Two more interesting responses to this piece from people who work (or worked) at National Public Radio:N.E. Brigand wrote: ↑Thu Apr 11, 2024 5:27 am Donald Trump colluded with Russia. ... I can't believe that point needs to be restated, but a National Public Radio reporter named Uri Berliner has written a column for the The Free Press titled "I’ve Been at NPR for 25 Years. Here’s How We Lost America’s Trust." In that piece, Berliner notes that NPR's audience has become much more liberal over just the past twelve years. Berliner never says this, but I think a major reason for this change is surely that NPR tries not to lie to its listeners, and in the age of Donald Trump, conservatives don't want stories that tell the truth. Instead of pointing to that possibility, Berliner opens by arguing that NPR became obsessed with the idea that "the Trump campaign colluded with Russia," and then when "the Mueller report found no credible evidence of collusion," NPR never confronted that fact and leveled with its viewers.
"How my NPR colleague failed at 'viewpoint diversity'" (Steve Inskeep).
"The Real Story Behind NPR’s Current Problems" (Alicia Montgomoery).
Here's a key passage from the latter. Note the part I have bolded:
She adds that more than a skewed politics, "the core editorial problem at NPR" has been "an abundance of caution that often crossed the border to cowardice. NPR culture encouraged an editorial fixation on finding the exact middle point of the elite political and social thought, planting a flag there, and calling it objectivity."Uri’s account of the deliberate effort to undermine Trump up to and after his election is also bewilderingly incomplete, inaccurate, and skewed. For most of 2016, many NPR journalists warned newsroom leadership that we weren’t taking Trump and the possibility of his winning seriously enough. But top editors dismissed the chance of a Trump win repeatedly, declaring that Americans would be revolted by this or that outrageous thing he’d said or done. I remember one editorial meeting where a white newsroom leader said that Trump’s strong poll numbers wouldn’t survive his being exposed as a racist. When a journalist of color asked whether his numbers could be rising because of his racism, the comment was met with silence. In another meeting, I and a couple of other editorial leaders were encouraged to make sure that any coverage of a Trump lie was matched with a story about a lie from Hillary Clinton. Another colleague asked what to do if one candidate just lied more than the other. Another silent response.
I left NPR in the early fall of 2016, but when I came back to work on Morning Edition about a year later, I saw NO trace of the anti-Trump editorial machine that Uri references. On the contrary, people were at pains to find a way to cover Trump’s voters and his administration fairly. We went full-bore on “diner guy in a trucker hat” coverage and adopted the “alt-right” label to describe people who could accurately be called racists. The network had a reflexive need to stay on good terms with people in power, and journalists who had contacts within the administration were encouraged to pursue those bookings.
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Edited to note that today, the New York Times published an article about Katherine Maher, the new president of NPR, an article that implies that Maher brings left-wing biases to her new post because, among other things, she tweeted "Also, Trump is a racist" in January 2018.
Not mentioned in the article: that was the day that Donald Trump was reputed to have referred to African nations as "shithole countries." The Times referred to that comment as "racially tinged." (Dave Weigel of Semafor pointed this out today.)
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Edited to note two updates: 1. Yesterday NPR suspended Evan Berliner for five days for violating company policy that forbids employees to do paid journalism for other outlets without first getting NPR's permission; 2. Today Berliner quit.
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Edited to add another examination of Berliner's article.
