I’ve Been at NPR for 25 Years. Here’s How We Lost America’s Trust.

return2ozma@lemmy.world to politics @lemmy.world – -20 points –
I’ve Been at NPR for 25 Years. Here’s How We Lost America’s Trust.
thefp.com
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So let me get this straight, NPR lost America's trust?

America was radicalized by a Australian billionaire and his oil-industry buddies feeding straight up lies to a captive audience, and this is NPR's fault?

Dude, one media company had to pay almost a billion dollars in damages for their election fraud narrative, and that company wasn't NPR.

And yet somehow, this is NPR's fault?

This is some grade-A fascist apologist bullshit, up there with the New York Times whitewashing fascism in Ohio diners and commenting on how nicely Neo Nazis are dressing these days.

That’s bullshit, though.

NPR is very factual with a left-center bias.

They get dinged for supporting Israel and because member stations curate their own content. Texas public radio is very different from Houston public radio which is different from Minnesota public radio and LAist serving southern cali.

Secondly, most conservatives left NPR in general because of their largely factual reporting. Further, at least MPR, they don’t shy away from reporting on republicans or admitting the rare good things they’ve done.

Conservatives responded in one of a few ways:

  • becoming less conservative (my dad for example is now an independent.)

  • not listening to NPR and instead going to fox or OAN or Epoch….

  • listening to those others mentioned and then making angry, terroristic phone calls.

It’s really not NPRs fault this happened- they told the truth as fairly and accurately as they could. And as to her accusation of favoring democrats for political interviews… do you really thing Trump or whoever is going to give an interview to somebody who says things like “but that’s not true.” To your face, when you just spouted some election-fraud lies? Or “do you have any proof?” When you double and triple down on the lie?

Nope. Because that guy looked like an idiot. (I forget who the interview was. Maybe it was one of trumps lawyers or some random pubie.)

Being very factual is what makes it liberal news. It's so slanted, in fact I don't think a single liberal would deny that this is exactly why they tune in! The savages are literally just listening to what they want to hear!

The universe has a well known liberal bias - it shouldn't be allowed to influence our fair and balanced media coverage.

Persistent rumors that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia over the election became the catnip that drove reporting. [...]

But when the Mueller report found no credible evidence of collusion [...]

Aaaaand I stopped reading.

The Mueller Report absolutely found credible evidence of collusion, despite heavy-handled interference by Trump, Barr, and the rest of the GOP. It unfortunately failed to result in any prosecution (in no small part due to Barr), and failed to pressure Republicans to vote to remove Trump when he was impeached.

That is exactly where I bowed out. I have my own criticisms of NPR (as a contributor for decades), but this guys opinion is trash.

Literally every source says there was insufficient evidence to prove collusion, from the Mueller report specifically.

Insufficient evidence to prove a crime? Maybe. I disagree, but I'm neither a lawyer nor a judge.

But "collusion" itself isn't a crime, and the evidence clearly showed evidence of collusion between the GOP and Russia.

The number of connections between the GOP and Russia, financially and ideologically, and Russia's proven interference in 2016 and since (not to mention the GOP visit to Moscow on July 4th) are evidence enough to show there is "collusion".

The problem is our laws on campaign finance and foreign political influence are Swiss cheese.

And then they turn around and act like, "Well, he didn't get convicted of a crime, so clearly it was all a hoax."

No. It wasn't a hoax. There was evidence. Just not enough to do anythong about it, apparently. (And I still argue only because of the amount of interference run on the investigation.)

EDIT: And just in case you want to come back and obtusely repeat your argument, here's the report in full. After 181 pages of evidence, here's the conclusion.

IV. CONCLUSION Because we determined not to make a traditional prosecutorial judgment, we did not draw ultimate conclusions about the President’s conduct. The evidence we obtained about the President’s actions and intent presents difficult issues that would need to be resolved if we were making a traditional prosecutorial judgment. At the same time, if we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, we are unable to reach that judgment. Accordingly, while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.

Its in black and white: they had already determined that they would not make a "prosecutorial judgment" (recommendation to charge Trump with a crime), since Barr said that should be left to the Impeachment process. But despite that, the report makes clear, in no unclear terms...

"It also does not exonerate him."

Obstruction of justice is a different accusation than collusion with Russians. The report states that there is insufficient evidence to prove collusion, but there may be a case to prove obstruction of justice if they decided to pursue it. But they aren't going to. Which means absolutely nothing, at the end of the day. You can't work with it, can't assume anything or draw any conclusions. It's not even a hypothesis let alone one that can be proven or not proven.

Hmm, I see, I see... But, pray tell...

WHAT JUSTICE WAS HE OBSTRUCTING?!

The GOP logic seems to go like this.

  1. Get accused of crime.
  2. Illegally block investigation into the original crime.
  3. Because of your obstruction, insufficient evidence of your original crime is found to force prosecution.
  4. Now that you blocked the original charges, you can claim it was all bogus. You can't "obstruct justice" if there was no crime in the first place, right?!

So, obstruction of justice is legal now, so long as you succeed. Got it. Thanks.

Also, fuck off. I'm not reading another reply. You are unwilling to discuss this topic in good faith, or you lack the brain cells to do so.

Read the thing.

Uhh.. no u?

I did when it came out.

So what did it conclude about trump colluding with Russians? And what actions have come from that conclusion?

Why are you asking these questions now after asserting falsehoods before and refusing to read the report?

Just curious what exactly you got from it, and how you reconcile that against what all of the news reported and concluded. Mueller report states that the investigation "did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in it's election interference activities". What does that mean to you?

Read the report and listen to what Mueller said he thought were the appropriate boundaries of his job. He refused to make judgments and focused on putting facts and evidence in the report. Fox and Republicans twisted that into the narrative that you are repeating. Mueller didn't find collusion because he refused to take that role, supposedly believing that the elected representatives were the ones that would take an honest look at the report and make that judgement. But you are asking those questions because you want to deflect away from you making claims about without having read it. All news didn't reach the same conclusion. All right-wing propaganda did though.

PBS, NPR, American Bar Association, etc are not what I would call right wing propaganda, but I guess it's relative. If I understand correctly though, your stance is that Mueller was simply getting the information out there for others to act on if they chose to. In that case, why have they not acted? My impression from legal summaries, including from the American bar association, is that they are not pursuing it because the Mueller report couldn't find enough evidence to build a case. I trust their assessment and summary of the report more than what I can get out of reading it myself in it's entirety.

So what really happened? Nobody knows for sure and there is not enough evidence to do anything about it. It's a non-topic.

How long until he gets jail time? How many continuous years of lawsuits and investigations before they get him? Is the system really that broken that he keeps getting away with it or are the charges simply weak to begin with? Tbh I don't really know, but I have serious Trump fatigue.

I think that an honest assessment of Trump's handling by the legal system shows that there is plenty to go after him for and that he has been given far too much leeway. The system is broken in the sense that it relies on being populated by good faith actors instead of loyalists to a demagogue.

I think that the motivation and the handling was different but I wonder if you feel that the decades a legal pursuit of the Clinton's similarly shows that it was unfounded?

I think they didn't take action against Trump because of a combination of cowardice, party loyalty, and overt obstruction from prominent Republican leadership.

I think it's the same as for the Clintons or Biden. There are probably shady things that they did, but we will never actually know or be able to prove anything. Their enemies certainly tried hard enough without success. Going after them was a political move for them as much as it is/was for Trump, and if you can't prove anything over years of investigation and legal actions then you need to let it go, even if you believe that they are probably guilty.

Just to reiterate, I personally think Trump easily could have colluded with Russians in their interference. I believe that he would do it if he knew he could get away with it, and maybe he did. but apparently nothing can be proven ("insufficient evidence" and all that) so we need to drop it and move on, effectively assuming innocence.

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I find NPR a little annoying for its nonchalant and cutesy way of presenting horrifying news stories. It’s like “Donald Trump tries to commit a coup” and Tamara Keith is like “on today’s show Domenico and I talk about what Trump’s strategy is here for his 2024 run and how this will impact house republicans.”

Or, the US economy is in shambles and Planet Money is like “today we’ll talk about that time the Dutch economy was in shambles in 1770 and what a tulip salesman did to save it. Maybe there will be something we can learn about today’s problems, ahyuck.”

Notable is NPR's rebuttal to this essay: NPR responds after editor says it has 'lost America's trust'

In particular, this portion stands out:

"As a person of color who has often worked in newsrooms with little to no people who look like me, the efforts NPR has made to diversify its workforce and its sources are unique and appropriate given the news industry's long-standing lack of diversity," Alfonso says. "These efforts should be celebrated and not denigrated as Uri has done."

After this story was first published, Berliner contested Alfonso's characterization, saying his criticism of NPR is about the lack of diversity of viewpoints, not its diversity itself.

"I never criticized NPR's priority of achieving a more diverse workforce in terms of race, ethnicity and sexual orientation. I have not 'denigrated' NPR's newsroom diversity goals," Berliner said. "That's wrong."

Nah, he just talked about how "Race and identity became paramount in nearly every aspect of the workplace" and how a bunch of employee groups based on identity started up, and then directly linked that to the "absence of viewpoint diversity." Totally different. 🙄

I'm really tired of this weasel wordplay that constantly happens, where someone talks about X and then uses that to lead into a point about how this bad thing happened, and when called out, backs off and says "I never blamed X on this bad thing happening." Fuck off with that shit, we all know what you said and we can fucking read, you just don't want to admit it because you know that saying it makes you look racist as all hell.

Yea, I bet it really was hard to be a conservative at NPR. Unfortunately, between DEI, Hunter's Laptop, Lab-gate, etc, it's pretty easy to see that this fellow has simply taken modern conservative talking points all at face-value. That is not necessarily a good idea.

edit: Side question: Has anyone else ever noticed a correlation between font size and journalistic integrity, or is it just me?

I can't get past the 6th or 7th paragraph. It resets the page.