NPR essay on losing "America's trust"

If someone can’t figure out at this late date that one side is flawed but mainly grounded in reality and the other side is in thrall to habitual liars, then I have nothing more to discuss with them. Fair seas and following winds.

 

Maybe if news coverage more accurately reflected conservative values, they’d stop complaining.*



* — LOL.

 

They are. I’m not sure the full-scale “this not a story and what’s more, could be a hoax” squelching of the story before the election was rooted in complexity.

It’s more, to question Biden is to help Trump so, how about not doing so much of those things. Which, if you believed Trump winning in 2020 or 2024 meant the end of democracy and the free press - which some NPR staffers may believe - then, perhaps, that kind of before-the-fact discernment is appropriate.

 

But again, no conservative outlet undertook that story either.

And some of it turned out to be a . . . hoax.

So it's not a slam dunk that somehow it's about helping Biden or "liberal" feelings.

 

Also, this, as regards Bari Weiss Pasteurized Processed Journalism Product™:

 

The NY Post, a conservative outlet, broke the story.

 

I wouldn’t have expected a whistleblower column to seek comment on how his opinion might be wrong. He shared his opinion for years with NPR leaders, they shrugged at his thoughts, so he told someone else.

A more reasonable critique might be asking why he didn’t just quit since, after this, I can imagine some NPR staffers fainting at the idea of him editing their work.

 

It's not up to Berliner to seek a comment or response from NPR.

It's up to the OpEd desk at the Free Press.

 

And?

Did they further report it out? Did the Wall Street Journal investigate?

www.npr.org/2022/04/09/1091859822/more-details-emerge-in-federal-investigation-into-hunter-biden

https://nypost.com/2021/04/02/npr-i...laptop-story-was-discredited-by-intelligence/

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/n...ent-trumps-son-wants-to-defund-it-11603386611

In fact, why didn't Berliner work the story himself?

 

And...what?

I think the story got thrown out in the cold when however many intelligence officials, within one day of the story breaking, said the story had "classic earmarks of a Russian information operation." Which, you know, maybe they believed that, independently of one another, one day after publishing, or maybe they got together and said, hell, this moment is too important to let Trump win because of it.

This is all known stuff by most people around here.

The question is - and has been for awhile - whether the threat of Trump simply outweighs not merely "objective" balance, but pointing out obvious shit that's not good, or even presenting his side of anything. Some network outlets won't show his speeches any more because of this presumed threat alongside the fear that some people won't know any better, and believe him.

 

So why do we need to re-itemize all the "liberal" outlets that treated the story exactly like a Russian disinformation operation?

If you go back and read across the coverage at the time, what's most apparent is that conservative outlets took the opportunity to accuse "liberal" outlets of ignoring the story - rather than actually reporting it out themselves.

Also, I wouldn't go so far as to designate Berliner a "whistleblower."

If he had a internal memo in his possession from leadership at NPR saying "don't cover Hunter Biden" - or any smoking gun at all, frankly - he'd be a "whistleblower."

He's a guy complaining.