Public media can be a great thing, but the current iteration treats America like a foreign country
Is this an argument for or against public funding of NPR? If listeners can make up the shortfall, why don’t we just do that and be done with the controversy? One reason is that the Times is doing what most outlets do in covering this story, skipping the inconvenient detail that NPR derives a significant chunk of its revenue from member stations using public funds to purchase its programs. That’s still a federal subsidy, only less direct, and not as easily made up by “dedicated listeners.”
More interesting is that while NPR and its supporters mostly recognize the station has a bias issue, they’ve abandoned the idea that this needs fixing. Earlier this year, CEO Katherine Maher tiptoed in the direction of concessions, saying she regretted calling Trump the rare fascist-racist-sociopath trifecta (“a fascist and deranged racist sociopath”) and addressing whistleblower Uri Berliner’s concerns by noting NPR could have covered the Hunter Biden laptop story “more aggressively or sooner.” However, when NPR sued to counter a Trump executive order canceling funding, Maher took a different tone. In a defiant statement, she pointed out that Trump’s Order, “Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Biased Media,” likely violated the First Amendment on viewpoint discrimination grounds by promising to “cease indirect funding.” In other words, even if NPR is biased, the White House can’t tell member stations not to buy it.
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A new poll finds 40% of respondents believe in a baseless conspiracy theory that the coronavirus was created in a lab in China.
There is zero evidence for this. Scientists say the virus was transmitted to humans from another species.
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I’ve Been at NPR for 25 Years. Here’s How We Lost America’s Trust.
NPR and PBS must face the consequences for their divisive approach to journalism.
On tomorrow’s @AmericaWeek @mtabbi and I examine like anthropologists recordings of real NPR stories. What I learned is that the problem isn’t “bias” so much as incomprehensible levels of politicized self-consciousness about incredibly tiny matters, like “racism” in plant names.
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What’s everyone’s favorite ridiculous NPR story?
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As an indication of Twitter’s tendency to expose people to more news, a simple breakdown of our data shows how a higher proportion of Twitter users (28% of them) accessed seven or more online news sources in the last week, compared to users of other platforms, those who don’t use social media, and the total sample in general. This is perhaps again a reflection of how Twitter has been seen as a destination for news.