NPR essay on losing "America's trust"

[Azrael]

https://wapo.st/3vY8uRj

Uri Berliner is offended.

In an April 9 essay in the Free Press, Berliner, who worked at NPR for 25 years, rapped his employer for allegedly running a newsroom fueled by progressive sensibilities that seep into a skewed on-air product. Stories on Trump-Russia, Hunter Biden and covid-19 have all suffered from acute NPRitis, he writes. And racial and identity considerations — as well as affinity groups — shape workplace culture.

The essay triggered a bona fide media drama that concluded on Wednesday with Berliner's resignation. On his way out, he delivered a parting shot at CEO Katherine Maher. "I cannot work in a newsroom where I am disparaged by a new C.E.O. whose divisive views confirm the very problems at NPR I cite in my Free Press essay," Berliner wrote on X.

 

[dixiehack]

Berliner, who worked at NPR for 25 years

Does anybody else's Spidey sense tingle when a longtime employee torches the place right as they hit an easily divisible service anniversary that may or may not coincide with having a sweet retirement package locked in?

 

[The Big Ragu]

To the contrary, my guess would be that the 25 years made him feel way too comfortable. Like it somehow gave him leeway to be critical of the people he works for in a way you shouldn't if you want to keep working there. He comes across as self important.

 

[Patchen]

Does anybody else's Spidey sense tingle when a longtime employee torches the place right as they hit an easily divisible service anniversary that may or may not coincide with having a sweet retirement package locked in?

And doing it in such a way that will attract suitors for a second career with a different content organization looking for rebels vs. MSM.

 

[Azrael]

Our ice cream cones are sufficiently delicious to have helped create trillions of dollars in value for their digital (re)distributors. Alphabet, Meta, X, ad inf., ad naus.

 

[The Big Ragu]

This is not what a government in a free country that protects and values individual civil liberties does.

"Anti-Trust" has become a catch all for authoritarian politicians with no concern about civil liberties having been enabled to infringe on whater rights they want to steal from one person (or group of people) to give to others they prefer. They use populist language to justify the thuggery.

In a free country that hadn't forked itself up the way we have with this bullshirt, if those California politicians wanted to start their own business to compete with Google, fine. But their efforts are authoritarian, and attempted government-sanctioned theft.

As for "Google should pay for content". ... it's the Internet. Make something publicly available on the Internet (Whether it is me, you. ... or a newspaper) and that is your choice. You VOLUNTARILY did it. Presumably you benefit from it in some way, and enough people have made the Internet a huge repository of things for that to be obvious. End of story.

That is the how the Internet works. It's FREE and widely accesible, and everyone who puts stuff on the Internet did it freely and of their own volition. If you want to protect things you have produced. DON'T MAKE IT WIDELY ACCESIBLE ON THE INTERNET.

There is nothing illegal, and certainly not immoral, about Google's business, and in fact. ... what this kind of nonsense does is make everyone worse off, because they will "regulate" away the immense transformational benefit that Google's business brought. If it doesn't entirely do that (or if Google's business becomes obsolete on its own before they can fork with them enough), they may hamstring them enough to disadvantage them moving forward. It's immoral and everything America wasn't supposed to ever be.

 

[Azrael]

 

[The Big Ragu]

1) They are using the tax code to offer a benefit to one company (privately-owned news organizations), but denying the same benefit to another company in the same exact business (publicly-traded news organizations). So calling it what it is. ... they are using the power the state has to try to advantage the preferred businesses of politicians over those businesses competitors that those politicians have decided to use their power to disadvantage. Which is corrupt by its very nature. It will be challenged in court because it violates every principle of people being treated equally (not only under the law, but in taxation of income, which was always supposed to treat people fairly and equally).

2) I really want to know details about what they call a "tax credit." If it is a credit that knocks down any income they earn for taxation purposes, fine. Our tax code is a mess of that kind of crap, but doesn't amount to redistributing wealth between people. It just makes it so that someone isn't coerced to hand over what they earn in taxes. If, on the other hand, "tax credit" means the misnomer it has come to mean when it comes to other things, and they will be giving money to businesses that those businesses didn't earn (and forcing others to pay for the freebie), it's more immorality.

 

[justgladtobehere]

How do the businesses reconcile an absolute policy of no government interference in their work with taking the same government's money?

 

[BTExpress]

Rationalization. Same as the other 8 billion hypocritical humans.

 

[Azrael]

gift link

https://www.wsj.com/business/media/...zr8pv0qp6pk&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

When Katherine Maher joined National Public Radio as its new CEO in March, she came ready to field internal scrutiny and concerns about coverage.

What she hadn't bargained for, two weeks into the job, was public criticism of NPR from a longtime editor. The controversy has triggered tumult inside NPR's newsroom and thrust Maher into the spotlight.

Critics have scrutinized her political views and seized on past comments she made on everything from the First Amendment to misinformation to the idea that written history is tilted toward the worldview of white men.

"All of this frankly is a bit of a distraction relative to the transformation our organization needs to undergo in order to best serve our mandate," Maher said in an interview.

 

[Alma]

gift link

https://www.wsj.com/business/media/...zr8pv0qp6pk&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

When Katherine Maher joined National Public Radio as its new CEO in March, she came ready to field internal scrutiny and concerns about coverage.

What she hadn't bargained for, two weeks into the job, was public criticism of NPR from a longtime editor. The controversy has triggered tumult inside NPR's newsroom and thrust Maher into the spotlight.

Critics have scrutinized her political views and seized on past comments she made on everything from the First Amendment to misinformation to the idea that written history is tilted toward the worldview of white men.

"All of this frankly is a bit of a distraction relative to the transformation our organization needs to undergo in order to best serve our mandate," Maher said in an interview.

I agree with her.

Like a lot of people, she wrote stuff on social media - and said stuff in interviews - around 2019, 2020, 2021 that she probably wouldn't write or say today, even if she thought it, because that was a moment where meritocrats like her were rushing to add their names to the moral movement of that moment. Almost of the people at NPR in DC likely agree with what she wrote or said. So it's probably not a big deal.

Berliner's piece was timed just so - at the moment of many public media pledge drives - and I'm sure the brief concern was that his work might harm donations. Perhaps it did. I suspect, more likely, it helped, since the piece showed NPR is precisely what many of its donors want it to be - corporate, progressive do-gooderism.

Maher will do the one thing she's there to do - get NPR more money.