NPR essay on losing "America's trust"

As has been said of drama in academia, the NPR story is compelling because the stakes are so low.

 

I think that much of the attention given to dust-ups at NPR stems from its listeners literally having a vested interest in the programming (unless, of course, you’re one of those cheap-ass miscreants who listen for free without pledging or paying). Most are college-educated and forward-thinking, so they naturally trend more toward a thought- or science-based perspective to news events, modern culture and problem solving.

Conversely, the opponents of NPR tend to be lesser-educated backward-thinking folks holding on to values they regard as traditional while being whipped into a frenzy by pseudo-Nazi right-wing demagogues playing on fears that they are somehow going to be forced to be better, more caring people. The perception that NPR listeners seem to believe they are smarter and morally superior only increases non-listeners’ ire.

Its no surprise that public radio listeners might be a bit cranky when some hereto unknown “senior business editor” (I mean, doesn’t everything business-related on NPR go through Kai Ryssdal?) shat the familial bed and gave fuel to the torches and bonfires of those who hope to cut federal funding and force donors to kick in more if they want to experience the quiet hope that they might do better on a Sunday morning than some hapless contestant being challenged by Puzzle Master Will Shortz.

As a middle-age white guy and even though he brought a flame thrower to what might have been a panel discussion, I do have a twinge of sympathy for Uri Berliner. I’m occasionally irked by politically correct terms such as “pregnant person,” trigger warnings, stories about vegan alternatives to what have always been meat-based holidays and nontraditional radio voices such as Ayesha Rascoe. But I’ve come to appreciate those nudges as reminders that I should continue to try to be less judgmental so that I might be worthy of wearing my local station’s t-shirt.

 

Without giving NPR a pass (it can do better), it's interesting to see that the three go-to arguments for conservatives - Russia collusion, Lab leak and Hunter Biden - are all stories that began with significantly bad faith, cruel or inaccurate arguments. How much of the pushback on the lab leak was really pushback on mocking Asian people, causing them stress, without much evidence? They were so wrong about Hunter Biden (and didn't really care about being wrong as long as it attacked his dad) in so many ways, why believe anything? Again, it's the media's job to get it right, but those three instances are a complex bag of lies, misleading statements and conspiracy theories that make it difficult to unravel exactly what the media did and did not do.

 

The stakes in academia aren't low.

 

That's on purpose. The framework goes a little like: What we want you to know, is what you need.

 

It's a joke.

And a fairly famous one.

 

Ah.

 

Kai Ryssdal doesn't work for NPR.

Public radio and NPR aren't the same.

 

*The fights in academia are so vicious because the stakes are so low.*

That's the one I remember from my days in academia.

 

I was being perhaps a wee bit too flip. I think a common perception might be that, since the local public radio station bills itself as “Your local NPR station” that’s what it all is even though programming also comes from American Public Media, National Native News, ProPublica, BBC, etc.

Heck, our station even airs a music program at night called “The Spy Radio.” Except for that one, I think many listeners might not be all that clear what might or might not actually be NPR.

 

www.npr.org/sections/publiceditor/2024/04/17/1245346337/the-relentless-focus-on-gaza

It's been six months since Hamas attacked Israel and Israel responded with war. Since then, the most frequent complaint we get in the Public Editor inbox is that NPR has downplayed the suffering of Israelis while calling attention to the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza.

It was also one criticism of many mentioned in a column last week from an NPR editor. It raises a question: Should the news coverage of this war be proportional to the number of civilian deaths and suffering?