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PaperclipPerfector  15d ago (text post)   26477 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 15, 2024

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NPR is in the news lately. First because they have a new CEO, who tweets like a parody of white liberal women. OK those were "in the past" but they were only 4-8 years ago... has she matured at all since then? So far no sign of that.

Secondly was this essay by Uri Berliner, their longtime senior business editor, creator of the popular "Planet Money" podcast, and one of the very few white males/not-super-liberals still in a position of authority at NPR. I really recommend this essay. He lays it out how, sure, NPR was always left-leaning, but it had intelligence and integrity. It's changed.

In recent years, however, that has changed. Today, those who listen to NPR or read its coverage online find something different: the distilled worldview of a very small segment of the U.S. population.

If you are conservative, you will read this and say, duh, it’s always been this way.

But it hasn’t.

...

Back in 2011, although NPR’s audience tilted a bit to the left, it still bore a resemblance to America at large. Twenty-six percent of listeners described themselves as conservative, 23 percent as middle of the road, and 37 percent as liberal.

By 2023, the picture was completely different: only 11 percent described themselves as very or somewhat conservative, 21 percent as middle of the road, and 67 percent of listeners said they were very or somewhat liberal. We weren’t just losing conservatives; we were also losing moderates and traditional liberals.

He was suspended for writing that essay (edited- he has since been made to resign: https://archive.is/YR3LB). NPR claims it's not about the content, they just don't allow their workers to write for outside publications without permission. Benjamin Mullin has the story in the New York Times

(edited to remove something wrong)

For my own part, I grew up listening to NPR and I used to love it. The voices, the production value, the journalism, all of it was high-quality. It really stood out in the world of FM radio, where everything else is staticky, ad-filled garbage, and tends to play the same basic pop-classic rock-rap top 40 garbage over and over. In the world before podcasts and sattelite Radio, NPR was the only halfway intellectual content on the radio. Now it just feels like a podcast from some random student activists who have been triggered by Trump to the point that they're on the verge of a psychotic breakdown. I seriously can't stand listening to it anymore, it's just amazing how deranged and annoying it's become.

If you want more examples, Peter Boghossian has a series of podcasts about it: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYNjnJFU-62s5cNuqeB-D-7QPymF6myk_. I'm guessing that most of this won't be very shocking to the people here. But still, it's nice to feel like "I'm not alone. there really are a lot of other people who used to like NPR and now hate it."

NPR is too far left? That's certainly a take.

I have the impression of NPR as their spin being similar to NYT: representing the most milquetoast "centrist" corporate Dem position possible, with token discussions of "diversity" or minority rights while completely eliding any structural issues or suggestions for real leftist/progressive reform. Often so blatantly that it feels like the editor deleted the paragraph discussing them and immediately hit publish.

  • -29

I appreciate you for being here.

I think your take on this is remarkable in 2024, long after “nice polite Republicans” was what NPR could be accused of.

It’s interesting to consider what NPR would have to do such that you would not accuse them of being centrist as opposed to actually progressive.

Is there a relatively prominent media source they could model themselves on?

I'd say ProPublica, The Atlantic, and The Economist are all mainstream left-leaning news sources I expect to do a better job of analysis than NPR. With the "analysis" part, I'm intentionally excluding Reuters/AP which I expect to be relatively trustworthy on the facts (of course with some bias on which facts they report and precisely how they present them), but analysis just isn't what they're trying to do.

I do note that Economist and Atlantic have more authors pushing back against DEI slop, usually couching their counterarguments in some hard numbers before going 'this is not how we help (insert chosen minority)'. Still ostensibly on Team DEI, but less wedded to the distasteful tactics normally employed.

You expect ProPublica to do a good job of analysis? They're the ones that broke my faith in in-depth journalism with this article. I'd recommend reading it yourself to see if you can find their trick.

Spoilers: The tool works perfectly. 25% of "risk 1" and 80% of "Risk 10" offenders go on to reoffend, regardless of race. They then calculated "Of the [Race] criminals, X% of the [non-|re-]offenders were labelled [high|low] risk" to obscure that fact. I went into it more here, on the old site.

They certainly know how to tell a compelling story, but that's all it is: a story.

I used to read The Atlantic fairly regularly, but that was a while back and so I don’t know how they are in recent years. I know they have some quite left and still some not-so-left writers.

I’m quite surprised you list The Economist here, since they are typically considered fairly neoliberal in their stances, and so not leftist friendly. The fairly recent not-pro-trans article they had rocked the world of a lot of /r/neoliberal.

https://old.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/v5d0hp/executive_editor_of_the_economist_on_eliminating/

https://old.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/uo2ghw/the_economists_record_on_trans_issues_setting_the/

Like I agree that a lot of NPR analysis is pretty shallow, even if you stripped out any overt political valence, but I guess I don’t quite understand your complaint and/or your particular progressive stances on any given issue.

(For context, I used to be an Obama-loving left neoliberal and now I’m a ~Romney-loving right neoliberal, but I’ve always been annoyed with progressives.)

With the "analysis" part, I'm intentionally excluding Reuters/AP; analysis just isn't what they're trying to do.

Technically, Reuters does have an opinion section, Breakingviews.

I have never heard of Nice Polite Republicans til today; that's a fun bacronym. My favorite is Neutered Pacifica Radio.

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