NPR's Liberal Bias Shocker

Millions of radio listeners are ok with it, and conservative politicians get to campaign on defunding public radio.

National Public Radio’s news and commentary programming has built a reputation over the decades. Its range of topics and the humanness of its reporters is unmatched in its medium, which for most of its followers, is broadcast FM Radio.

Seriously, take a spin down your radio’s choice of stations and see what else there is to offer. If you can find a station claiming to be current events and commentary focused, what you’ll hear is one or two people reading a script rewritten from wire services. And, as for commentary, using a format analogy, these stations offer Country and Western.

This is nobody’s fault. The contemporary makeup of broadcast journalism doesn’t exist because Ronald Reagan ended the FCC’s fairness doctrine. The demands of late stage capitalism make the rules.

If you boil NPR’s programming down to its essence you’ll find an organization functioning within what some would call a “liberal” framework. This should surprise nobody. Millions of radio listeners are ok with it, and conservative politicians get to campaign on defunding public radio.

To listen to the uproar coming from right wing commentary over the past few days is to hear that they are shocked, mind you, shocked by the observations of NPR senior business editor Uri Berliner

Oliver Darcy weighed in at CNN’s Reliable Sources Newsletter:

• Berliner lampooned NPR in the 3,500-word piece, saying it "lost America's trust" by supposedly embracing a "progressive worldview," rejecting "viewpoint diversity," and "telling listeners how to think." Berliner took issue with the way NPR has covered several stories, including "Russiagate," the Covid-19 lab-leak theory, and the New York Post's Hunter Biden story. Suffice to say that the views Berliner articulated felt more aligned with the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal than NPR.

Belinger’s objective in penning the piece wasn’t to close the NPR operation down. He even says defunding is a bad idea. (Most politicians using that word have no idea what they are talking about.)

Predictably, the presumptive GOP nominee has been blustering about how NPR is a “liberal disinformation machine.” And the rest of rightwing medialand has been doing an excellent job of the pot calling the kettle black. 

While I would quibble* with his characterizations of the broadcaster’s reporting on the three issues mentioned above, his overall complaint was about what he perceives as the progressive culture permeating everything to do with public radio.

(* I actually researched both NPR’s archives and what seemed to have been the generally accepted consensus on these topics. I opted not to spend several thousand words on the details, but am confident in my mistrust in his examples.)

The points Berliner makes concern the lack of diversity in viewpoints, the decision making process, and the loss of credibility accompanying the modern day NPR brand of news. He’s speaking as an public radio insider in a medium (Bari Weiss’ The Free Press) whose raison d'etat is contrarianism to the liberal press.

What you find at the Free Press or in Berliner’s thought processes is a presumption of normal; Issues have sides, which is how you end up sponsoring a debate on “should the U.S. shut its borders” with (among others) Ann Coulter vs. Cenk Uyger.

What you don’t find with the above perspective is an acknowledgement or understanding of the modern day corrosion of institutions. The much bigger picture. Change is treated as inconvenient. Being contrary is a virtue. The fall election is a contest between candidates rather than a test for democracy. Yada, yada.

It’s a sort of Trumpism without Trump; the sort of framing one would have found in an old school Bostonian focused on everything in its place and willing to use sub rosa techniques to keep it that way. 

The NPR editor’s expressed concern about ‘telling people what to think” misses the mark. What is dominant right now in media is a framework to force a conclusion. In public radio’s case, the framework is liberal-ish. In an America centered on personal achievement rather than collective accomplishments (or some mix thereof) the framework is illiberal-ish.

NPR is mostly an outlier. Given the deepness of division in this country, there’s no road back. 

Here’s the truth about liberal or conservative or politically correct or making America great again: People don’t trust. Anyone or anything. Period. And it ain’t because NPR talked about gender fluidity.

What struck me the most about this exposé of NPR wasn’t the critiques of its editorial processes; it was the commentary about the politically correct culture the author felt oppressed by. 

Somehow the lesson of George Foster’s death had to be discovered. By journalists. Like him.

The assumption of institutional racism stuck in his craw. I don’t know Uri Berliner or what he’s done. I’m not saying he’s anything; racist or not. What’s involved here goes beyond skin color.

What I do know is that the “pendulum” is being pushed in another direction by the people vested in the old ways. “DEI” is some sort of curse word. The quest for a patriarchal order has emerged from the shadows. A lot of people think they lost (or will lose) something via society’s upheaval(s) in recent times. MAGA.

If an organization tries to remake itself along the lines of the world they’d like to see, there will be friction. Given that humans are making decisions there will be mistakes. Bigger people cope with the bumps along the way with the expectation that the greater good is worthy. 

Smaller people infer that there’s a conspiracy afoot.

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Thursday’s Noteworthy News Links

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‘Climate homicide’ architects pitch theory to prosecutors via E&E News

• The authors of “Climate Homicide: Prosecuting Big Oil for Climate Death” — which will be published soon in the Harvard Environmental Law Review — embarked on a road trip of college campuses this spring, making the case for bringing a slew of criminal charges against oil and gas companies.

• The push by David Arkush, director of Public Citizen’s climate program, and Donald Braman, an associate professor at George Washington University Law School, aims to bolster support for the theory through presentations at law schools. Their events have attracted law students, legal professors and local climate activists.

• Local district attorneys offices are also starting to pay attention. “As stakeholders in the realm of criminal justice, it is imperative that we acknowledge and address the profound impact of pollution and chemical exposure on individuals’ well-being and their abilities to live full lives,” said Marian Ryan, district attorney for Middlesex County, Massachusetts, whose office sent a representative to a recent event at Harvard Law School.

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Raul Ureña battles recall election in Calexico over his trans identity Via Los Angeles Blade

• A battle is underway that encapsulates the broader national struggle over LGBTQ+ rights, environmental policy, and the future direction of local governance. At the center of this storm is Raul Ureña, 26, one of the youngest and first openly transgender city council members in Calexico’s history.

• Ureña faces a recall election orchestrated by a faction of past politicians and fueled by a campaign marred with alleged misinformation and accusations rooted in prejudice.

• Ureña, alongside fellow young councilmember Gilberto Manzanarez, has been instrumental in ushering in a new era of progressive policy-making in Calexico, aimed at rectifying a decade of economic downturn, political strife, and social neglect. Their tenure has been marked by significant investments in the community’s infrastructure, environmental initiatives, public safety, and efforts to boost the financial health of the city, in stark contrast to the practices of previous administrations.

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Letters from an American, April 9, 2024 by Heather Cox Richardson… about the 1864 Arizona Legislature…

• The legislature provided that “[n]o black or mulatto, or Indian, Mongolian, or Asiatic, shall be permitted to [testify in court] against any white person,” thus making it impossible for them to protect their property, their families, or themselves from their white neighbors. It declared that “all marriages between a white person and a [Black person], shall…be absolutely void.”

• And it defined the age of consent for sexual intercourse to be just ten years old (even if a younger child had “consented”). 

• So, in 1864, a legislature of 27 white men created a body of laws that discriminated against Black people and people of color and considered girls as young as ten able to consent to sex, and they adopted a body of criminal laws written by one single man.

• And in 2024, one of those laws is back in force in Arizona.