The worst part about last week’s news about long-time National Public Radio (NPR) editor Uri Berliner’s tell all about the network’s, uh, systemic bias toward the left isn’t the bias itself (and if you haven’t read Berliner’s entire article, you should). We all knew that; it was obvious on issue after issue:
- Tripling down on the “Russia Hoax”, treating it as divine revealed truth until it all fell apart, followed by a half-hearted and oh-so-quiet walkback.
- Participating in the DNC (and RNC’s) defamation of the Tea Party, the last serious conservative threat to Democrat hegemony (which led, pretty directly, to Donald Trump, for better or worse; to Donald Trump; to quote Glenn Reynolds, ““I’m increasingly concerned that the neutralization of the Tea Party movement — an effort by both major parties — may have convinced a lot of people that civics-book style polite political participation is for chumps.”
- Went full-bore Mao on Covid, not only unskeptically carrying the party line on the lab leak theory, vaccination, lockdowns and treatments, but actively attacking any departures from the Administration’s narrative, even as the narrative fell apart.
- Actively participated in suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story.
- Buying modern “Woke”-ism and portraying it as the revealed absolute truth – serving more like a religious broadcaster than a news organization, serving America’s modern, upper-to-upper-middle class progressive faith.
- Reporting on every other issue imaginable – climate, guns, faith, abortion, you name it.
It’s not that the network has lied about it for decades; as recently as a couple years ago, Ira Glass and Bob Garfield dismissed the allegations, saying “multiple studies” proved it was untrue – conveniently without showing the “studies” for serious examination.
It’s not that they went full-bore “woke”:
Race and identity became paramount in nearly every aspect of the workplace. Journalists were required to ask everyone we interviewed their race, gender, and ethnicity (among other questions), and had to enter it in a centralized tracking system. We were given unconscious bias training sessions. A growing DEI staff offered regular meetings imploring us to “start talking about race.” Monthly dialogues were offered for “women of color” and “men of color.” Nonbinary people of color were included, too.
These initiatives, bolstered by a $1 million grant from the NPR Foundation, came from management, from the top down. Crucially, they were in sync culturally with what was happening at the grassroots—among producers, reporters, and other staffers. Most visible was a burgeoning number of employee resource (or affinity) groups based on identity.
It’s not even that NPR actively denies they have a problem – “my weaknesses are actually my strengths”, as Michael Scott put it in a similar situation – and septupled down, suspending Berliner for doing business against the family and hiring a new CEO, Katherine Maher, who reads like a Babylon Bee caricature of a Prius-driving “In This House” sign-wielding upper-middle-class credentialist Karen.
(Naturally, the real crime is “pouncing” on Maher)
As great a service as Berliner has given the world of journalism, the biggest problem isn’t even that this is just the tip of the iceberg. Berliner’s observations about NPR appear to apply, to one degree or another, at every mainstream media newsroom, particularly here in the Twin Cities. All four local TV news stations, to say nothing of the Strib, are reliable DFL mouthpieces. While some reporters are modestly diligent about getting a variety of points of view, that appears to be much less a priority than it used to be..
In particular, Minnesota Public Radio seems to have abandoned their long-time drive for, if not “balance”, at least trying to include more perspectives. Not so long ago, NPR reporters would reach out to the state’s opposition – not just in the legislature, but opposition advocacy groups for their groups points of view on issues. When the DFL would float one of their gun control bills, for example, you’d hear Bryan Strawser or Rob Doar along with the usual suspects from Everytown or “Protect” MN.
When was the last time you heard any of that?
And while I try not to conflate Human Resources with news, it can’t possible escape notice that while MPR is famously hostile to hiring anyone to the right of Paul Wellstone, and is an actively hostile workplace to any that might leak through, they hired a meteorologist who’d gotten whacked for rhetoric too extreme for KARE, had a political reporter who dated and eventually married the state’s sitting ultraprogressive Lieutenant Governor, and another newsroom figure who we are assured no-way no-how frothed with hatred for conservatives and all they stood for before he retired.
No. The worst thing is, all of this systemic bias not only guts the media’s ability to do it’s most important job – holding government accountable – but eradicates any real reason to trust the media to do that job. It erodes the trust among people and institutions that a society needs to make “democracy” work.
And the worst part still? Either they are too cloistered in their class bubble to see the problem, or they think their class’s interests are what society actually needs.
The fact that NPR has become “Religious Radio” for the secular faith of the modern left hasn’t been even a serious debate outside prog journo circles in over a decade.
The perception that the rest of the media is the same thing in a lower-gloss format? That’s the part that needs to sink in.
