An NPR reporter speaks out against NPR

I realize this one may be hard to steer away from politics.  Please avoid it. In spite of his political leanings the author has managed to keep a balanced viewpoint. We can too.
 

It's a really good and honest look inward from auto Berliner, a journalist with 25 years experience who recognizes that journalism has changed in recent years, and is not as balanced as it once was.  I think he's right, and I'm impressed with his ability to look hard at the institution he loves and works for with a critical eye.  I don't think it is limited to NPR.  It's evident in most of our journalistic sources.

How NPR lost America’s Trust

Of all of the current "journalism" NPR would be the one I worry the least about. The rest are doing more entertainment to get viewers or listeners. 
 

NPR isn't perfect. Not even close. Which, IMHO, says a lot about the rest. 

Wow.  That was a surprising read.  I once listened to NPR pretty regularly, but gave up on them about 15 or 20 years ago as a propaganda machine and not a news outlet.  If they can restore truthful reporting and present both sides of the issues, I might be willing to give them a second chance.

I didn't read the entire thing. It's a little late for them to regain trust. They have proved over and over again they are no better than Fox, CNN, or any other news outlet. 

They are all in it for the ratings. Truth or actual reporting is such a distant second, I'm not sure why they hire journalists. 

We have CBC radio which I think collaborates with NPR on some things.  I was a long term regular listener, but for somewhat similar reasons, for me, and a number of my friends, it has become essentially unlistenable. There is a move right now in Canada to defund the CBC, and as much as I really enjoyed listening in the past, I now support that initiative. I get that there was once a valid reason for it to exist, but I think those days are gone and they're no longer serving that purpose anyway.

There is definitely an increasing ideological mismatch between journalism and the rest of society on average. I think the issue is that journalism has changed a little, but society has changed a lot, to put it mildly. The kinds of views that people dreaded hearing from their cranky uncle at thanksgiving in the '90s are now mainstream in much of the first world. Maybe those views were always common and people are just more willing to express them openly these days, but it can seem like 3-4 decades of social progress has been reversed in less than 1. That's a rate of change that could be hard to keep up with even if you wanted to and made an effort to.

Another issue is that journalism can't be relied on to offer balanced coverage of anything that threatens democracy due to the most inherent conflict of interest possible. A nebulous danger to media profits is only the mildest threat that democratic backsliding can pose to journalism. Loss of access to government media pools, threats to journalists' personal safety, even censorship by the state and company takeovers are among the possibilities in a less democratic environment. The conflict of covering a #1 advertiser or even the owner of the publication is nothing compared to the conflict in covering a threat to democracy.

It's reassuring to read a fairly level headed middle of the road take on the state of journalism. We've gotten to a pretty fractured, dire place that's going to take a lot of work to fix. Not even fix, just get back to a better place.

I read his whole column.  Seems like a retirement swan song lamenting the lost past.

I am probably their target audience and I can only stand about 15 minutes at a time, or as soon as I hear one of their favorite repetitive dog-whistle lines. I miss when NPR was boring, probably around 2010 like the author mentions. Right around the rise of social media... go figure.

Anyway, it's still the most tolerable news radio to listen to. Which is sad. 

In reply to maschinenbau :

Agreed on all points.

NPR being more tolerable than other new outlets speaks more to how bad all the other options are than how good NPR is.

alfadriver said:

Of all of the current "journalism" NPR would be the one I worry the least about. The rest are doing more entertainment to get viewers or listeners. 
 

NPR isn't perfect. Not even close. Which, IMHO, says a lot about the rest. 

The article mentions that NPR is proud to have the highest trustworthiness rating of any other news outlet.
That rating? 3/10.

That's the biggest issue.

An important point here, the is not mentioned in the article, is that NPR is, at least partially, government funded.  If there is a clear ideological / political bent to it, that is of course wildly inappropriate.  If, for example, it took a generally pro-American bent, you could justify that I suppose, but this seems to be something entirely different.

I found this last paragraph interesting, and sadly, pretty naive.

A few weeks ago, NPR welcomed a new CEO, Katherine Maher, who’s been a leader in tech. She doesn’t have a news background, which could be an asset given where things stand. I’ll be rooting for her. It’s a tough job. Her first rule could be simple enough: don’t tell people how to think. It could even be the new North Star.

Yes, maybe the the new CEO will instruct the employees not to tell people how to think, but, based on the article, the organization is wholey coopted already and that is not something you will undo by simply suggesting change in how you report things...

Mr_Asa said:

alfadriver said:

Of all of the current "journalism" NPR would be the one I worry the least about. The rest are doing more entertainment to get viewers or listeners. 
 

NPR isn't perfect. Not even close. Which, IMHO, says a lot about the rest. 

The article mentions that NPR is proud to have the highest trustworthiness rating of any other news outlet.
That rating? 3/10.

That's the biggest issue.

Yep. It's important to point out that this rating is the result of polling Americans. It's long been recognized that journalists and their ethical reporting are essential to democracy, so the arrival of faux journalism and its effect on Americans' trust in the news--along with their inability to distinguish real journalism from opinion--has to be the biggest factor in democracy's current decline. Here's some light reading on the subject.

Margie

Marjorie Suddard said:

......Here's some light reading on the subject.

Margie

I will just take a moment here to complain about another, sadly common, journalistic practice:

When was this article written?!?  It's kind of important, and it's not anywhere on the page!  The most recent date reference within the article, seems to point to 2019?

I mean, if I posted an article about the new rotary engine Mazda is developing, don't you think it would be useful to know it was written in 2002!?!

(I should probably check to see if GRM puts dates on their online articles, but heck, in the magazine, all I have to do is look at the cover.)

In reply to Marjorie Suddard :

Even that article has it wrong. We, or at least I, don't want journalists "telling their story." I want them telling me what happened in the world, stating facts with zero story or opinion interjected into it. 

Their story is why they aren't trusted. They aren't there to sway my opinion, they are there to pass on information and that is all. The stories they choose to report or exclude are why they aren't trusted. I don't want their artistry or videography. I don't want their opinions or feelings. I want facts stated as plainly as possible. 

If they want to be artistic, I would suggest they write for a magazine or maybe get into movies. They should stay out of the news rooms. 

In reply to Toyman! :

And that gets magnified when the news room fills with more and more people of a particular ideological bent

I just don't understand this new constant "threat too democracy". It seems like the whole blanket cover of "threat too national security" that allowed us to slaughter so many civilians across the middle east and completely gut the protections of the 4th and 5th amendment of the Constitution here at home. 

The biggest threat to democracy was letting two private corporate parties become the only options on election Day. Frankly that wasn't even a threat, that was the actual death of the illusion of Democratic choice, but I suspect that conversation would go a lot deeper than we really need to get here. 

Facts don't sell like fear, and fear sells even better than sex. That's the threat to the dying art of actual journalism. 

Journalism died when they went from the 5 Ws and H to trying to "Change society for the better."

There is power and profit to be had from keeping the general public riled up and polarized.

And let's face it, the vast majority of people would rather feel than think anyway.

A properly trained Journalist  should ALWAYS separate commentary from reporting. Most "news" today is actually commentary

Duke said:

There is power and profit to be had from keeping the general public riled up and polarized.

And let's face it, the vast majority of people would rather feel than think anyway.

 

And a lot of it as financed by outside influences.

As a President once said about 22-23 years ago, "they will use our freedoms against us."  And the freedom of the press is one of our country's biggest strengths, but like many strengths it can also be a liability.  Like another man once said, never argue against someone who buys newspaper ink by the barrel.  And it's a LOT cheaper today than it was back then.

TRoglodyte said:

A properly trained Journalist  should ALWAYS separate commentary from reporting. Most "news" today is actually commentary

But is is marketed as news.

Cable NEWS Network

Fox NEWS

And so on.

As for properly trained journalists? I remember taking journalism in college where the hard and fast rule for stories was that anything printed in the school paper had to be verified by three different sources, and it was the editor's job to make sure these stories were verified. How many news sources today are Facebook Pages run by somebody who has never taken a journalism class even in high school and has no idea what an editor does, yet they crank out stories that are picked up and repeated by other 'more legitimate' news sources until they reach the mainstream media. And what kind of journalistic training does a "Tic Toc Influencer have?" It isn't about the truth anymore. It's about grabbing eyeballs, getting attention and selling ads. The FCC used to have rules like the Fairness Doctrine that at least attempted to differentiate between news and opinion. Our Supreme Court killed that in 1969. Now there are no rules other than he who sells the most advertising makes the rules.

I used to listen to NPR all the time, now, with podcasts you can get the shows you like without the garbage in between.

Journalism is broken, and there are few things that sadden me more. 

In reply to Snowdoggie (Forum Supporter) :

The beauty is, one person just has to make E36 M3 up and then two other aggregators copy it. Boom, three independent sources, none of which cite anything.  But people usually don't cross check to find the original source.

Just to be clear.  This is FAR from a recent phenomenon. In the past it became known as "Yellow Journalism".  That trend did fade away at some point and new was a bit more "news" for a while (then again, maybe we didn't know any better, as there were far fewer sources....).

It is kind of funny, considering the link Margie provided about the state of journalism was from the Pulitzer site... who essentially started yellow journalism!

Yellow journalism, the use of lurid features and sensationalized news in newspaper publishing to attract readers and increase circulation. The phrase was coined in the 1890s to describe the tactics employed in the furious competition between two New York City newspapers, the World and the Journal.

Joseph Pulitzer had purchased the New York World in 1883 and, using colourful, sensational reporting and crusades against political corruption and social injustice, had won the largest newspaper circulation in the country....

https://www.britannica.com/topic/yellow-journalism