A longtime editor for NPR recently published an essay about his assertion that NPR had gone astray. If you’re someone who thinks as obsessively about good journalism as I do, you should read it. Unfortunately, it did require me to visit the Free Press website for the first time, led by Bari Weiss, and I can’t help but roll my eyes when I say or read her name. I will say she definitely draws the “I’m a” commentary. You know, “I’m a [insert very specific minority group] here, so hear me when I say the moon is made of Swiss cheese.”
And my guy Uri Berliner (that is a real-one NPR name) leans into that one right away, George Constanza-style. “My mother’s a lesbian, and I have a liberal background, so hear me when I say that NPR has a liberal bias.”
SIDEBAR: One more thing about The Free Press and then I’m gonna stop. One of the banners at the top of the page is “Witch Trials.” It’s about J.K. Rowling! OMGLOLFMLAYKM. Their slogan is “For Free People.” We’re gonna talk about what they might be free of in a minute.
I’m an NPR listener and I have even donated to their programming because I have considered their coverage to be bias-free in general, so let’s get that out of the way. I’m listening, though! Uri offers a few examples of where he felt there was bias in NPR’s coverage. One was the management of the first Trump impeachment. He recounted that NPR frequently had California congressman Adam Schiff as a guest and he argued that there was a good case for collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. Once special counsel Robert Mueller’s report came out though, there was no such finding. Berliner said that NPR basically swept this under the rug and never acknowledged the finding was wrong. First of all, it seems a bit crazy to suggest that NPR didn’t cover the full findings of the Mueller report and of course they did. His specificity regarding the collusion finding is interesting to me. It’s like Berliner just wanted folks to look at that part of the Mueller findings without context. If you did that, you wouldn’t have to consider that Mueller never talked to Trump himself and says in the report that the findings were incomplete due to redacted records and restricted access to information. (By the way, if you never actually read the Mueller report, maybe listen to it?)
This isolation of information is something you’ll find a lot in the faux intellectual crowd. Other people refer to it as intellectual dishonesty. We’ve all been guilty of it, but usually, we outgrow it by the time we’re 10. Like when we accused of writing all over the walls with crayon and we deny it because it really was a pencil. You know. Anyway, this essay is a lot of that. The Hunter Biden computer thing is still a little above my understanding, but I don’t think NPR was alone in being late to this story. It was first reported by the New York Post for Pete’s sake. Regardless of whether there’s any there, Berliner accuses his colleagues of failing to pursue the story because they didn’t want to help Trump. That is a heck of an accusation and the type of thing that could isolate you from your fellow journalists. (Foreshadowing.)
Berliner’s example about COVID was also interesting. He appears to be knocking NPR for reporting evidence-based news and shying away from things that were not so easily provable. Enjoyed this paragraph, though:
There is one thing that might tie those situations and that would be an administration pushing a certain conclusion. Let’s not forget the supergenius who was in the White House at the time, routinely using racist language to refer to the coronavirus. Again: context.
That said, I still wasn’t sure what he was really so upset about until I got to the part where he digs into the newsroom’s coverage of George Floyd’s murder. I literally said out loud: “There it is.”
First of all, Uri says, NPR just took wholesale that there is systematic racism, and it seems he would have liked to have slow-walked that one. Berliner wanted an investigation into whether there’s systematic bias in America. Hm, that’s a tough one. I wonder if he personally suggested that investigation. Or if he was aware of many other pieces of journalism and research that have highlighted systematic racism in America. There’s probably just nothing out there about this at all. Definitely not any books.
Man, when they say Free Press, this must be why it’s free. Because what.
Berliner thinks that NPR shifted its focus from race unfairly to the detriment of its coverage and overall success. You can’t prove this, although Berliner tries to do so by highlighting here some of NPR’s recent financial setbacks. The only problem there is that journalism in general is facing these issues and linking it to an effort to right-side its treatment is a failure to consider other possibilities.
Berliner ends by lamenting his place as a “visible wrongthinker” at his longtime workplace. Why? Because he makes stands like:
Took a lot of nerve to link to the House bill, which, true, does not use the word “gay.” It uses “sexual orientation or gender identity”, and it does look as if the bill would like teachers to not talk or teach or mention, uh, being … sexual orientation? Wwwwhat does he think that means? He could have really kept that wrongthinking to himself and then it wouldn’t have been visible.
Berliner got suspended after this piece hit the freewaves and resigned soon after. That gives me a little pause. He was suspended for not getting permission to talk to an outside outlet, which is NPR policy and according to NPR’s reporting on … all of this, Berliner had just gotten permission to speak on another network. So he probably knew the policy. But it’s too bad he ultimately decided to quit. Yes, I just finished chewing this piece a new asshole. But there’s nothing wrong with opposing viewpoints in a newsroom. In fact, it’s better for coverage. Berliner is right about that and it’s concerning that the leadership are all registered Democrats. I don’t know what you do about that, though, besides a concerted effort to seek out conservative viewpoints. But that’s hard for a news organization these days. I don’t know how else to say this, but conservatism and facts … man, they don’t get along right now. Their candidate for president is so comfortable lying that journalism outlets have had to figure out how to fact-check him as close to real-time as possible. (This poor man.)
And related: This might also be why NPR listeners are overwhelmingly liberal. Is it possible conservatives and Trump supporters don’t like NPR because they report news that challenges what they would like to be true? Like, how do you fix that? That feels like something that should be investigated. But I’m sure that the Free Press will get right on that. As soon as they’re done with the J.K. Rowling blockbuster story about the billionaire (uh-huh) author who keeps opening her mouth and reaping consequences for it.
Which, wow, big if true.