> inside the organization.
>>
>> You need to start with former CEO John Lansing. Lansing came to NPR in
>> 2019 from the federally funded agency that oversees Voice of America.
>> Like others who have served in the top job at NPR, he was hired
>> primarily to raise money and to ensure good working relations with
>> hundreds of member stations that acquire NPR's programming.
>>
>> After working mostly behind the scenes, Lansing became a more visible
>> and forceful figure after the killing of George Floyd in May 2020. It
>> was an anguished time in the newsroom, personally and professionally so
>> for NPR staffers. Floyd's murder, captured on video, changed both the
>> conversation and the daily operations at NPR.
>>
>> Given the circumstances of Floyd's death, it would have been an ideal
>> moment to tackle a difficult question: Is America, as progressive
>> activists claim, beset by systemic racism in the 2020s-in law
>> enforcement, education, housing, and elsewhere? We happen to have a
>> very powerful tool for answering such questions: journalism. Journalism
>> that lets evidence lead the way.
>>
>> But the message from the top was very different. America's infestation
>> with systemic racism was declared loud and clear: it was a given. Our
>> mission was to change it.
>>
>> "When it comes to identifying and ending systemic racism," Lansing
>> wrote in a companywide article, "we can be agents of change. Listening
>> and deep reflection are necessary but not enough. They must be followed
>> by constructive and meaningful steps forward. I will hold myself
>> accountable for this."
>>
>> And we were told that NPR itself was part of the problem. In
>> confessional language he said the leaders of public media, "starting
>> with me-must be aware of how we ourselves have benefited from white
>> privilege in our careers. We must understand the unconscious bias we
>> bring to our work and interactions. And we must commit ourselves-body
>> and soul-to profound changes in ourselves and our institutions."
>>
>> He declared that diversity-on our staff and in our audience-was the
>> overriding mission, the "North Star" of the organization. Phrases like
>> "that's part of the North Star" became part of meetings and more casual
>> conversation.
>>
>> Race and identity became paramount in nearly every aspect of the
>> workplace. Journalists were required to ask everyone we interviewed
>> their race, gender, and ethnicity (among other questions), and had to
>> enter it in a centralized tracking system. We were given unconscious
>> bias training sessions. A growing DEI staff offered regular meetings
>> imploring us to "start talking about race." Monthly dialogues were
>> offered for "women of color" and "men of color." Nonbinary people of
>> color were included, too.
>>
>> These initiatives, bolstered by a $1 million grant from the NPR
>> Foundation, came from management, from the top down. Crucially, they
>> were in sync culturally with what was happening at the grassroots-among
>> producers, reporters, and other staffers. Most visible was a burgeoning
>> number of employee resource (or affinity) groups based on identity.
>>
>> They included MGIPOC (Marginalized Genders and Intersex People of Color
>> mentorship program); Mi Gente (Latinx employees at NPR); NPR Noir
>> (black employees at NPR); Southwest Asians and North Africans at NPR;
>> Ummah (for Muslim-identifying employees); Women, Gender-Expansive, and
>> Transgender People in Technology Throughout Public Media; Khevre
>> (Jewish heritage and culture at NPR); and NPR Pride (LGBTQIA employees
>> at NPR).
>>
>> All this reflected a broader movement in the culture of people
>> clustering together based on ideology or a characteristic of birth. If,
>> as NPR's internal website suggested, the groups were simply a "great
>> way to meet like-minded colleagues" and "help new employees feel
>> included," it would have been one thing.
>>
>> But the role and standing of affinity groups, including those outside
>> NPR, were more than that. They became a priority for NPR's union, SAG-
>> AFTRA-an item in collective bargaining. The current contract, in a
>> section on DEI, requires NPR management to "keep up to date with
>> current language and style guidance from journalism affinity groups"
>> and to inform employees if language differs from the diktats of those
>> groups. In such a case, the dispute could go before the DEI
>> Accountability Committee.
>>
>> In essence, this means the NPR union, of which I am a dues-paying
>> member, has ensured that advocacy groups are given a seat at the table
>> in determining the terms and vocabulary of our news coverage.
>>
>> Conflicts between workers and bosses, between labor and management, are
>> common in workplaces. NPR has had its share. But what's notable is the
>> extent to which people at every level of NPR have comfortably coalesced
>> around the progressive worldview.
>>
>> And this, I believe, is the most damaging development at NPR: the
>> absence of viewpoint diversity.
>>
>> There's an unspoken consensus about the stories we should pursue and
>> how they should be framed. It's frictionless-one story after another
>> about instances of supposed racism, transphobia, signs of the climate
>> apocalypse, Israel doing something bad, and the dire threat of
>> Republican policies. It's almost like an assembly line.
>>
>> The mindset prevails in choices about language. In a document called
>> NPR Transgender Coverage Guidance-disseminated by news management-we're
>> asked to avoid the term biological sex. (The editorial guidance was
>> prepared with the help of a former staffer of the National Center for
>> Transgender Equality.) The mindset animates bizarre stories-on how The
>> Beatles and bird names are racially problematic, and others that are
>> alarmingly divisive; justifying looting, with claims that fears about
>> crime are racist; and suggesting that Asian Americans who oppose
>> affirmative action have been manipulated by white conservatives.
>>
>> More recently, we have approached the Israel-Hamas war and its
>> spillover onto streets and campuses through the "intersectional" lens
>> that has jumped from the faculty lounge to newsrooms. Oppressor versus
>> oppressed. That's meant highlighting the suffering of Palestinians at
>> almost every turn while downplaying the atrocities of October 7,
>> overlooking how Hamas intentionally puts Palestinian civilians in
>> peril, and giving little weight to the explosion of antisemitic hate
>> around the world.
>>
>> For nearly all my career, working at NPR has been a source of great
>> pride. It's a privilege to work in the newsroom at a crown jewel of
>> American journalism. My colleagues are congenial and hardworking.
>>
>> I can't count the number of times I would meet someone, describe what I
>> do, and they'd say, "I love NPR!"
>>
>> And they wouldn't stop there. They would mention their favorite host or
>> one of those "driveway moments" where a story was so good you'd stay in
>> your car until it finished.
>>
>> It still happens, but often now the trajectory of the conversation is
>> different. After the initial "I love NPR," there's a pause and a person
>> will acknowledge, "I don't listen as much as I used to." Or, with some
>> chagrin: "What's happening there? Why is NPR telling me what to think?"
>>
>> In recent years I've struggled to answer that question. Concerned by
>> the lack of viewpoint diversity, I looked at voter registration for our
>> newsroom. In D.C., where NPR is headquartered and many of us live, I
>> found 87 registered Democrats working in editorial positions and zero
>> Republicans. None.
>>
>> So on May 3, 2021, I presented the findings at an all-hands editorial
>> staff meeting. When I suggested we had a diversity problem with a score
>> of 87 Democrats and zero Republicans, the response wasn't hostile. It
>> was worse. It was met with profound indifference. I got a few messages
>> from surprised, curious colleagues. But the messages were of the "oh
>> wow, that's weird" variety, as if the lopsided tally was a random
>> anomaly rather than a critical failure of our diversity North Star.
>>
>> In a follow-up email exchange, a top NPR news executive told me that
>> she had been "skewered" for bringing up diversity of thought when she
>> arrived at NPR. So, she said, "I want to be careful how we discuss this
>> publicly."
>>
>> For years, I have been persistent. When I believe our coverage has gone
>> off the rails, I have written regular emails to top news leaders,
>> sometimes even having one-on-one sessions with them. On March 10, 2022,
>> I wrote to a top news executive about the numerous times we described
>> the controversial education bill in Florida as the "Don't Say Gay" bill
>> when it didn't even use the word gay.
>
> Someone needs to point this out to Effa. Even his fellow liberals are
> troubled by the kind of lies he spews.
>
>> Throughout these exchanges, no one has ever trashed me. That's not the
>> NPR way. People are polite. But nothing changes. So I've become a
>> visible wrong-thinker at a place I love. It's uncomfortable, sometimes
>> heartbreaking.
>>
>> Even so, out of frustration, on November 6, 2022, I wrote to the
>> captain of ship North Star-CEO John Lansing-about the lack of viewpoint
>> diversity and asked if we could have a conversation about it. I got no
>> response, so I followed up four days later. He said he would appreciate
>> hearing my perspective and copied his assistant to set up a meeting. On
>> December 15, the morning of the meeting, Lansing's assistant wrote back
>> to cancel our conversation because he was under the weather. She said
>> he was looking forward to chatting and a new meeting invitation would
>> be sent. But it never came.
>>
>> I won't speculate about why our meeting never happened. Being CEO of
>> NPR is a demanding job with lots of constituents and headaches to deal
>> with. But what's indisputable is that no one in a C-suite or upper
>> management position has chosen to deal with the lack of viewpoint
>> diversity at NPR and how that affects our journalism.
>>
>> Which is a shame. Because for all the emphasis on our North Star, NPR's
>> news audience in recent years has become less diverse, not more so.
>> Back in 2011, our audience leaned a bit to the left but roughly
>> reflected America politically; now, the audience is cramped into a
>> smaller, progressive silo.
>>
>> Despite all the resources we'd devoted to building up our news audience
>> among blacks and Hispanics, the numbers have barely budged. In 2023,
>> according to our demographic research, 6 percent of our news audience
>> was black, far short of the overall U.S. adult population, which is
>> 14.4 percent black. And Hispanics were only 7 percent, compared to the
>> overall Hispanic adult population, around 19 percent. Our news audience
>> doesn't come close to reflecting America. It's overwhelmingly white and
>> progressive, and clustered around coastal cities and college towns.
>>
>> These are perilous times for news organizations. Last year, NPR laid
>> off or bought out 10 percent of its staff and canceled four podcasts
>> following a slump in advertising revenue. Our radio audience is
>> dwindling and our podcast downloads are down from 2020. The digital
>> stories on our website rarely have national impact. They aren't
>> conversation starters. Our competitive advantage in audio-where for
>> years NPR had no peer-is vanishing. There are plenty of informative and
>> entertaining podcasts to choose from.
>>
>> Even within our diminished audience, there's evidence of trouble at the
>> most basic level: trust.
>>
>> In February, our audience insights team sent an email proudly
>> announcing that we had a higher trustworthy score than CNN or The New
>> York Times. But the research from Harris Poll is hardly reassuring. It
>> found that "3-in-10 audience members familiar with NPR said they
>> associate NPR with the characteristic `trustworthy.'?" Only in a world
>> where media credibility has completely imploded would a 3-in-10
>> trustworthy score be something to boast about.
>>
>> With declining ratings, sorry levels of trust, and an audience that has
>> become less diverse over time, the trajectory for NPR is not promising.
>> Two paths seem clear. We can keep doing what we're doing, hoping it
>> will all work out. Or we could start over, with the basic building
>> blocks of journalism. We could face up to where we've gone wrong. News
>> organizations don't go in for that kind of reckoning. But there's a
>> good reason for NPR to be the first: we're the ones with the word
>> public in our name.
>>
>> Despite our missteps at NPR, defunding isn't the answer. As the country
>> becomes more fractured, there's still a need for a public institution
>> where stories are told and viewpoints exchanged in good faith.

On 4/12/24 4:27 PM, BTR1701 wrote:
> In article <uvb69k$2b6g4$3@dont-email.me>,
> Ubiquitous <weberm@polaris.net> wrote:
>
> Excellent analysis of the pervasiveness of 'progressive' bias and
> enforcement of ideological rigor in the legacy media. And coming from a
> liberal at NPR, it cuts off the typical blame-the-messenger tactic
> employed by the Effas of the world at the knees.
>
>> You know the stereotype of the NPR listener: an EV-driving, Wordle-
>> playing, tote bag-carrying coastal elite.

Why don't you two form a brain trust and do a point/counterpoint about
the typical Fox Viewer/MAGA rally attendee? Is it fear, stupidity, or
both in the case of you two butt buddies?

anim8rfsk@cox.net wrote:
> Ubiquitous <weberm@polaris.net> wrote:
>>
>> You know the stereotype of the NPR listener: an EV-driving, Wordle-
>> playing, tote bag-carrying coastal elite. It doesn't precisely describe
>> me, but it's not far off. I'm Sarah Lawrence-educated, was raised by a
>> lesbian peace activist mother, I drive a Subaru, and Spotify says my
>> listening habits are most similar to people in Berkeley.
>>
>> I fit the NPR mold. I'll cop to that.
>>
>> So when I got a job here 25 years ago, I never looked back. As a senior
>> editor on the business desk where news is always breaking, we've
>> covered upheavals in the workplace, supermarket prices, social media,
>> and AI.
>>
>> It's true NPR has always had a liberal bent, but during most of my
>> tenure here, an open-minded, curious culture prevailed. We were nerdy,
>> but not knee-jerk, activist, or scolding.
>>
>> In recent years, however, that has changed. Today, those who listen to
>> NPR or read its coverage online find something different: the distilled
>> worldview of a very small segment of the U.S. population.
>>
>> If you are conservative, you will read this and say, duh, it's always
>> been this way.
>>
>> But it hasn't.
>
>Yes, it has. As far back as I can remember which is pretty much 1970 in
>this case.
>
>Now I'm told that NPR varies wildly location to location, but the one in
>Phoenix has always been Commie pinko propaganda. The only thing I ever
>listened to it, for was click and clack.

Yeah, I've heard the same thing and it's a load of Barbra Stressand.

--
Let's go Brandon!

atropos@mac.com wrote:
> Ubiquitous <weberm@polaris.net> wrote:

>Excellent analysis of the pervasiveness of 'progressive' bias and
>enforcement of ideological rigor in the legacy media. And coming from a
>liberal at NPR, it cuts off the typical blame-the-messenger tactic
>employed by the Effas of the world at the knees.
>
>> You know the stereotype of the NPR listener: an EV-driving, Wordle-
>> playing, tote bag-carrying coastal elite. It doesn't precisely describe
>> me, but it's not far off. I'm Sarah Lawrence-educated, was raised by a
>> lesbian peace activist mother, I drive a Subaru, and Spotify says my
>> listening habits are most similar to people in Berkeley.
>>
>> I fit the NPR mold. I'll cop to that.
>>
>> So when I got a job here 25 years ago, I never looked back. As a senior
>> editor on the business desk where news is always breaking, we've
>> covered upheavals in the workplace, supermarket prices, social media,
>> and AI.
>>
>> It's true NPR has always had a liberal bent, but during most of my
>> tenure here, an open-minded, curious culture prevailed. We were nerdy,
>> but not knee-jerk, activist, or scolding.
>>
>> In recent years, however, that has changed. Today, those who listen to
>> NPR or read its coverage online find something different: the distilled
>> worldview of a very small segment of the U.S. population.
>>
>> If you are conservative, you will read this and say, duh, it's always
>> been this way.
>>
>> But it hasn't.
>>
>> For decades, since its founding in 1970, a wide swath of America tuned
>> in to NPR for reliable journalism and gorgeous audio pieces with birds
>> singing in the Amazon. Millions came to us for conversations that
>> exposed us to voices around the country and the world radically
>> different from our own-engaging precisely because they were unguarded
>> and unpredictable. No image generated more pride within NPR than the
>> farmer listening to Morning Edition from his or her tractor at sunrise.
>>
>> Back in 2011, although NPR's audience tilted a bit to the left, it
>> still bore a resemblance to America at large. Twenty-six percent of
>> listeners described themselves as conservative, 23 percent as middle of
>> the road, and 37 percent as liberal.
>>
>> 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.
>>
>> An open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR, and now,
>> predictably, we don't have an audience that reflects America.
>>
>> That wouldn't be a problem for an openly polemical news outlet serving
>> a niche audience. But for NPR, which purports to consider all things,
>> it's devastating both for its journalism and its business model.
>>
>>
>> Like many unfortunate things, the rise of advocacy took off with Donald
>> Trump. As in many newsrooms, his election in 2016 was greeted at NPR
>> with a mixture of disbelief, anger, and despair. (Just to note, I
>> eagerly voted against Trump twice but felt we were obliged to cover him
>> fairly.) But what began as tough, straightforward coverage of a
>> belligerent, truth-impaired president veered toward efforts to damage
>> or topple Trump's presidency.
>>
>> Persistent rumors that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia over the
>> election became the catnip that drove reporting. At NPR, we hitched our
>> wagon to Trump's most visible antagonist, Representative Adam Schiff.
>>
>> 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 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.
>>
>> But when the Mueller report found no credible evidence of collusion,
>> NPR's coverage was notably sparse. Russiagate quietly faded from our
>> programming.
>>
>> It is one thing to swing and miss on a major story. Unfortunately, it
>> happens. You follow the wrong leads, you get misled by sources you
>> trusted, you're emotionally invested in a narrative, and bits of
>> circumstantial evidence never add up. It's bad to blow a big story.
>>
>> What's worse is to pretend it never happened, to move on with no mea
>> culpas, no self-reflection. Especially when you expect high standards
>> of transparency from public figures and institutions, but don't
>> practice those standards yourself. That's what shatters trust and
>> engenders cynicism about the media.
>>
>> Russiagate was not NPR's only miscue.
>>
>> In October 2020, the New York Post published the explosive report about
>> the laptop Hunter Biden abandoned at a Delaware computer shop
>> containing emails about his sordid business dealings. With the election
>> only weeks away, NPR turned a blind eye. Here's how NPR's managing
>> editor for news at the time explained the thinking: "We don't want to
>> waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don't
>> want to waste the listeners' and readers' time on stories that are just
>> pure distractions."
>>
>> But it wasn't a pure distraction, or a product of Russian
>> disinformation, as dozens of former and current intelligence officials
>> suggested. The laptop did belong to Hunter Biden. Its contents revealed
>> his connection to the corrupt world of multimillion-dollar influence
>> peddling and its possible implications for his father.
>>
>> The laptop was newsworthy. But the timeless journalistic instinct of
>> following a hot story lead was being squelched. During a meeting with
>> colleagues, I listened as one of NPR's best and most fair-minded
>> journalists said it was good we weren't following the laptop story
>> because it could help Trump.
>>
>> When the essential facts of the Post's reporting were confirmed and the
>> emails verified independently about a year and a half later, we could
>> have fessed up to our misjudgment. But, like Russia collusion, we
>> didn't make the hard choice of transparency.
>>
>> Politics also intruded into NPR's Covid coverage, most notably in
>> reporting on the origin of the pandemic. One of the most dismal aspects
>> of Covid journalism is how quickly it defaulted to ideological story
>> lines. For example, there was Team Natural Origin-supporting the
>> hypothesis that the virus came from a wild animal market in Wuhan,
>> China. And on the other side, Team Lab Leak, leaning into the idea that
>> the virus escaped from a Wuhan lab.
>>
>> The lab leak theory came in for rough treatment almost immediately,
>> dismissed as racist or a right-wing conspiracy theory. Anthony Fauci
>> and former NIH head Francis Collins, representing the public health
>> establishment, were its most notable critics. And that was enough for
>> NPR. We became fervent members of Team Natural Origin, even declaring
>> that the lab leak had been debunked by scientists.
>>
>> But that wasn't the case.
>
>I've never understood why the American media was so invested in
>protecting the Chinese Communist Party from responsibility and
>much-deserved criticism over its creation of and release of that virus.

The liberal media supports the DNC and their Chinese masters.

>> When word first broke of a mysterious virus in Wuhan, a number of
>> leading virologists immediately suspected it could have leaked from a
>> lab there conducting experiments on bat coronaviruses. This was in
>> January 2020, during calmer moments before a global pandemic had been
>> declared, and before fear spread and politics intruded.
>>
>> Reporting on a possible lab leak soon became radioactive.
>
>Talking about it was radioactive on rec.arts.tv, also. And much like the
>leftists at NPR, there have never been any mea culpas or admissions of
>error from Effa and Hutt and moviePig over the Wuhan Lab, the Biden
>laptop, or the fake Russia collusion conspiracy.
>
>> Fauci and Collins apparently encouraged the March publication of an
>> influential scientific paper known as "The Proximal Origin of
>> SARS-CoV-2." Its authors wrote they didn't believe "any type of
>> laboratory-based scenario is plausible."
>>
>> But the lab leak hypothesis wouldn't die. And understandably so. In
>> private, even some of the scientists who penned the article dismissing
>> it sounded a different tune. One of the authors, Andrew Rambaut, an
>> evolutionary biologist from Edinburgh University, wrote to his
>> colleagues, "I literally swivel day by day thinking it is a lab escape
>> or natural."
>>
>> Over the course of the pandemic, a number of investigative journalists
>> made compelling, if not conclusive, cases for the lab leak. But at NPR,
>> we weren't about to swivel or even tiptoe away from the insistence with
>> which we backed the natural origin story. We didn't budge when the
>> Energy Department-the federal agency with the most expertise about
>> laboratories and biological research-concluded, albeit with low
>> confidence, that a lab leak was the most likely explanation for the
>> emergence of the virus.
>>
>> Instead, we introduced our coverage of that development on February 28,
>> 2023, by asserting confidently that "the scientific evidence
>> overwhelmingly points to a natural origin for the virus."
>>
>> When a colleague on our science desk was asked why they were so
>> dismissive of the lab leak theory, the response was odd. The colleague
>> compared it to the Bush administration's unfounded argument that Iraq
>> possessed weapons of mass destruction, apparently meaning we won't get
>> fooled again. But these two events were not even remotely related.
>> Again, politics were blotting out the curiosity and independence that
>> ought to have been driving our work.
>>
>> I'm offering three examples of widely followed stories where I believe
>> we faltered. Our coverage is out there in the public domain. Anyone can
>> read or listen for themselves and make their own judgment. But to truly
>> understand how independent journalism suffered at NPR, you need to step
>> inside the organization.
>>
>> You need to start with former CEO John Lansing. Lansing came to NPR in
>> 2019 from the federally funded agency that oversees Voice of America.
>> Like others who have served in the top job at NPR, he was hired
>> primarily to raise money and to ensure good working relations with
>> hundreds of member stations that acquire NPR's programming.
>>
>> After working mostly behind the scenes, Lansing became a more visible
>> and forceful figure after the killing of George Floyd in May 2020. It
>> was an anguished time in the newsroom, personally and professionally so
>> for NPR staffers. Floyd's murder, captured on video, changed both the
>> conversation and the daily operations at NPR.
>>
>> Given the circumstances of Floyd's death, it would have been an ideal
>> moment to tackle a difficult question: Is America, as progressive
>> activists claim, beset by systemic racism in the 2020s-in law
>> enforcement, education, housing, and elsewhere? We happen to have a
>> very powerful tool for answering such questions: journalism. Journalism
>> that lets evidence lead the way.
>>
>> But the message from the top was very different. America's infestation
>> with systemic racism was declared loud and clear: it was a given. Our
>> mission was to change it.
>>
>> "When it comes to identifying and ending systemic racism," Lansing
>> wrote in a companywide article, "we can be agents of change. Listening
>> and deep reflection are necessary but not enough. They must be followed
>> by constructive and meaningful steps forward. I will hold myself
>> accountable for this."
>>
>> And we were told that NPR itself was part of the problem. In
>> confessional language he said the leaders of public media, "starting
>> with me-must be aware of how we ourselves have benefited from white
>> privilege in our careers. We must understand the unconscious bias we
>> bring to our work and interactions. And we must commit ourselves-body
>> and soul-to profound changes in ourselves and our institutions."
>>
>> He declared that diversity-on our staff and in our audience-was the
>> overriding mission, the "North Star" of the organization. Phrases like
>> "that's part of the North Star" became part of meetings and more casual
>> conversation.
>>
>> Race and identity became paramount in nearly every aspect of the
>> workplace. Journalists were required to ask everyone we interviewed
>> their race, gender, and ethnicity (among other questions), and had to
>> enter it in a centralized tracking system. We were given unconscious
>> bias training sessions. A growing DEI staff offered regular meetings
>> imploring us to "start talking about race." Monthly dialogues were
>> offered for "women of color" and "men of color." Nonbinary people of
>> color were included, too.
>>
>> These initiatives, bolstered by a $1 million grant from the NPR
>> Foundation, came from management, from the top down. Crucially, they
>> were in sync culturally with what was happening at the grassroots-among
>> producers, reporters, and other staffers. Most visible was a burgeoning
>> number of employee resource (or affinity) groups based on identity.
>>
>> They included MGIPOC (Marginalized Genders and Intersex People of Color
>> mentorship program); Mi Gente (Latinx employees at NPR); NPR Noir
>> (black employees at NPR); Southwest Asians and North Africans at NPR;
>> Ummah (for Muslim-identifying employees); Women, Gender-Expansive, and
>> Transgender People in Technology Throughout Public Media; Khevre
>> (Jewish heritage and culture at NPR); and NPR Pride (LGBTQIA employees
>> at NPR).
>>
>> All this reflected a broader movement in the culture of people
>> clustering together based on ideology or a characteristic of birth. If,
>> as NPR's internal website suggested, the groups were simply a "great
>> way to meet like-minded colleagues" and "help new employees feel
>> included," it would have been one thing.
>>
>> But the role and standing of affinity groups, including those outside
>> NPR, were more than that. They became a priority for NPR's union, SAG-
>> AFTRA-an item in collective bargaining. The current contract, in a
>> section on DEI, requires NPR management to "keep up to date with
>> current language and style guidance from journalism affinity groups"
>> and to inform employees if language differs from the diktats of those
>> groups. In such a case, the dispute could go before the DEI
>> Accountability Committee.
>>
>> In essence, this means the NPR union, of which I am a dues-paying
>> member, has ensured that advocacy groups are given a seat at the table
>> in determining the terms and vocabulary of our news coverage.
>>
>> Conflicts between workers and bosses, between labor and management, are
>> common in workplaces. NPR has had its share. But what's notable is the
>> extent to which people at every level of NPR have comfortably coalesced
>> around the progressive worldview.
>>
>> And this, I believe, is the most damaging development at NPR: the
>> absence of viewpoint diversity.
>>
>> There's an unspoken consensus about the stories we should pursue and
>> how they should be framed. It's frictionless-one story after another
>> about instances of supposed racism, transphobia, signs of the climate
>> apocalypse, Israel doing something bad, and the dire threat of
>> Republican policies. It's almost like an assembly line.
>>
>> The mindset prevails in choices about language. In a document called
>> NPR Transgender Coverage Guidance-disseminated by news management-we're
>> asked to avoid the term biological sex. (The editorial guidance was
>> prepared with the help of a former staffer of the National Center for
>> Transgender Equality.) The mindset animates bizarre stories-on how The
>> Beatles and bird names are racially problematic, and others that are
>> alarmingly divisive; justifying looting, with claims that fears about
>> crime are racist; and suggesting that Asian Americans who oppose
>> affirmative action have been manipulated by white conservatives.
>>
>> More recently, we have approached the Israel-Hamas war and its
>> spillover onto streets and campuses through the "intersectional" lens
>> that has jumped from the faculty lounge to newsrooms. Oppressor versus
>> oppressed. That's meant highlighting the suffering of Palestinians at
>> almost every turn while downplaying the atrocities of October 7,
>> overlooking how Hamas intentionally puts Palestinian civilians in
>> peril, and giving little weight to the explosion of antisemitic hate
>> around the world.
>>
>> For nearly all my career, working at NPR has been a source of great
>> pride. It's a privilege to work in the newsroom at a crown jewel of
>> American journalism. My colleagues are congenial and hardworking.
>>
>> I can't count the number of times I would meet someone, describe what I
>> do, and they'd say, "I love NPR!"
>>
>> And they wouldn't stop there. They would mention their favorite host or
>> one of those "driveway moments" where a story was so good you'd stay in
>> your car until it finished.
>>
>> It still happens, but often now the trajectory of the conversation is
>> different. After the initial "I love NPR," there's a pause and a person
>> will acknowledge, "I don't listen as much as I used to." Or, with some
>> chagrin: "What's happening there? Why is NPR telling me what to think?"
>>
>> In recent years I've struggled to answer that question. Concerned by
>> the lack of viewpoint diversity, I looked at voter registration for our
>> newsroom. In D.C., where NPR is headquartered and many of us live, I
>> found 87 registered Democrats working in editorial positions and zero
>> Republicans. None.
>>
>> So on May 3, 2021, I presented the findings at an all-hands editorial
>> staff meeting. When I suggested we had a diversity problem with a score
>> of 87 Democrats and zero Republicans, the response wasn't hostile. It
>> was worse. It was met with profound indifference. I got a few messages
>> from surprised, curious colleagues. But the messages were of the "oh
>> wow, that's weird" variety, as if the lopsided tally was a random
>> anomaly rather than a critical failure of our diversity North Star.
>>
>> In a follow-up email exchange, a top NPR news executive told me that
>> she had been "skewered" for bringing up diversity of thought when she
>> arrived at NPR. So, she said, "I want to be careful how we discuss this
>> publicly."
>>
>> For years, I have been persistent. When I believe our coverage has gone
>> off the rails, I have written regular emails to top news leaders,
>> sometimes even having one-on-one sessions with them. On March 10, 2022,
>> I wrote to a top news executive about the numerous times we described
>> the controversial education bill in Florida as the "Don't Say Gay" bill
>> when it didn't even use the word gay.
>
>Someone needs to point this out to Effa. Even his fellow liberals are
>troubled by the kind of lies he spews.

anim8rfsk@cox.net wrote:
>BTR1701 <atropos@mac.com> wrote:
>> Ubiquitous <weberm@polaris.net> wrote:

>> Excellent analysis of the pervasiveness of 'progressive' bias and
>> enforcement of ideological rigor in the legacy media. And coming from a
>> liberal at NPR, it cuts off the typical blame-the-messenger tactic
>> employed by the Effas of the world at the knees.
>>
>>> You know the stereotype of the NPR listener: an EV-driving, Wordle-
>>> playing, tote bag-carrying coastal elite. It doesn't precisely describe
>>> me, but it's not far off. I'm Sarah Lawrence-educated, was raised by a
>>> lesbian peace activist mother, I drive a Subaru, and Spotify says my
>>> listening habits are most similar to people in Berkeley.
>>>
>>> I fit the NPR mold. I'll cop to that.
>>>
>>> So when I got a job here 25 years ago, I never looked back. As a senior
>>> editor on the business desk where news is always breaking, we've
>>> covered upheavals in the workplace, supermarket prices, social media,
>>> and AI.
>>>
>>> It's true NPR has always had a liberal bent, but during most of my
>>> tenure here, an open-minded, curious culture prevailed. We were nerdy,
>>> but not knee-jerk, activist, or scolding.
>>>
>>> In recent years, however, that has changed. Today, those who listen to
>>> NPR or read its coverage online find something different: the distilled
>>> worldview of a very small segment of the U.S. population.
>>>
>>> If you are conservative, you will read this and say, duh, it's always
>>> been this way.
>>>
>>> But it hasn't.
>>>
>>> For decades, since its founding in 1970, a wide swath of America tuned
>>> in to NPR for reliable journalism and gorgeous audio pieces with birds
>>> singing in the Amazon. Millions came to us for conversations that
>>> exposed us to voices around the country and the world radically
>>> different from our own-engaging precisely because they were unguarded
>>> and unpredictable. No image generated more pride within NPR than the
>>> farmer listening to Morning Edition from his or her tractor at sunrise.
>>>
>>> Back in 2011, although NPR's audience tilted a bit to the left, it
>>> still bore a resemblance to America at large. Twenty-six percent of
>>> listeners described themselves as conservative, 23 percent as middle of
>>> the road, and 37 percent as liberal.
>>>
>>> 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.
>>>
>>> An open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR, and now,
>>> predictably, we don't have an audience that reflects America.
>>>
>>> That wouldn't be a problem for an openly polemical news outlet serving
>>> a niche audience. But for NPR, which purports to consider all things,
>>> it's devastating both for its journalism and its business model.
>>>
>>>
>>> Like many unfortunate things, the rise of advocacy took off with Donald
>>> Trump. As in many newsrooms, his election in 2016 was greeted at NPR
>>> with a mixture of disbelief, anger, and despair. (Just to note, I
>>> eagerly voted against Trump twice but felt we were obliged to cover him
>>> fairly.) But what began as tough, straightforward coverage of a
>>> belligerent, truth-impaired president veered toward efforts to damage
>>> or topple Trump's presidency.
>>>
>>> Persistent rumors that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia over the
>>> election became the catnip that drove reporting. At NPR, we hitched our
>>> wagon to Trump's most visible antagonist, Representative Adam Schiff.
>>>
>>> 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 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.
>>>
>>> But when the Mueller report found no credible evidence of collusion,
>>> NPR's coverage was notably sparse. Russiagate quietly faded from our
>>> programming.
>>>
>>> It is one thing to swing and miss on a major story. Unfortunately, it
>>> happens. You follow the wrong leads, you get misled by sources you
>>> trusted, you're emotionally invested in a narrative, and bits of
>>> circumstantial evidence never add up. It's bad to blow a big story.
>>>
>>> What's worse is to pretend it never happened, to move on with no mea
>>> culpas, no self-reflection. Especially when you expect high standards
>>> of transparency from public figures and institutions, but don't
>>> practice those standards yourself. That's what shatters trust and
>>> engenders cynicism about the media.
>>>
>>> Russiagate was not NPR's only miscue.
>>>
>>> In October 2020, the New York Post published the explosive report about
>>> the laptop Hunter Biden abandoned at a Delaware computer shop
>>> containing emails about his sordid business dealings. With the election
>>> only weeks away, NPR turned a blind eye. Here's how NPR's managing
>>> editor for news at the time explained the thinking: "We don't want to
>>> waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don't
>>> want to waste the listeners' and readers' time on stories that are just
>>> pure distractions."
>>>
>>> But it wasn't a pure distraction, or a product of Russian
>>> disinformation, as dozens of former and current intelligence officials
>>> suggested. The laptop did belong to Hunter Biden. Its contents revealed
>>> his connection to the corrupt world of multimillion-dollar influence
>>> peddling and its possible implications for his father.
>>>
>>> The laptop was newsworthy. But the timeless journalistic instinct of
>>> following a hot story lead was being squelched. During a meeting with
>>> colleagues, I listened as one of NPR's best and most fair-minded
>>> journalists said it was good we weren't following the laptop story
>>> because it could help Trump.
>>>
>>> When the essential facts of the Post's reporting were confirmed and the
>>> emails verified independently about a year and a half later, we could
>>> have fessed up to our misjudgment. But, like Russia collusion, we
>>> didn't make the hard choice of transparency.
>>>
>>> Politics also intruded into NPR's Covid coverage, most notably in
>>> reporting on the origin of the pandemic. One of the most dismal aspects
>>> of Covid journalism is how quickly it defaulted to ideological story
>>> lines. For example, there was Team Natural Origin-supporting the
>>> hypothesis that the virus came from a wild animal market in Wuhan,
>>> China. And on the other side, Team Lab Leak, leaning into the idea that
>>> the virus escaped from a Wuhan lab.
>>>
>>> The lab leak theory came in for rough treatment almost immediately,
>>> dismissed as racist or a right-wing conspiracy theory. Anthony Fauci
>>> and former NIH head Francis Collins, representing the public health
>>> establishment, were its most notable critics. And that was enough for
>>> NPR. We became fervent members of Team Natural Origin, even declaring
>>> that the lab leak had been debunked by scientists.
>>>
>>> But that wasn't the case.
>>
>> I've never understood why the American media was so invested in
>> protecting the Chinese Communist Party from responsibility and
>> much-deserved criticism over its creation of and release of that virus.
>
>Hey, I just got back from the grocery store and the Chinese food counter,
>all the Chinese people behind it are wearing the Covid masks again. What
>the hell?

gmsingh@email.com wrote:
> On 4/12/24 4:27 PM, BTR1701 wrote:
>> Ubiquitous <weberm@polaris.net> wrote:

>> Excellent analysis of the pervasiveness of 'progressive' bias and
>> enforcement of ideological rigor in the legacy media. And coming from a
>> liberal at NPR, it cuts off the typical blame-the-messenger tactic
>> employed by the Effas of the world at the knees.
>>
>>> You know the stereotype of the NPR listener: an EV-driving, Wordle-
>>> playing, tote bag-carrying coastal elite.
>
>
>Why don't you two form a brain trust and do a point/counterpoint about
>the typical Fox Viewer/MAGA rally attendee?

Nonsequitur noted. Get back to us when you have a real argument to make.

>both in the case of you two butt buddies?

Well, there you go obsessiving over butt sex again!

--
"Courage"
https://www.kindpng.com/imgv/Tbhxho_courage-rick-and-morty-hd-png-download/

Ubiquitous <weberm@polaris.net> wrote:
> anim8rfsk@cox.net wrote:
>> BTR1701 <atropos@mac.com> wrote:
>>> Ubiquitous <weberm@polaris.net> wrote:
>
>>> Excellent analysis of the pervasiveness of 'progressive' bias and
>>> enforcement of ideological rigor in the legacy media. And coming from a
>>> liberal at NPR, it cuts off the typical blame-the-messenger tactic
>>> employed by the Effas of the world at the knees.
>>>
>>>> You know the stereotype of the NPR listener: an EV-driving, Wordle-
>>>> playing, tote bag-carrying coastal elite. It doesn't precisely describe
>>>> me, but it's not far off. I'm Sarah Lawrence-educated, was raised by a
>>>> lesbian peace activist mother, I drive a Subaru, and Spotify says my
>>>> listening habits are most similar to people in Berkeley.
>>>>
>>>> I fit the NPR mold. I'll cop to that.
>>>>
>>>> So when I got a job here 25 years ago, I never looked back. As a senior
>>>> editor on the business desk where news is always breaking, we've
>>>> covered upheavals in the workplace, supermarket prices, social media,
>>>> and AI.
>>>>
>>>> It's true NPR has always had a liberal bent, but during most of my
>>>> tenure here, an open-minded, curious culture prevailed. We were nerdy,
>>>> but not knee-jerk, activist, or scolding.
>>>>
>>>> In recent years, however, that has changed. Today, those who listen to
>>>> NPR or read its coverage online find something different: the distilled
>>>> worldview of a very small segment of the U.S. population.
>>>>
>>>> If you are conservative, you will read this and say, duh, it's always
>>>> been this way.
>>>>
>>>> But it hasn't.
>>>>
>>>> For decades, since its founding in 1970, a wide swath of America tuned
>>>> in to NPR for reliable journalism and gorgeous audio pieces with birds
>>>> singing in the Amazon. Millions came to us for conversations that
>>>> exposed us to voices around the country and the world radically
>>>> different from our own-engaging precisely because they were unguarded
>>>> and unpredictable. No image generated more pride within NPR than the
>>>> farmer listening to Morning Edition from his or her tractor at sunrise.
>>>>
>>>> Back in 2011, although NPR's audience tilted a bit to the left, it
>>>> still bore a resemblance to America at large. Twenty-six percent of
>>>> listeners described themselves as conservative, 23 percent as middle of
>>>> the road, and 37 percent as liberal.
>>>>
>>>> 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.
>>>>
>>>> An open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR, and now,
>>>> predictably, we don't have an audience that reflects America.
>>>>
>>>> That wouldn't be a problem for an openly polemical news outlet serving
>>>> a niche audience. But for NPR, which purports to consider all things,
>>>> it's devastating both for its journalism and its business model.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Like many unfortunate things, the rise of advocacy took off with Donald
>>>> Trump. As in many newsrooms, his election in 2016 was greeted at NPR
>>>> with a mixture of disbelief, anger, and despair. (Just to note, I
>>>> eagerly voted against Trump twice but felt we were obliged to cover him
>>>> fairly.) But what began as tough, straightforward coverage of a
>>>> belligerent, truth-impaired president veered toward efforts to damage
>>>> or topple Trump's presidency.
>>>>
>>>> Persistent rumors that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia over the
>>>> election became the catnip that drove reporting. At NPR, we hitched our
>>>> wagon to Trump's most visible antagonist, Representative Adam Schiff.
>>>>
>>>> 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 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.
>>>>
>>>> But when the Mueller report found no credible evidence of collusion,
>>>> NPR's coverage was notably sparse. Russiagate quietly faded from our
>>>> programming.
>>>>
>>>> It is one thing to swing and miss on a major story. Unfortunately, it
>>>> happens. You follow the wrong leads, you get misled by sources you
>>>> trusted, you're emotionally invested in a narrative, and bits of
>>>> circumstantial evidence never add up. It's bad to blow a big story.
>>>>
>>>> What's worse is to pretend it never happened, to move on with no mea
>>>> culpas, no self-reflection. Especially when you expect high standards
>>>> of transparency from public figures and institutions, but don't
>>>> practice those standards yourself. That's what shatters trust and
>>>> engenders cynicism about the media.
>>>>
>>>> Russiagate was not NPR's only miscue.
>>>>
>>>> In October 2020, the New York Post published the explosive report about
>>>> the laptop Hunter Biden abandoned at a Delaware computer shop
>>>> containing emails about his sordid business dealings. With the election
>>>> only weeks away, NPR turned a blind eye. Here's how NPR's managing
>>>> editor for news at the time explained the thinking: "We don't want to
>>>> waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don't
>>>> want to waste the listeners' and readers' time on stories that are just
>>>> pure distractions."
>>>>
>>>> But it wasn't a pure distraction, or a product of Russian
>>>> disinformation, as dozens of former and current intelligence officials
>>>> suggested. The laptop did belong to Hunter Biden. Its contents revealed
>>>> his connection to the corrupt world of multimillion-dollar influence
>>>> peddling and its possible implications for his father.
>>>>
>>>> The laptop was newsworthy. But the timeless journalistic instinct of
>>>> following a hot story lead was being squelched. During a meeting with
>>>> colleagues, I listened as one of NPR's best and most fair-minded
>>>> journalists said it was good we weren't following the laptop story
>>>> because it could help Trump.
>>>>
>>>> When the essential facts of the Post's reporting were confirmed and the
>>>> emails verified independently about a year and a half later, we could
>>>> have fessed up to our misjudgment. But, like Russia collusion, we
>>>> didn't make the hard choice of transparency.
>>>>
>>>> Politics also intruded into NPR's Covid coverage, most notably in
>>>> reporting on the origin of the pandemic. One of the most dismal aspects
>>>> of Covid journalism is how quickly it defaulted to ideological story
>>>> lines. For example, there was Team Natural Origin-supporting the
>>>> hypothesis that the virus came from a wild animal market in Wuhan,
>>>> China. And on the other side, Team Lab Leak, leaning into the idea that
>>>> the virus escaped from a Wuhan lab.
>>>>
>>>> The lab leak theory came in for rough treatment almost immediately,
>>>> dismissed as racist or a right-wing conspiracy theory. Anthony Fauci
>>>> and former NIH head Francis Collins, representing the public health
>>>> establishment, were its most notable critics. And that was enough for
>>>> NPR. We became fervent members of Team Natural Origin, even declaring
>>>> that the lab leak had been debunked by scientists.
>>>>
>>>> But that wasn't the case.
>>>
>>> I've never understood why the American media was so invested in
>>> protecting the Chinese Communist Party from responsibility and
>>> much-deserved criticism over its creation of and release of that virus.
>>
>> Hey, I just got back from the grocery store and the Chinese food counter,
>> all the Chinese people behind it are wearing the Covid masks again. What
>> the hell?
>
> I heard somewhere there's a new bird flu coming out, just in time for the
> 2024 elections.

Crosspost to newsgroups Ubi doesn't read cut

BTR1701 <atropos@mac.com> wrote:
>Ubiquitous <weberm@polaris.net> wrote:

The essay that Ubi the shithead plagarized is this:

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

Uri Berliner, a veteran at the public radio institution, says the
network lost its way when it started telling listeners how to think.

By Uri Berliner
The Free Press (on Substack)

April 9, 2024

https://www.thefp.com/p/npr-editor-how-npr-lost-americas-trust

>Excellent analysis of the pervasiveness of 'progressive' bias and
>enforcement of ideological rigor in the legacy media. And coming from a
>liberal at NPR, it cuts off the typical blame-the-messenger tactic
>employed by the Effas of the world at the knees.

The messenger was blamed, and cut off at the knees.

NPR suspends veteran editor as it grapples with his public criticism
Updated April 16, 202411:27 AM ET
by David Folkenflik
NPR
https://www.npr.org/2024/04/16/1244962042/npr-editor-uri-berliner-suspended-essay

Folkenflik reported that Berliner was told that he violated company
policy about failure to get his essay pre-approved by his bosses. It's
not like he came upon a breaking news story and gave it to someone other
than NPR. This was a personal essay.

Steve Inskeep, host of Morning Edition, criticized what Berliner had
written on his own Substack, but I guess that counter-essay was, er,
pre-approved as he wasn't disciplined.

How my NPR colleague failed at "viewpoint diversity"
Uri Berliner gave a perfect example of the kind of journalism he says
he's against.
Steve Inskeep
Apr 16, 2024
https://steveinskeep.substack.com/p/how-my-npr-colleague-failed-at-viewpoint

Berliner has resigned.

An NPR editor who wrote a critical essay on company has resigned after
being suspended
By DAVID BAUDER
AP
Updated 2:26 PM CDT, April 17, 2024
https://apnews.com/article/npr-editor-resigns-conservative-liberal-c259642e3920e99d5f05a7fe1a90012e

>>. . .

In article <uvpahr$1pljv$1@dont-email.me>,
"Adam H. Kerman" <ahk@chinet.com> wrote:

> Crosspost to newsgroups Ubi doesn't read cut
>
> BTR1701 <atropos@mac.com> wrote:
> >Ubiquitous <weberm@polaris.net> wrote:
>
> The essay that Ubi the shithead plagarized is this:
>
> I've Been at NPR for 25 Years. Here's How We Lost America's Trust.
>
> Uri Berliner, a veteran at the public radio institution, says the
> network lost its way when it started telling listeners how to think.
>
> By Uri Berliner
> The Free Press (on Substack)
>
> April 9, 2024
>
> https://www.thefp.com/p/npr-editor-how-npr-lost-americas-trust
>
> >Excellent analysis of the pervasiveness of 'progressive' bias and
> >enforcement of ideological rigor in the legacy media. And coming from a
> >liberal at NPR, it cuts off the typical blame-the-messenger tactic
> >employed by the Effas of the world at the knees.
>
> The messenger was blamed, and cut off at the knees.
>
> NPR suspends veteran editor as it grapples with his public criticism

The go-to move of the Left: censor, ban, fire, suspend any viewpoint
that counters the Agenda.

On 4/17/2024 4:25 PM, BTR1701 wrote:
> In article <uvpahr$1pljv$1@dont-email.me>,
> "Adam H. Kerman" <ahk@chinet.com> wrote:
>
>> Crosspost to newsgroups Ubi doesn't read cut
>>
>> BTR1701 <atropos@mac.com> wrote:
>>> Ubiquitous <weberm@polaris.net> wrote:
>>
>> The essay that Ubi the shithead plagarized is this:
>>
>> I've Been at NPR for 25 Years. Here's How We Lost America's Trust.
>>
>> Uri Berliner, a veteran at the public radio institution, says the
>> network lost its way when it started telling listeners how to think.
>>
>> By Uri Berliner
>> The Free Press (on Substack)
>>
>> April 9, 2024
>>
>> https://www.thefp.com/p/npr-editor-how-npr-lost-americas-trust
>>
>>> Excellent analysis of the pervasiveness of 'progressive' bias and
>>> enforcement of ideological rigor in the legacy media. And coming from a
>>> liberal at NPR, it cuts off the typical blame-the-messenger tactic
>>> employed by the Effas of the world at the knees.
>>
>> The messenger was blamed, and cut off at the knees.
>>
>> NPR suspends veteran editor as it grapples with his public criticism
>
> The go-to move of the Left: censor, ban, fire, suspend any viewpoint
> that counters the Agenda.

Can't imagine why you'd think such behavior the province of one side...

On 4/17/24 8:40 AM, anim8rfsk wrote:
> Ubiquitous <weberm@polaris.net> wrote:
>> anim8rfsk@cox.net wrote:
>>> BTR1701 <atropos@mac.com> wrote:
>>>> Ubiquitous <weberm@polaris.net> wrote:
>>
>>>> Excellent analysis of the pervasiveness of 'progressive' bias and
>>>> enforcement of ideological rigor in the legacy media. And coming from a
>>>> liberal at NPR, it cuts off the typical blame-the-messenger tactic
>>>> employed by the Effas of the world at the knees.
>>>>
>>>>> You know the stereotype of the NPR listener: an EV-driving, Wordle-
>>>>> playing, tote bag-carrying coastal elite. It doesn't precisely describe
>>>>> me, but it's not far off. I'm Sarah Lawrence-educated, was raised by a
>>>>> lesbian peace activist mother, I drive a Subaru, and Spotify says my
>>>>> listening habits are most similar to people in Berkeley.
>>>>>
>>>>> I fit the NPR mold. I'll cop to that.
>>>>>
>>>>> So when I got a job here 25 years ago, I never looked back. As a senior
>>>>> editor on the business desk where news is always breaking, we've
>>>>> covered upheavals in the workplace, supermarket prices, social media,
>>>>> and AI.
>>>>>
>>>>> It's true NPR has always had a liberal bent, but during most of my
>>>>> tenure here, an open-minded, curious culture prevailed. We were nerdy,
>>>>> but not knee-jerk, activist, or scolding.
>>>>>
>>>>> In recent years, however, that has changed. Today, those who listen to
>>>>> NPR or read its coverage online find something different: the distilled
>>>>> worldview of a very small segment of the U.S. population.
>>>>>
>>>>> If you are conservative, you will read this and say, duh, it's always
>>>>> been this way.
>>>>>
>>>>> But it hasn't.
>>>>>
>>>>> For decades, since its founding in 1970, a wide swath of America tuned
>>>>> in to NPR for reliable journalism and gorgeous audio pieces with birds
>>>>> singing in the Amazon. Millions came to us for conversations that
>>>>> exposed us to voices around the country and the world radically
>>>>> different from our own-engaging precisely because they were unguarded
>>>>> and unpredictable. No image generated more pride within NPR than the
>>>>> farmer listening to Morning Edition from his or her tractor at sunrise.
>>>>>
>>>>> Back in 2011, although NPR's audience tilted a bit to the left, it
>>>>> still bore a resemblance to America at large. Twenty-six percent of
>>>>> listeners described themselves as conservative, 23 percent as middle of
>>>>> the road, and 37 percent as liberal.
>>>>>
>>>>> 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.
>>>>>
>>>>> An open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR, and now,
>>>>> predictably, we don't have an audience that reflects America.
>>>>>
>>>>> That wouldn't be a problem for an openly polemical news outlet serving
>>>>> a niche audience. But for NPR, which purports to consider all things,
>>>>> it's devastating both for its journalism and its business model.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Like many unfortunate things, the rise of advocacy took off with Donald
>>>>> Trump. As in many newsrooms, his election in 2016 was greeted at NPR
>>>>> with a mixture of disbelief, anger, and despair. (Just to note, I
>>>>> eagerly voted against Trump twice but felt we were obliged to cover him
>>>>> fairly.) But what began as tough, straightforward coverage of a
>>>>> belligerent, truth-impaired president veered toward efforts to damage
>>>>> or topple Trump's presidency.
>>>>>
>>>>> Persistent rumors that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia over the
>>>>> election became the catnip that drove reporting. At NPR, we hitched our
>>>>> wagon to Trump's most visible antagonist, Representative Adam Schiff.
>>>>>
>>>>> 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 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.
>>>>>
>>>>> But when the Mueller report found no credible evidence of collusion,
>>>>> NPR's coverage was notably sparse. Russiagate quietly faded from our
>>>>> programming.
>>>>>
>>>>> It is one thing to swing and miss on a major story. Unfortunately, it
>>>>> happens. You follow the wrong leads, you get misled by sources you
>>>>> trusted, you're emotionally invested in a narrative, and bits of
>>>>> circumstantial evidence never add up. It's bad to blow a big story.
>>>>>
>>>>> What's worse is to pretend it never happened, to move on with no mea
>>>>> culpas, no self-reflection. Especially when you expect high standards
>>>>> of transparency from public figures and institutions, but don't
>>>>> practice those standards yourself. That's what shatters trust and
>>>>> engenders cynicism about the media.
>>>>>
>>>>> Russiagate was not NPR's only miscue.
>>>>>
>>>>> In October 2020, the New York Post published the explosive report about
>>>>> the laptop Hunter Biden abandoned at a Delaware computer shop
>>>>> containing emails about his sordid business dealings. With the election
>>>>> only weeks away, NPR turned a blind eye. Here's how NPR's managing
>>>>> editor for news at the time explained the thinking: "We don't want to
>>>>> waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don't
>>>>> want to waste the listeners' and readers' time on stories that are just
>>>>> pure distractions."
>>>>>
>>>>> But it wasn't a pure distraction, or a product of Russian
>>>>> disinformation, as dozens of former and current intelligence officials
>>>>> suggested. The laptop did belong to Hunter Biden. Its contents revealed
>>>>> his connection to the corrupt world of multimillion-dollar influence
>>>>> peddling and its possible implications for his father.
>>>>>
>>>>> The laptop was newsworthy. But the timeless journalistic instinct of
>>>>> following a hot story lead was being squelched. During a meeting with
>>>>> colleagues, I listened as one of NPR's best and most fair-minded
>>>>> journalists said it was good we weren't following the laptop story
>>>>> because it could help Trump.
>>>>>
>>>>> When the essential facts of the Post's reporting were confirmed and the
>>>>> emails verified independently about a year and a half later, we could
>>>>> have fessed up to our misjudgment. But, like Russia collusion, we
>>>>> didn't make the hard choice of transparency.
>>>>>
>>>>> Politics also intruded into NPR's Covid coverage, most notably in
>>>>> reporting on the origin of the pandemic. One of the most dismal aspects
>>>>> of Covid journalism is how quickly it defaulted to ideological story
>>>>> lines. For example, there was Team Natural Origin-supporting the
>>>>> hypothesis that the virus came from a wild animal market in Wuhan,
>>>>> China. And on the other side, Team Lab Leak, leaning into the idea that
>>>>> the virus escaped from a Wuhan lab.
>>>>>
>>>>> The lab leak theory came in for rough treatment almost immediately,
>>>>> dismissed as racist or a right-wing conspiracy theory. Anthony Fauci
>>>>> and former NIH head Francis Collins, representing the public health
>>>>> establishment, were its most notable critics. And that was enough for
>>>>> NPR. We became fervent members of Team Natural Origin, even declaring
>>>>> that the lab leak had been debunked by scientists.
>>>>>
>>>>> But that wasn't the case.
>>>>
>>>> I've never understood why the American media was so invested in
>>>> protecting the Chinese Communist Party from responsibility and
>>>> much-deserved criticism over its creation of and release of that virus.
>>>
>>> Hey, I just got back from the grocery store and the Chinese food counter,
>>> all the Chinese people behind it are wearing the Covid masks again. What
>>> the hell?
>>
>> I heard somewhere there's a new bird flu coming out, just in time for the
>> 2024 elections.
>
> That was my first thought. Along with “how come there are all new people
> working here that I don’t recognize?”

On 4/17/24 3:25 PM, BTR1701 wrote:
> In article <uvpahr$1pljv$1@dont-email.me>,
> "Adam H. Kerman" <ahk@chinet.com> wrote:
>
>> Crosspost to newsgroups Ubi doesn't read cut
>>
>> BTR1701 <atropos@mac.com> wrote:
>>> Ubiquitous <weberm@polaris.net> wrote:
>>
>> The essay that Ubi the shithead plagarized is this:
>>
>> I've Been at NPR for 25 Years. Here's How We Lost America's Trust.
>>
>> Uri Berliner, a veteran at the public radio institution, says the
>> network lost its way when it started telling listeners how to think.
>>
>> By Uri Berliner
>> The Free Press (on Substack)
>>
>> April 9, 2024
>>
>> https://www.thefp.com/p/npr-editor-how-npr-lost-americas-trust
>>
>>> Excellent analysis of the pervasiveness of 'progressive' bias and
>>> enforcement of ideological rigor in the legacy media. And coming from a
>>> liberal at NPR, it cuts off the typical blame-the-messenger tactic
>>> employed by the Effas of the world at the knees.
>>
>> The messenger was blamed, and cut off at the knees.
>>
>> NPR suspends veteran editor as it grapples with his public criticism
>
> The go-to move of the Left: censor, ban, fire, suspend any viewpoint
> that counters the Agenda.

Cite?

In article <uvpahr$1pljv$1@dont-email.me>, ahk@chinet.com wrote:

>Crosspost to newsgroups Ubi doesn't read cut

TROLL-O-METER
5* 6* *7
4* *8
3* *9
2* *10
1* | *stuporous
0* -*- *catatonic
* |\ *comatose
* \ *clinical death
* \ *biological death
* _\/ *demonic apparition
* * *damned for all eternity

>The essay that Ubi the shithead plagarized

TROLL-O-METER
5* 6* *7
4* *8
3* *9
2* *10
1* | *stuporous
0* -*- *catatonic
* |\ *comatose
* \ *clinical death
* \ *biological death
* _\/ *demonic apparition
* * *damned for all eternity

atropos@mac.com wrote:

>Excellent analysis of the pervasiveness of 'progressive' bias and
>enforcement of ideological rigor in the legacy media. And coming from a
>liberal at NPR, it cuts off the typical blame-the-messenger tactic
>employed by the Effas of the world at the knees.

National Public Radio (NPR) has suspended Senior Business Editor Uri Berliner
after he publicly accused the network of espousing left-wing bias with an
essay that began a media firestorm.

Last week, Berliner received a letter that informed him of a five-day
suspension without pay beginning Friday, according to a report by NPR�s media
correspondent David Folkenflik.

NPR told Berliner he failed to follow the network�s rules and get approval
for outside work for other news outlets after his essay for The Free Press
and follow-up interviews.

Berliner was also accused of publicly releasing proprietary information about
audience demographics that NPR considered confidential, per the report.

The letter, which was called a �final warning,� said Berliner would be fired
for another policy violation.

Berliner, a dues-paying member of NPR�s newsroom union, told Folkenflik that
he would not appeal the punishment.

He claimed the figures discussed in his essay �were essentially marketing
material. If they had been really good, they probably would have distributed
them and sent them out to the world.�

Berliner conceded that he did not get permission to speak with Folkenflik,
but said he thought it would be �extraordinary� if he were fired for speaking
to an NPR journalist.

The Free Press published the essay on Tuesday last week in which Berliner
argued NPR �lost America�s trust� with its increasingly liberal bent.

His critique touched on topics related to former President Donald Trump,
NPR�s COVID coverage, reporting on transgender issues, audience figures, the
network�s own level of diversity, and more.

Berliner additionally wrote about how he tried to make some of his concerns
known internally. He said no one ever �trashed� him, but he was repeatedly
brushed off and nothing changed.

In the public backlash that followed the essay, Trump demanded that NPR�s
funding be cut. Despite his critique, Berliner said �defunding� was not the
way to address the �missteps� he outlined.

NPR�s chief executive of less than a month, Katherine Maher, lashed out at
the �deeply simplistic� and �profoundly disrespectful, hurtful, and
demeaning� essay without mentioning Berliner�s name.

After Berliner�s essay was published, old tweets from Maher resurfaced that
displayed her personal views in favor of liberal causes, fueling more
criticism, particularly from the Right.

Maher called Trump a �racist� in a 2018 post that has since been deleted and
shared a photo of herself wearing a hat touting President Joe Biden�s
campaign in November of 2020.

Berliner said the posts indicate Maher is the �opposite� of the kind of
leader NPR needs to be �unifying and bring more people into the tent and have
a broader perspective on, sort of, what America is all about.�

Maher released a statement that said �everyone is entitled to free speech as
a private citizen� in America.

�What matters is NPR�s work and my commitment as its CEO: public service,
editorial independence, and the mission to serve all of the American public,�
she added. �NPR is independent, beholden to no party, and without commercial
interests.�

The report noted that NPR emphasized that �the CEO is not involved in
editorial decisions.�

Folkenflik wrote that some in the newsroom acknowledge Berliner�s critique as
valid, while others say they are no longer willing to work with him.

The report said NPR�s chief news executive, Edith Chapin, announced late
Monday that Executive Editor Eva Rodriguez would lead monthly coverage review
meetings.

Berliner reportedly said he welcomed the announcement but would reserve
judgment until those meetings happen.

--
Let's go Brandon!

On 4/17/24 4:25 PM, BTR1701 wrote:
> In article <uvpahr$1pljv$1@dont-email.me>,
> "Adam H. Kerman" <ahk@chinet.com> wrote:
>
>> Crosspost to newsgroups Ubi doesn't read cut
>>
>> BTR1701 <atropos@mac.com> wrote:
>>> Ubiquitous <weberm@polaris.net> wrote:
>>
>> The essay that Ubi the shithead plagarized is this:
>>
>> I've Been at NPR for 25 Years. Here's How We Lost America's Trust.
>>
>> Uri Berliner, a veteran at the public radio institution, says the
>> network lost its way when it started telling listeners how to think.
>>
>> By Uri Berliner
>> The Free Press (on Substack)
>>
>> April 9, 2024
>>
>> https://www.thefp.com/p/npr-editor-how-npr-lost-americas-trust
>>
>>> Excellent analysis of the pervasiveness of 'progressive' bias and
>>> enforcement of ideological rigor in the legacy media. And coming from a
>>> liberal at NPR, it cuts off the typical blame-the-messenger tactic
>>> employed by the Effas of the world at the knees.
>>
>> The messenger was blamed, and cut off at the knees.
>>
>> NPR suspends veteran editor as it grapples with his public criticism
>
> The go-to move of the Left: censor, ban, fire, suspend any viewpoint
> that counters the Agenda.
>

You mean the journalist who lied? Sure did!

> Some of Berliner's NPR colleagues also took issue with the essay, with "Morning Edition" host Steve Inskeep writing on his Substack that the article was "filled with errors and omissions."
> "The errors do make NPR look bad, because it's embarrassing that an NPR journalist would make so many,"
> He also took NPR for task for what he said was failing to report developments related to Hunter Biden's laptop. "With the election only weeks away, NPR turned a blind eye," Berliner wrote.

> NPR also accused Berliner of releasing “proprietary information” about the network’s demographics in his now viral essay.
> Berliner was told he would be fired if he violated the policy again, according to an official rebuke that he provided to NPR for its report on his suspension. Berliner told NPR that he did not plan on appealing the suspension.

And he was out and out full of shit, as one of his colleagues explained:

> The article made headlines for Uri’s claim that he “looked at voter registration for our newsroom” in Washington, D.C., and found his “editorial” colleagues were unanimously registered Democrats—87 Democrats, 0 Republicans.
>
> I am a prominent member of the newsroom in Washington. If Uri told the truth, then I could only be a registered Democrat. I held up a screenshot of my voter registration showing I am registered with “no party.” Some in the crowd gasped. Uri had misled them.
>
> NPR says its content division has 662 people around the world, including far more than 87 in Washington. The article never disclosed this context. (NPR doesn’t ask employees about their voter registration; I don’t know how Uri learned the 87 registrations he says he found.)
>
> When I asked Uri, he said he “couldn’t care less” that I am not a Democrat. He said the important thing was the “aggregate”—exactly what his 87-0 misrepresented by leaving out people like me. While it’s widely believed that most mainstream journalists are Democrats, I’ve had colleagues that I was pretty sure were conservative (I don’t ask), and I’ve learned just since Uri’s article that I am one of several NPR hosts of “no party” registration.

He was suspended FOR CAUSE. Because, as a journalist, he failed
Journalism 101.

--
"Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a man’s mind." - OC
Bible 25B.G.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ek8kap93bmk0q5w/D%20U%20N%20E%20Part%20II.jpg?dl=0

Gracie, age 6.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0es3xolxka455iw/BetterThingsToDo.jpg?dl=0

On 4/17/24 6:10 PM, moviePig wrote:
> On 4/17/2024 4:25 PM, BTR1701 wrote:
>> In article <uvpahr$1pljv$1@dont-email.me>,
>>   "Adam H. Kerman" <ahk@chinet.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Crosspost to newsgroups Ubi doesn't read cut
>>>
>>> BTR1701 <atropos@mac.com> wrote:
>>>> Ubiquitous <weberm@polaris.net> wrote:
>>>
>>> The essay that Ubi the shithead plagarized is this:
>>>
>>> I've Been at NPR for 25 Years. Here's How We Lost America's Trust.
>>>
>>> Uri Berliner, a veteran at the public radio institution, says the
>>> network lost its way when it started telling listeners how to think.
>>>
>>> By Uri Berliner
>>> The Free Press (on Substack)
>>>
>>> April 9, 2024
>>>
>>> https://www.thefp.com/p/npr-editor-how-npr-lost-americas-trust
>>>
>>>> Excellent analysis of the pervasiveness of 'progressive' bias and
>>>> enforcement of ideological rigor in the legacy media. And coming from a
>>>> liberal at NPR, it cuts off the typical blame-the-messenger tactic
>>>> employed by the Effas of the world at the knees.
>>>
>>> The messenger was blamed, and cut off at the knees.
>>>
>>> NPR suspends veteran editor as it grapples with his public criticism
>>
>> The go-to move of the Left: censor, ban, fire, suspend any viewpoint
>> that counters the Agenda.
>
> Can't imagine why you'd think such behavior the province of one side...
>
>

Guy was a liar, pig. He was one of the Hunter Biden Laptopers.

--
"Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a man’s mind." - OC
Bible 25B.G.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ek8kap93bmk0q5w/D%20U%20N%20E%20Part%20II.jpg?dl=0

Gracie, age 6.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0es3xolxka455iw/BetterThingsToDo.jpg?dl=0

On 4/18/24 3:58 AM, trotsky wrote:
> On 4/17/24 3:25 PM, BTR1701 wrote:
>> In article <uvpahr$1pljv$1@dont-email.me>,
>>   "Adam H. Kerman" <ahk@chinet.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Crosspost to newsgroups Ubi doesn't read cut
>>>
>>> BTR1701 <atropos@mac.com> wrote:
>>>> Ubiquitous <weberm@polaris.net> wrote:
>>>
>>> The essay that Ubi the shithead plagarized is this:
>>>
>>> I've Been at NPR for 25 Years. Here's How We Lost America's Trust.
>>>
>>> Uri Berliner, a veteran at the public radio institution, says the
>>> network lost its way when it started telling listeners how to think.
>>>
>>> By Uri Berliner
>>> The Free Press (on Substack)
>>>
>>> April 9, 2024
>>>
>>> https://www.thefp.com/p/npr-editor-how-npr-lost-americas-trust
>>>
>>>> Excellent analysis of the pervasiveness of 'progressive' bias and
>>>> enforcement of ideological rigor in the legacy media. And coming from a
>>>> liberal at NPR, it cuts off the typical blame-the-messenger tactic
>>>> employed by the Effas of the world at the knees.
>>>
>>> The messenger was blamed, and cut off at the knees.
>>>
>>> NPR suspends veteran editor as it grapples with his public criticism
>>
>> The go-to move of the Left: censor, ban, fire, suspend any viewpoint
>> that counters the Agenda.
>
>
> Cite?

He won't. But I did, up thread.

He was all butt-hurt because NPR didn't pay enough attention to Hunter
Biden's laptop, and covid lab leak theories.

You know... MAGA bullshit.

--
"Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a man’s mind." - OC
Bible 25B.G.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ek8kap93bmk0q5w/D%20U%20N%20E%20Part%20II.jpg?dl=0

Gracie, age 6.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0es3xolxka455iw/BetterThingsToDo.jpg?dl=0

On 4/18/2024 12:26 PM, FPP wrote:
> On 4/17/24 6:10 PM, moviePig wrote:
>> On 4/17/2024 4:25 PM, BTR1701 wrote:
>>> In article <uvpahr$1pljv$1@dont-email.me>,
>>>   "Adam H. Kerman" <ahk@chinet.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Crosspost to newsgroups Ubi doesn't read cut
>>>>
>>>> BTR1701 <atropos@mac.com> wrote:
>>>>> Ubiquitous <weberm@polaris.net> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> The essay that Ubi the shithead plagarized is this:
>>>>
>>>> I've Been at NPR for 25 Years. Here's How We Lost America's Trust.
>>>>
>>>> Uri Berliner, a veteran at the public radio institution, says the
>>>> network lost its way when it started telling listeners how to think.
>>>>
>>>> By Uri Berliner
>>>> The Free Press (on Substack)
>>>>
>>>> April 9, 2024
>>>>
>>>> https://www.thefp.com/p/npr-editor-how-npr-lost-americas-trust
>>>>
>>>>> Excellent analysis of the pervasiveness of 'progressive' bias and
>>>>> enforcement of ideological rigor in the legacy media. And coming
>>>>> from a
>>>>> liberal at NPR, it cuts off the typical blame-the-messenger tactic
>>>>> employed by the Effas of the world at the knees.
>>>>
>>>> The messenger was blamed, and cut off at the knees.
>>>>
>>>> NPR suspends veteran editor as it grapples with his public criticism
>>>
>>> The go-to move of the Left: censor, ban, fire, suspend any viewpoint
>>> that counters the Agenda.
>>
>> Can't imagine why you'd think such behavior the province of one side...
>>
>>
>
> Guy was a liar, pig.  He was one of the Hunter Biden Laptopers.

We'd need to (but probably never will) know the order of events.

atropos@mac.com wrote:

>The go-to move of the Left: censor, ban, fire, suspend any viewpoint
>that counters the Agenda.

I belive the phrase is "suggest, shove, shoot".

--
Let's go Brandon!

On 4/18/24 5:38 PM, moviePig wrote:
> On 4/18/2024 12:26 PM, FPP wrote:
>> On 4/17/24 6:10 PM, moviePig wrote:
>>> On 4/17/2024 4:25 PM, BTR1701 wrote:
>>>> In article <uvpahr$1pljv$1@dont-email.me>,
>>>>   "Adam H. Kerman" <ahk@chinet.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Crosspost to newsgroups Ubi doesn't read cut
>>>>>
>>>>> BTR1701 <atropos@mac.com> wrote:
>>>>>> Ubiquitous <weberm@polaris.net> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> The essay that Ubi the shithead plagarized is this:
>>>>>
>>>>> I've Been at NPR for 25 Years. Here's How We Lost America's Trust.
>>>>>
>>>>> Uri Berliner, a veteran at the public radio institution, says the
>>>>> network lost its way when it started telling listeners how to think.
>>>>>
>>>>> By Uri Berliner
>>>>> The Free Press (on Substack)
>>>>>
>>>>> April 9, 2024
>>>>>
>>>>> https://www.thefp.com/p/npr-editor-how-npr-lost-americas-trust
>>>>>
>>>>>> Excellent analysis of the pervasiveness of 'progressive' bias and
>>>>>> enforcement of ideological rigor in the legacy media. And coming
>>>>>> from a
>>>>>> liberal at NPR, it cuts off the typical blame-the-messenger tactic
>>>>>> employed by the Effas of the world at the knees.
>>>>>
>>>>> The messenger was blamed, and cut off at the knees.
>>>>>
>>>>> NPR suspends veteran editor as it grapples with his public criticism
>>>>
>>>> The go-to move of the Left: censor, ban, fire, suspend any viewpoint
>>>> that counters the Agenda.
>>>
>>> Can't imagine why you'd think such behavior the province of one side...
>>>
>>>
>>
>> Guy was a liar, pig.  He was one of the Hunter Biden Laptopers.
>
> We'd need to (but probably never will) know the order of events.
>
>

Read some of his accusations. They don't hold water.

--
"Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a man’s mind." - OC
Bible 25B.G.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ek8kap93bmk0q5w/D%20U%20N%20E%20Part%20II.jpg?dl=0

Gracie, age 6.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0es3xolxka455iw/BetterThingsToDo.jpg?dl=0