An NPR liberal wakes up

bladerunner wrote:

I used to listen to Cartalk on NPR. Never missed it. I'd occasionally listen to Wait, wait, don't tell me. They had on conservatives like P.J. O'rourke, one of my favorite authors. In the early 2000's Ray Kroc's widow left NPR over 200 million dollars. I don't know what their budget was but I thought that was more than enough to keep them going.

I do think they've really gone left on social issues regarding BLM and transgender issues. They are not standard liberals, in that regard. Their biased reporting on the George Floyd riots and the defund the police movement was a deal breaker for Republicans like myself.

I would agree that most right wing outlets have gone off the rails. On Fox, the standard evening lineup are just shills for Trump. Newsmax is simply crazy. There's a reason they've been sued over the voting machine issues. Sadly, some of them are in Alex Jones territory. On the left, MSNBC and CNN are just as bad.

The one outlet that is fairly straight down the line on most issues is Bloomberg. They lean a little left but the reporting is pretty balanced.

Precious Roy wrote:

I have been listening to NPR sing the mid 80s. This guy's critique of NPR is just a cut and paste from Glenn Greenwald's twitter feed. I also suspect there might be some "you mad bro" in here over big anchor spots going to women of color recently amid acrimony over pay gap between white hosts and women of color that lead to some big departures two years ago. Otherwise, it is a lazy "look at me" piece that offers no real insight.

NPR used to be much, much more liberal than it is today. Susan Stamberg, Nina Totenberg and Linda Wertheimer lead a news room that was surprisingly out in front on issues like the US involvement with central and south American dictators and their death squads and were a big counterbalance to a network news establishment that was very reticent to get too deep into the sins of US foreign policy under Reagan and HW Bush.

Over the years, NPR has moved decidedly to the center as concerns over Republican attempts to pull funding for public broadcasting made NPR gun shy for hard hitting journalism. Since then, NPR has been rightfully criticized for being too deferential to Pentagon sources and prioritizing access over journalism.

The shift in NPR's listeners has nothing to do with the programing. The listeners and the media landscape have changed. Conservatives have moved hard to the right with Trump taking over the party. And social media, and a slew of new right wing media outlets (Newsmaxx, Daily Caller, etc.) have captured right wing news and commentary consumers.

So, the article just ends up following lock step in what Greenwald has been saying about MSNBC. It is not really a claim that these news outlets are too liberal. It is a claim that these news outlets are too captive to the DNC corporate elites. Stories about Hunter Biden's laptop and Russiagate are not signs of a leftwing progressive takeover at NPR. To the contrary, it shows that NPR is married to the DNC corporate elites, much like MSNBC is. In fact, NPR's coverage of progressive issues like Medicare for All, Green new deal, etc. is pretty snotty and dismissive of progressive views.