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Disclosure: This story was reported and written by NPR Media Correspondent David Folkenflik and NPR Intern Mary Yang. It was edited by Acting Chief Business Editor Emily Kopp. Under NPR's protocol for reporting on itself, no NPR corporate official or news executive reviewed this story before it was posted publicly.
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Ie., they reported on themselves without interference from the suits.
One of my absolute favorite television shows is called W1A. It features David Tennent as a narrator, who frequently gets lines like that about the BBC.
Sort of. I listen to NPR nearly every day, and it's difficult to do so. Lots, and lots, and lots of of the same theme...women, women of color, LGBTQ. They pound the same narrative into your head constantly.
I'm all for human rights. I listen to NPR because they report on human rights. But FFS, I'm always left cringing and thinking "does the audience really demand this level of progressivism?"
It's so bad now that I can't trust them to report objectively.
Wanna solve your money problems? Spin up a conservative arm and let it rip. With the same journalistic standards of course.
NPR and the News Hour, it is hard to take them seriously anymore, and I run a household of people who feel strongly about the environment, human rights and worker rights. Some of us are women, LGBTQ and we have friends who are people of color.
Overemphasizing the previously-underemphasized is how social corrections begin. It's often noisy, myopic, superficial, misdirected, and even ignorant. But completely human.
And yes it can be uncomfortable for those of us who are losing our default stature as nature's chosen ones.
The pendulum swings, inevitably. The successful case we can hope for (work toward?) is that the swings are damping over time. This doesn't have much historical precedent, however.
Since these are crucial issues and the framing grates a little, I wish they’d reframe every single story with a gender/race/identity angle in terms of freedom.
Non scientific, but even the news shows like All Things Considered had a turning point when Trump was elected and then a larger one around the George Floyd riots where they became unlistenable for me. Around New Years 2021 I decided each time I stepped in the car that I’d turn it off at the first mention of some kind of racial inequality issue. Usually I didn’t get more than halfway into my 5-mile commute.
Maybe a few months later, I changed my default to the local Boomer news radio, KCBS, and have been fine since.
I found the opposite. They were one of the few places who continued to report the news. Also unscientific. That said I think that the news simply became more polarizing and people looked to confirm biases rather than get news.
> I decided each time I stepped in the car that I’d turn it off at the first mention of some kind of racial inequality issue.
I struggle with this, because if we accept the idea that racial inequality is an issue, then I have to wonder:
- Who are the right people to think or talk about it?
- What is the right time for them to do so?
- Where it is appropriate for them to be part of the public discourse?
Which leads me to "everyone, any time, wherever the other party might be receptive".
So then what is too much?
I sympathize with "give me non-challenging corporate news/noise on my morning commute".
But where is the space for other peoples' complicated topics? And at what point does my ignorance become willful, and harmful?
From another angle: Supposing people's increasing atheism is a problem, who are the right people to tell people of the good news of the Messiah, when is it the right time, and where is it appropriate as part of public discourse?
Salvation, eternal life. Everyone, any time.
So, when is too much Jesus talk too much? I'd imagine many listeners would start tuning out pretty fast.
Why frame it this way? Because the racial inequality stuff isn't THINKING. It isn't pondering about things, figuring out how things are or anything of the sort. It is the repetition of a narrow, formulaic dogma that's simply being slathered onto everything, and the conclusions are always miraculously the same, the cause the same (there is always only one cause), the prescriptions similar. The question is simply do we just say white people bad. Or do we start having fun and saying stuff like, idk:
> Whiteness is a condition one first acquires and then one has-a malignant, parasitic-like condition to which "white" people have a particular susceptibility. The condition is foundational, generating characteristic ways of being in one's body, in one's mind, and in one's world. Parasitic Whiteness renders its hosts' appetites voracious, insatiable, and perverse. These deformed appetites particularly target nonwhite peoples. Once established, these appetites are nearly impossible to eliminate.
This person still has a job. If he wrote that about black people or Jews, say, today's school assignment would be calculating the arc his ass would fly in when he got fired from his job.
If we were actually doing THINKING about racism, it'd look a hell of a lot different than rainbow activism, and much more varied. Just to list some topics or questions:
Does the abolition of objective measures in school actually help underachieving (disproportionately minority) students, or is this a way for an underperforming teaching establishment to game their numbers while their actual performance at instilling useful skills and knowledge tanks?
We'd investigate whether inclusion and equity policies are covert methods of reducing Asian representation in higher education, while not really denting white liberals' standing that much.
We'd look at actual patterns of crime (and notice that a giant chunk of violent crime is by a small number of repeat offenders) and try to deal with them to provide the poorer areas with actual safety and stability. There would likely be some hard questions about stigma and whatnot, but those can and should be weighed against actual prosperity. Now they're just presumed to be the worst thing in the world to the point security guards don't arrest/check suspicious-looking people because they're afraid of appearing racist. Oh, oops, that guy really was a bomber. Sorry.
We'd seriously question minorities' hatreds of each other, and their racism against whites (and whites' racism against themselves) instead of plastering some black guy smearing shit on an Asian grandpa's face as an instance of white supremacy. We'd ask why the activists themselves are quick to sling racial epithets to minorities that don't toe the line.
There's a TON of very varied work to do, questions on what methods even work for reducing bad outcomes and so on, and the answers to many of them are not at all clear. There's years of genuine, engaging intellectual work and concrete organizing to do with a real possibility of achieving genuinely good things like literacy rates that don't suck.
Are the rainbow activists doing ANY of that? No. They're just hiring more DEI bureaucrats to lecture us about the same things over and over and over again.
No but it's more evidence you don't. Think about it..
, you can't imagine that I would care about something that doesn't affect me. The right has made empathy their newest attack and I mean their real enemy. Once they eliminate it from a significant enough people every belief they have will be easier.
No welfare, no social programs, send criminals to jail forever and god damn the conditions right? When you don't have empathy there's nothing stopping you from creating the animalistic, live or die, capitalist utopia you dream of.
The slow destruction of public schools will push parents towards home schooling, private schools, and religious schools where you snuff out any sense of caring in these kids before it becomes a problem.
Is that something that happens?
When the news makes a report about a person or business (excluding politicians) do they specify that persons political party?
Can you provide a few examples that can support your accusation against, what I assume is all news organizations in the US?
They're... horrid. It could be parody if it wasn't deadly serious. It's been bad for decades, but now it's gone completely off the rails. Trump damaged their minds and ripped away whatever shreds of sanity and objectivity they managed to hold on to through the Bush years.
Neutral isn't a thing. There is the truth and deviation from it. How much it deviates from the truth is a good criticism. How "neutral" it is says more about your beliefs than it says about the quality of reporting.
Neutral is at best a measurement of the middle of the Overton window.
What is neutrality in regards to Ukraine vs Russia? What is an example of high quality "neutral" reporting in regards to it? How neutral do you think Russians would estimate your example to be?
While I don't entirely disagree, I think perhaps we need a new word.
I'd hate to come out and say "NPR lies" as it gets people's hackles up and immediately starts the us-vs-them dynamic. "Non-Neutral" seems to have been the best way in recent years to indicate that their reporting is, at best, slanted and spun in order to present a view of the world that they prefer.
It's hard to notice it when they're talking about things you don't know about, perhaps wheat imports for example. But then they do a story about something you do know about that you recognize is absolutely a one-sided hatchet job. A Not technically "lying" perhaps, but certainly not anything close to "neutral".
What's the word for that? Low-quality news? Mis/dis-information?
Personally I like the neutral/non-neutral because it reminds us of what the goal should be: actual truth, without the agenda.
> I'd hate to come out and say "NPR lies" as it gets people's hackles up and immediately starts the us-vs-them dynamic. "Non-Neutral" seems to have been the best way in recent years to indicate that their reporting is, at best, slanted and spun in order to present a view of the world that they prefer.
I think this is a reasonably good faith revision:
> NPR lies. Non-Neutral is the best way to indicate that their reporting presents their different/false world view.
"Non-neutral" is the word you are using to indicate that NPR is not reporting what you believe.
People who agree with you are neutral. People who disagree are non-neutral.
Non-neutral is just a fancy way to call someone a liar while avoiding having to support your accusation with reasoning because it is self evident that having any opinion at all makes an entity non-neutral.
As someone outside of the anglosphere who has been consuming news from left-leaning sources, there is a sudden shift in the type of language used and the kind of topics that would make it to the headlines. This is an observable phenomena, and when news is conveyed to make facts appear to imply only a specific set of outcomes (i.e. stretching your case), calling it non-neutral seems justified. As such, I think it's odd to characterize anyone who recognizes this as a solipsist.
“Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray [Gell-Mann]’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.”
> I'd hate to come out and say "NPR lies"
> their reporting is, at best, slanted and spun
Do you see the cognitive dissonance/double speak? You are asserting NPR is "manipulating the truth" (read: lying directly or by omission) for ideological (read: bad faith/dominance hierarchy manipulation) purposes.
Just because you disavow the words that best describe your belief, doesn't mean that those words don't most accurately describe your position.
If those words aren't most representative of your beliefs, then I have failed to understand the nuance you were trying to communicate.
> immediately starts the us-vs-them dynamic.
Do you see that you are disavowing responsibility for being half of the "us vs them" problem despite invoking the idea of "them" yourself? You created us vs them the instant you asserted NPR's bad faith instead of trying to figure out why we can't seem to reach consensus about what "the truth" is.
Don't you understand that you are basically saying "I don't want conflict with people who find NPR credible, but they're definitely wrong.”? "People who find NPR credible just aren't experienced/smart enough to see they are being lied to."
You recognize there is conflict, but fail to realize you are half of the conflict. You are putting responsibility for creating an "us vs them" situation on the people who disagree with you. "I'm not wrong, they're wrong. They're creating an us vs them dynamic, not me, I know the truth and they are denying it.”
“Other peoples hackles are up, not mine, I'm just unemotionally stating the truth.”
> is absolutely a one-sided hatchet job
You pre-suppose your own correctness. I don't see how your position is materially different than: "It is as simple as I am right and they are wrong, people who don't see it my way just haven't understood they are wrong yet."
Of course you will get an us vs them response, because you go into the conversation with the axiom that you are right rather than a desire to understand why someone disagrees so you can help them understand why they are wrong by asking questions that are hard to answer given the set of beliefs you assess that they have.
> actual truth, without the agenda.
Don't you understand that you have defined neutral to be "things that have the same agenda I have, and things that see the same truth I do?"
The truth is intrinsically not neutral. The truth picks a side every time. All conflicts involve two parties that think they know the truth.
Neutral is a measurement of distance from your beliefs. To Chinese people, “Taiwan is part of china“ is a neutral statement. To express something else is to not be neutral.
Your subjective truth is the stick you are using to measure neutrality. Your agenda is the origin of the measurement.
There is only one way to assess truth and that is to look at internal consistency.
Yes, but requires more than a day to describe a single day's events. As there are multiple parties at play and multiple perspectives on everything, even if folks wanted to watch news 24 hours a day, it's simply not tenable.
So you edit BY NECESSITY. You decide which stories are more newsworthy. I could report on the consistency and color of my dogs' feces at the park, and it would be part of objective reality, but my BIAS excludes those nuggets from any list of headlines I'd publish.
"Objective truth exists" is a useless comment in the context of reporting the news. It can be 100% true and yet still 100% useless. It doesn't matter.
That said, it's useful to examine which stories are covered, from which perspectives, and including which facts. The evaluation of semantics is a worthwhile endeavor. It's always important to keep an eye out for conflicts of interest. NPR and PBS are both really excellent sources of news and consistent at calling out their own limitations in addition to prominently reporting when they've made mistakes.
You may not care for their (necessary) biases and look for news from a variety of sources other than them, but if more news orgs were like them in practices, we would be a lot better off as a country. Be honest: how often does Fox News, Newsmax, or OANN make clear, public corrections of their previous reporting on prime time air?
It's not just about bias; it's about integrity. NPR's integrity frankly is unimpeachable whether you like their bias or not.
While objective truth exists nobody can know the objective truth, they can only approach it. Further, you can't approach the truth in an affirmative way, you can only approach it in a negative way.
We can know that that two ideas that can't be true at the same time means that one of them is definitely wrong.
I think this was the point of Socrates. Truth only comes from internal consistency.
In fairness, I don't think the Russia-Ukraine war is the best example. Eg, it is obvious that the BBC's reporting [0] is truthful but not neutral - it only quotes from Ukranians. But people don't generally want or ask neutral reporting on the Ukraine war, I expect if there was a poll it would show people wanted pro-Ukraine reporting.
Neutrality could be made into a reasonably objective standard - on any controversy, report the viewpoints of the top 3-4 groups involved in their own voice and then throw in the opinion of any academics who've made a point of studying similar situations. That is close enough to be called 'neutral'.
Reporting the viewpoints of the top groups in equal balance isn't really a good approach when they don't all deserve the same weight or merit. It actually has a name called "false balance" [0]. I would rather the news just give me facts and give coverage to what they believe is true. I think NPR does that.
Just giving facts is difficult, since either side can dispute the sources used to prove those facts. I would much prefer each side presenting what they think the facts are.
I chose the war on purpose precisely to make that point.
Why do you think there are any situations at all where people (at large) don't want reporting that reinforces their world view?
How would you define neutrality, like a one sentence definition?
I think doing so will make you understand pretty quickly that in doing "report the viewpoints of the top 3-4 groups" even choosing "the top 3-4 groups" already defies neutrality because you are implicily equating those groups giving them equal status and giving authority to whoever determines the top 3-4 groups. If 1 group is fringe, you are letting them be main stream.
I think Ukraine is an excellent example. Contrast the media coverage of the USA/EU vs Russia proxywar in Ukraine vs the USA/Saudi vs Iran proxywar in Yemen. Both are horrible wars with untold civilian suffering. For obvious reasons one has daily coverage the other literally zero mentions.
Another part of the Ukraine conflict that is strangely absent is that Ukraine has been in a civil war since 2014 when a CIA backed coup toppled their government. It is always presented as if one day for no reason Putin invaded a peaceful Ukraine.
I'm not convinced that China has much of a stake in the outcome. Maybe the war itself serves their purposes because they want Russia to be weaker and have fewer trading partners to choose from, but whether Russia wins or loses in Ukraine, Russia will (short of a major internal political collapse) continue to sell gas to China. The risk that Ukraine or anyone would invade Russia and force a regime change is low.
Same with Iran and North Korea. They might supply weapons because Russia is paying them for it, but they don't have much to gain if Russia were to win.
It's possible that Putin's decision to invade was made under duress, but if so I think it's more likely that it was some faction inside Russia that was twisting his arm rather than an outside faction. (Xi /may/ have set up Russia for failure by requesting that the invasion not happen until the Olympics were finished and the rainy season had begun, but I think that's just idle speculation. I don't know if there's any real evidence of that.)
China and Russia want a world where big countries bully small countries, and the small countries dont find safety in numbers. If russia gets away with ukraine, so can china with taiwan. Thats their stake.
>Another part of the Ukraine conflict that is strangely absent is that Ukraine has been in a civil war since 2014 when a CIA backed coup toppled their government. It is always presented as if one day for no reason Putin invaded a peaceful Ukraine.
This is one of the most annoying tankie talking points. Maidan? Duh, obviously it was a CIA coup. There's no need to prove it, everyone knows that only anti-western uprisings can be genuine.
OTOH, when Russia sent their soldiers to Crimea and Donbas, it clearly was a show of the local people's will. Also, it's better not to mention that the separatist movement didn't exist before 2014 and then they suddenly were organized enough to wage a full-scale war.
The USA government absolutely had a hand in the Maidan revolution. There was even a leaked phone call where state department officials discuss who to pick for the new government.
All that leaked phone call between Nuland and Pyatt shows is that the US most likely participated in the (failed) negotiations for a new government with Yanukovych
as the president and a opposition candidate as the prime minister.
It isn't, however, a proof that the US somehow caused the protests to happen. How would that even work?
On the other hand, there's a mountain of evidence for Russian military involvement in 2014, including Putin himself admitting that.
> It is always presented as if one day for no reason Putin invaded a peaceful Ukraine.
Yes! American geopolitics like to gloss over that Russia has been saying for at least a decade that Ukraine acceptance to NATO would incite a military response.
> American geopolitics like to gloss over that Russia has been saying for at least a decade that Ukraine acceptance to NATO would incite a military response.
No, American geopolitics actually cites those threats which disrespect Ukraine’s sovereignty as part of the pattern of Russian aggression, though less significant than its actually launching various aggressive wars.
Also, Ukraine was not, at any point, accepted into NATO, so even if such a threat was somehow not a threat to engage in unwarranted aggression and deserved respect…it really wouldn’t be relevant.
If you want neutral go and read Stratfor reporting on the Ukraine-Russia War.
It’s basically fact reporting - who is doing what. It reads like an academic paper. No filtering of what’s covered based on who’s the “good guy”. The conclusion are focused on geopolitical impact - good or bad.
For me it's not so much neutral vs non-neutral. As other commenters have pointed out this is often just a way of more nicely saying "things that support my world view or that do not"
For me it was just the sheer volume of stories about identity. Politics, social, slice of life etc. They seemed like they were all about issues of identity. While the U.S. Overton window has certainly shifted in this direction I just wasn't interested in an outlet that was "all identity, all the time". It just wasn't super relative to me in the proportions they were dosing it out in.
It didn't really have much to do with whether I agreed with it or not.
I liked NPR because it was pretty reliable (probably still is I just haven't listened in a couple years) and their world view was different than my own so I was exposed to things outside of my bubble. But, and this is just my perception, when it was 80% of their programming, I stopped participating.
Right now the first headline on NPR.org is “ What a House GOP messaging bill could spell for 2024 culture war campaign”
This is a headline that passes judgement and takes a side, out is also a call to fear and anger. Of course not in an extremely explicit way, but it’s still obvious whose side NPR is on.
It’s ok for news to pick sides sometimes when things are obvious but I want my news more facts biased with less editorializing, especially when it comes to politics.
Neutral is a thing. Not always possible, but sometimes achievable.
Neutral in regards to Ukraine v Russia is not having an unquestioning lovefest for Ukrainian leadership.
Recently a major news outlet reported on the conditions Russian prisoners (in Ukrainian custody) were kept under.
It was very clear they did not have the ability to freely question prisoners, or freely move around the facility.
That’s normal. But it’s very important to point out. That’s responsible journalism.
Frankly fewer puff pieces of Zelenskyy, and a more critical look at his relationship with the tv production company that made him president would be nice.
There’s no need to maintain a false equivalence. But there are too many unquestioning puff pieces.
A war is about truth. Russia's truth is that Ukraine belongs to Russia. Ukraine's truth is that Ukraine belongs to Ukrainians.
The war's purpose is to determine who is wrong and who is left.
I do not think there is any way to be neutral at all in regards to Russia and Ukraine because any stance taken at all will support one sides victory or the others. Puff pieces about Zelensky are not meant to profess truth, they are meant to increase morale so troops fight better/more tenaciously, so battles can be won, so the war can be won.
Neutrality is not desired nor is it good.
Neutrality almost always supports the oppressors and neutrality is almost always implicit support for both the ideology of might makes right and the outcome of might makes right.
Fewer puff pieces on zelensky has the opportunity cost of fewer peices tearing down putins legitimacy. There can truly be no neutrality.
There is no neutrality to be found because both parties are not good faith actors attempting to reach consensus. If any parties are bad faith, there can be no neutrality because they don't have a desire to reach consensus, they have a desire to dominate.
I think time is finite and I think the act of spending time writing uncritical pieces on zelensky is a choice about how to spend the finite time. I think making that choice is an act of prioritization.
I think zelensky's puff pieces are propaganda, the same way I think putin as the head of a giant propaganda machine.
I think spending time un-puffing zelensky is a choice and I think that choice can be measured by its opportunity cost.
Zelensky puff pieces aren't even a tenth of the evil that putin's puff pieces are. Why is it a priority to spend time debunking Zelensky's puff?
There are a million stories that could be written. Choosing to write an anti-propaganda pieces is prioritizing the outcome of doing so over spending time writing about mistreatment of pows, and writing about the mistreatment of pows is at the cost of an infinite number of other potential stories. Each story has an outcome. Each story is a finger on the scale of public opinion.
So what does the way a news service prioritizes their stories say about the news service?
Please direct me to the place where NPR retracted their reports/comments about the Hunter Biden laptop which was 100% really his laptop and not even a little bit of Russian propaganda? It's so really his laptop the FBI is using it in investigations and Hunter is suing the guy who released it for violation of privacy.
There's no journalism outfit that can beat back this criticism from someone, all things not being aligned with every ideology. Perfect neutrality doesn't exist, and very arguably isn't desirable anyway.
NPR hasn't even been close to neutral for years. I say that as someone who was a regular listener from high school until 2020, and nominally on their side of the political spectrum.
I feel like things really started to turn south after 2016 -- lots and lots of content about feelings and opinions presented during "news" times. But only for a super-narrow class of people, and never called out as opinion content. They did and do regularly mix editorial content with "news", and the line between each has been getting fuzzier with each passing year.
To be fair, the entire news media went crazy after 2016, but NPR was clearly on the left before, and went hard left after that. It's essentially propaganda now.
What's your local NPR affiliate? KQED is all identity politics, all the time. It's been over 10 years since I was in the DC area, but WAMU always seemed to have better political shows (even though some of them touched directly upon, e.g., race long before KQED went down that road), and from what I can tell their lineup is still far better than KQED.
I still regularly listen to WAMU's The Big Broadcast; they may be more selective about the classic episodes they play, but I wouldn't know as they haven't turned it into a virtue signaling exercise. Ditto for Hot Jazz Saturday Night.
Some of the national, NPR-produced shows definitely recite identitarian narratives more often than they used to, but compared to KQED-produced content it's still a massive difference in tone and content.
WNYC listener here. They've gone hard identity politics over the past decade, definitely got way worse in 2016.
Their reporting on so many topics has been biased bordering on being intentionally disingenuous so for a long time now.
I do occasionally listen however because I try to expose myself to a lot of points of view, especially when I know I might not agree with them. I was listening to Brian Lerher a few weeks back and it was so sad. I wish I could recall the exact topic but it was exactly some identity politics nonsense, presented in a way which was designed to stoke the most outrage possible (anyone who disagrees is knowingly trying to harm the other side, they can't possibly have good intentions but disagree with us!) and it was all over some trivial thing too.
Add onto that it just sounded like Lerher, someone I used to idolize, someone who used to be incredibly passionate, just sounded like he was phoning it in. It was very disheartening.
I remember WNYC was the place during the Afghan/Iraq wars where I could get some reasonable and balanced coverage of the situation, especially in the first few months/years when things were very in-flux (and I recall Lerher being an intimate part of that). Air America was the lib-left perspective, NPR would echo that but give me a reasonable perspective of what the other side thought. That seems completely and utterly dead now.
The thing is I’m generally in support of these things, but jeez the amount is just exhausting. You but you, whoever you are, but I’m also a supporter of shutting up about how you identify and doing something else with your life. (No “you” in particular)
On my station there’s at least a 50/50 chance that when I turn the radio on within a minute they’ll mention identity politics. Today it was right when I changed the channel, and I changed right back to a music station.
> NPR was clearly on the left before, and went hard left after that. It's
essentially propaganda now.
Do you understand that actual leftists consider NPR to be a voice of the corporate right-center?
Anyway, the correct analysis of NPR, like most "mainstream" media outlets, is that they are biased but not consistently left or right (or any other direction in whatever N-dimensional political space is now fashionable); their bias is pro status quo. That is, their bias is always towards the idea that we live in something roughly approximating the best of all possible worlds, that it requires a bit of tinkering, some careful tweaks to get it dialed in even closer to justice and desirability, but that's about it.
The concept that we live in something that is basically, fundamentally broken on the deepest levels is very difficult for mainstream media to tackle, and even though some occasionally do try, it is quickly put back in the box so that we continue to consider how best to tweak and tinker with what we already have.
The hard left is not a place, it's a movement that exists to move further to the left, to the point of insanity.
The hard left is offended with the definition of a woman as someone born with female reproductive organs.
As a feminist liberal man I do find it amazing that we fought for women's rights for over 100 years only to make the term "woman" meaningless. I still enjoy some NPR shows, but they've gone way past what I'm comfortable with ideologically.
If I were standing in Times Square with you and I asked you to point out the women as they walked down the street, would you reply "I can't, I can't see their vaginas"?
There's more to being a "woman" than having female reproductive organs.
That doesn't render the term "woman" meaningless. It just means there are a large number of characteristics that define "woman" and each woman exhibits a varying set of them.
And unless you're planning to mate with them, their vagina is none of your business.
It’s very obvious all mammals are dual sex, no more no less. It’s a fact that there are only 2 sexes when it comes to mammals. They also have average behavior differences due to hormones and their structure, but this only goes so deep. Bulls for instance are more aggressive than cows on average - this is because their hormonal differences that stem all the way back to their chromosomal differences, but also due to their body differences (like extra muscle and size) that give them the ability and perception by other cows.
These things are the same in humans: we have our “run-time sexual differences” that come from hormones, and our “static sexual differences” from how those hormones have built our bodies over time. Men behave differently on average because of the hormones profile in their body is different from that of women. Men also behave differently because those hormones over their life time have changed their body to be larger on average, and this on another level has led them to have different experiences than women that have shaped their mindset and behavior (eg being larger means people treat you differently, and that reinforces different behaviors).
All this to say that the differences between the sexes are almost entirely immutably biological at the base (including the social construct aspects). The differences between men and women start from the chromosomes, and that decides hormones and body structure, and those two affect how people treat you naturally (a larger, more aggressive organism is treated differently than a smaller, less aggressive person), which creates over time what we call gender roles.
Some examples: men being deemed “protectors” isn’t just some arbitrary gender role out of the blue, it stems from the fact that one sex of the human species is obviously larger, and so naturally expected to step up in these situations throughout their life. Aka: if you reset everyone’s memory of gender roles, they’d likely come back and be pretty similar in broad strokes very quickly, because they are determined at the base by chromosomes > hormones > body structure > how others perceive you and the experiences you have in your life as a result.
Men can never be women and vice versa. You can change the hormones, but you can’t change the body structure, the chromosomes, the experiences of the individual and others, and consequently how others naturally react to them. Those aspects all together are what makes a man fundamentally different from a woman.
And: you keep saying "on average" without acknowledging what that implies: there is a distribution, and that distribution overlaps. Some women are stronger than some men; that doesn't make them men. Some women are more aggressive than some men; that doesn't make them men. Some women are larger than some men; that doesn't make them men. All of that means that you can't simply define man/woman on the basis of size, strength, or aggression.
Looping back to gender: it's a social construct, and there is no way for a non-human mammal to declare what they think or feel in a way we can understand or interpret. (Lack of) examples from the animal kingdom have no bearing.
My point is that sex deeply influences gender. Gender expression and gender roles have a direct line to sex via chromosomes > hormones + body structure > how you behave and how you're treated.
You can of course call yourself whatever you want, but expecting others to adhere to that, or even being bothered that they don't, is senseless.
So when a man calls himself a woman, and says it's on the basis of some internal feeling of being a woman - how on earth is he supposed to know what that is like? Being male, he has absolutely zero reference point for what it's like to be female.
He might desire to be a woman (and claim to have a "female gender identity" because of this), but that's not the same thing as actually being a woman. And if you look on the trans forums where these males discuss this, you can see it's all about performing stereotypes of femininity. Often related to being sexually aroused by the thought of cross-dressing - the so-called "euphoria boner", as they put it.
Furthermore, most of these men use their claims of having a "female gender identity" to demand access to women-only spaces, disregarding and violating women's boundaries, and defeating the whole point of why we have sex-segregated spaces in the first place. Gender identity is a dangerous, misogynistic concept that is harming women and children.
Thanks! Your saying "Being male, he has absolutely zero reference point for what it's like to be female" made me think.
That said, I disagree :-)
I'm male -- both in chromosomes and in thought -- but I know that (generally) being a woman involves wearing skirts, makeup, and in general softer, more elaborate clothes; paying more attention to grooming a certain way; maybe wearing makeup, at least a little; being deferred to in lesser matters like who goes first through a door, but expected to defer in more serious matters like where to go and how to get there. I don't have to experience any of the above to envision what they feel like, or to know whether I would be more comfortable experiencing them one way or the other.
Calling these things "stereotypes" is a silly minification of them. If they are just stereotypes, then women should be able to discard them whenever they wish, but that is far from the case when it comes to negotiating, advancing, getting their way, etc., etc.
"And if you look on the trans forums where these males discuss this, you can see it's all about performing stereotypes of femininity." You've done extensive research? :-) And again, "stereotypes" is dismissive.
Your last paragraph is an unjustified panic, but I'll at least reply to say that if I were to be concerned about someone in the bathroom, it would be concern for someone who presents as a woman, but is forced to use the men's room because beneath their poodle skirt they happen to have a penis.
Men and women have different chromosomes. They have different skeletal structures. They have different amounts of hormones. They have different averages.
Women can have children. Men cannot.
The fact that people are trying to argue otherwise is frankly insane.
Saying men and women have different chromosomes is circular logic. You're saying that XX = woman and XY = man, and then defining "man" and "woman" in terms of the standard you set up for them.
As I responded to in a different reply, skeletal structures exist on a distribution. Those distributions generally overlap, meaning there are some women closer to the "male" average, and some men closer to the "female average. That doesn't determine their gender or even their sex.
Edit to add: you list hormones as a determining factor -- but hormones can be adjusted. Would you agree that a person who achieves "male" hormones through pills or injections qualifies as male? Or vice versa?
Saying they have different averages ignores that distribution, and again would arbitrarily classify some people as the opposite of their chromosomal classification.
"Women can have children" -- even among XX women, that's clearly false. Or are you saying that women who can't bear children aren't women?
Your use of the word gender is effectively "personality". Yes people have different personalities.
Yes XX is a woman and YY is a man. Mammals require one of each to reproduce. Creating a clear, simple definition is what science is supposed to do so that we can better understand existence.
When a woman can no longer have kids she has gone through menopause or had a genetic aberration that prevented her from doing so.
Yes there are bell curves within nature. This doesn't change chromosomes.
No I would not agree that hormones received from an external source make one male or female. If I color my skin green, my skin is still not green. I have simply made it appear that way.
Personality is an element of gender, but they are not synonymous. Even in your definition of men vs. women, there are people of all "personalities" in each "gender".
Yes, science classes chromosomes, and yes, one of each is (generally, let's not get too caught up in parthenogenesis) required to reproduce. Is that all you see in men v. women? You used reproduction as a determinant, but now you're saying that women who can't reproduce are still women because...they're supposed to be able to reproduce? That's not quite circular logic, but it's darn close.
Taking hormones is pretty far from "coloring your skin green" -- by your definition Arnold Schwarzenegger wasn't really as muscular as he was, or Lance Armstrong as fast as he was, because they took steroids/PEDs. It's easy to argue that they cheated, but hard to argue that they actually weren't as big/fast as they were.
Your argument seems to simplify to chromosomes. Of course you know that there are people born with neither XX nor XY. You can claim those people are "something else," but if they want to present as male or female, is that wrong? And I'll ask you the same question I posted in a separate comment: if we were standing in Times Square and I asked you to point out the women walking by, would you really say, "I can't until I get blood samples"?
> There's more to being a "woman" than having female reproductive organs.
What is it then ?
Edit: I'm sorry, i realise that this is a troll-leading question, that ensures no good answer, because we can't give a good answer that doesn't offend someone. It shows that we're as a group intentionally ignoring basic reality, which is a shame but it is what it is.
If a person has longer hair, no facial hair, is wearing a dress, has a higher voice, wider hips, and the appearance of breasts, I'd assume they are a woman.
BUT: if a person with all of those traits says they're a man, I'm going to nod, file it away for future reference, and -- most importantly -- move on with my day.
And likewise, if a person with none of those traits tells me they are a woman, again, I will nod, remember it, and move on.
If that's not what you're asking for, then it seems you're asking for a flowchart that determine's someone's gender. Gender being a social construct (as opposed to sex) there is no decisive flowchart other than: ask them; accept the answer. If you want something generally accurate, I stand behind what I said above.
"mindset" is actually a pretty reasonable descriptor I think (I'm not an expert though).
I think a lot of the confusion does come from people having a hard time separating "what does this person want me to call them" from "how do I treat this person". I think (again, I speak only for myself, and I'm not even trans) most trans people would be happy to be called their chosen pronouns and treated in a neutral way.
There is a lot of history backing up a more constrained interpretation of gender and interpersonal relationships, and the present situation is definitely outside many people's comfort zone.
But it isn't just a vagina that makes a woman. They have specific organs that require specific hormonal profiles. Women have different skeletal dimensions than men, to the point where sex can be accurately ascertained from the skeleton alone.
The physical differences between men and women are not just societally imposed, and form the basis for their oppression. This cannot be wished away.
By the same logic a white person could claim they were actually black. The reality is there is far more genetic distance between a male and female than between races.
Yet, anyone who did such a thing would be seriously problematic. It is equally problematic for a man to claim he is woman by exactly the same logic as the oppression against women cannot fairly be appropriated by men.
Men have been screwing over women for thousands of years. It's not ok for them to appropriate their name and identity because of some qualitative feeling they're experiencing. It's not ok.
What's wrong with the term "transwoman" for a transwoman?
The problem is these terms are basically undefined and current 'left' and 'right' trends don't match historic left and right trends. Actual communists (e.g., Stalinist USSR) have had periods that were socially traditional in many ways, up to and including prosecuting homosexuality.
The truth is what we call 'the left' and 'the right' is some kind of attempt to cluster a bunch of orthogonal belief systems that in our contemporary time tend to cluster.
You then also have things like post-modernist ideas that in some sense reject the idea of an objective reality and are idealist, whereas orthodox Marxism is solidly materialist and modern. People don't know what the hell any of these terms mean. Even Marx himself, in comparison to some self-proclaimed Marxists, said something like, "if they are marxists then surely I am not a marxist."
Most orthodox Marxists I know do not consider themselves liberals by the way and many wouldn't call themselves feminists because they may disagree with a bunch of baggage there, while being stridently in favor of equality between the sexes. A common struggle among "the left" (e.g., the "new left" in the 60s) is whether or not it is an intra-liberal struggle and whether or not class is the primary or even only determinate and other 'identities' should be subsumed. It's complicated.
Personally I try to not take on a label that defines for me a set of beliefs that are orthogonal. Someone can disbelieve in the trans movement you identified entirely and also want a workers revolution. It's not actually uncommon.
> The hard left is offended with the definition of a woman as someone born with female reproductive organs.
"The hard left" is something British people call other British people in order to dismiss them. Americans who are calling out the hard left need to stop reading the Spectator.
You fought for rights and are now upset because the word "woman" is more inclusive?
How does that negatively affect you?
You mock people for being offended then get offended.
> Do you understand that actual leftists consider NPR to be a voice of the corporate right-center?
We have to give up on arguing about what "leftism" is. It doesn't mean anything, and Glenn Beck stirred the American brain so thoroughly that there's no way to even give them a general idea of what it used to mean. Just let liberals have it. We have to just talk about our specific political positions on their merits and leave the taxonomies in the history books.
NPR is exactly what you would think its sponsors, which are managed funds, massive health care insurers, huge agribusinesses, silicon valley and chemical companies want it to be. Arguing about whether it's "leftist" with people who think the most "leftist" things are massive banks, Hillary Clinton, and fundamentalist Islam is a waste of your life.
As a person who identified as a leftist and hung with other people like that for 30 years (and continuing), we were calling NPR National Petroleum Radio 25 years ago when it was gutted at the end of the Clinton administration. It no longer has any serious intention to inform; like most media it's staffed by the children of the wealthy, generating content to support current political initiatives.
It’s hilarious to me that you and the OP keep bandying about terms like “left” and “right” but don’t ever give any instances to support what you mean. It’s basically just hand waving - in other words, pretty meaningless other than “I don’t like their viewpoint”.
Not really. I don't have much interest in such labelling and consider it lazy.
However, the OP chose to label an organization "leftist", when I'm fairly sure that the people he would identify as "leftist" would not share the feeling that NPR represents their perspective.
Whether or not NPR represents my viewpoint is not of much concern to me. I don't expect it, if it happens it happens, it probably won't. That's fine.
Another recent front page HN story talks about ChatGPT and other advances in AI. So, defining “no true Scotsman” would be within AI’s wheelhouse. I think Openai needs to verbify the act of using GPTx to summarise ideas.
1. NPR used to have a stricter separation between editorial content and news content.
I agree and you're right I think this got a lot worse after 2016 across the board and IMO NPR has been better than many other agencies about it.
2. NPR took a turn left.
I disagree. I think they continue to be vaguely American center-left and haven't really changed much. In general it's quite hard to define "left" as there's multiple groups, but yes since 2016 the social justice left has become a bigger part of the conversation.
NPR isn't definitionally "corporate" news. It may functionally be, due to the way funding has worked out, but this is not baked into its structure or culture. Yet.
The yet part is what hurts my soul. I've watched the decline for almost two decades in horror, but all I can say is they're the lesser of many, many evils, but as always: buyer beware.
To be fair, the Republican Party went full white-nationalist cult after 2016, which is a real problem for outlets that want to maintain a "centrist" viewpoint.
Is the full-scale attack on reproductive rights boring? Perhaps if you were in a position where you had to pay attention, you’d find it more interesting.
Yeah sure. Every time I listen to "The Indicator" or "Planet Money" or "Throughline" I'm just thinking to myself wow, this is some hardcore left wing propaga;..
> That's what being left wing means. Identity politics are liberal, which is a right wing movement.
I get your point, especially as someone on the left myself. That said, it’s more useful in conversations about American politics to understand the political dichotomy is centered on the American political Overton window, not on the center of all extant political philosophies.
There has effectively been no real left wing party with national political presence in the US in the lifetimes of the majority of Americans alive today. Both major parties and nearly all smaller parties in US politics are right of extant center, but many are left of American center.
“Liberals” aren’t even liberals in the US, anyway. “Liberals” in the US are populist globalists. Identity politics is arguably not affiliated with any particular political philosophy or party, but rather is a cynical methodology employed by many parties to create a social device to shift the political median in their direction. For whatever philosophical rigor you’d assign to identity politics, it’s at best an ideology, but lacks the necessary substance to be a complete philosophy.
The left of the American center is mainly held by populist globalists, with orbiting positions which at its most collectivist aligns to environmentalism. The right of the American center is mainly held by populist nationalists, with orbiting positions which at it’s most collectivist aligns to religious fascism. American society is very deeply individualistic, and this is a major factor why populism holds so much sway and why collectivist philosophies exist in the fringes at best.
Hopefully I’ve managed to short-circuit repeating the same comment subthread about semantics of the term “left wing” that happens in every HN thread about American politics.
I think it's fair to say that they bias leftwards at least.
They may not be, you know, outright communists or anything, but that doesn't mean they don't lean towards the left side of the American political spectrum a fair bit past center. In the standard distribution of political views calling them "left wing" is fair, even if they're not out on the long tail.
Big ones I can think of off the top of my head: Immigration, tax, gun control, abortion, all modern "social justice" issues.
But my point isn't that they're "far left", just that they are reliably left of american center. They make no (or at least almost no) effort to present the center-right versions of the argument.
It is easy to understand how the degrading position of the English workers, engendered by our modern history, and its immediate consequences, has been still more degraded by the presence of Irish competition ~ Friedrich Engels
> gun control
Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary ~ Karl Marx
> all modern "social justice" issues
None of those are left wing. They're all liberal, which is a counter model to leftism.
> They make no (or at least almost no) effort to present the center-right versions of the argument.
They almost exclusively present the liberal argument, which is the center right.
The label you use to describe your beliefs is the same label that everyone else uses to describe a different set of beliefs, which you at least partially disagree with. We all know it and don't need to go over it every time.
Journalists and the public (often looking up to journalists post-Watergate) have made journalism sound wildly more "truthy" and "neutral" than it really is, or ever was.
Unedited broadcasts of congressional proceedings isn't "journalism" --- that's a broadcast. By the same token, most 24hr news on TV, which is just commentary on some live event, is barely or often not journalism at all.
Journalists write and tell stories. Journalism offers an account of real (or supposed) events. It always involves storytelling in some degree, in the sense that an account of events (in order, or in an order which clarifies the chain of events) is constructed and presented. There's an ideal of neutrality, which is generally understood as a certain set of journalistic "practices", but journalism is ultimately storytelling with the general idea of offering an accurate account of a real event. The idea that journalists have special access to the "truth" is largely just a thing journalists say to make their job sound more specialized than it really is because it has become a "prestige" job. The same goes for 'neutrality' as a relatively recent ideal for journalists to strive for. The history of journalism is actually rife with journalists saying they weren't neutral and never tried to be.
Journalism is important, and vital to democracies, but it's important to understand and clarify why they are because journalists can hang themselves on their own petard. They're storytellers with the idea of "holding people, institutions, and the public to account" by offering the public accounts of events that happened, which the public could not immediately witness. For instance, an unedited broadcast of congressional proceedings doesn't require nor is it journalism at all because the public can just watch it. The most a journalist could do is offer context...by situating the proceedings in a chain of historical events.
I agree that unedited congressional proceedings is not journalism; however C-Span does have journalists who do not tell stories.
C-SPAN journalists host “Washington Journal” on the TV and “Washington Today” on C-SPAN Radio. They interview newsmakers, authors, and other journalists. On “Washington Today” they do summarize the day’s happenings.
But they’re not attempting to synthesize a narrative. There is no storytelling. On “Washington Journal” they let guests and callers speak for themselves with no attempts to corner them or edit them. C-SPAN shows every day a way of doing journalism that’s about the subject and not about what the journalist thinks.
Seeing as we're a tech audience, I ask you (and everyone else) this: Would anyone be happy if ext4 or NTFS "told stories" of what goes on in their file systems instead of journaling everything fact-for-fact as-is? I am happy to bet noone would be.
Journalism is (and should be) nothing more than a record of what happens or happened. A proper journalist, after all, is writing a journal. If someone is writing a story, they are a storyteller and should not be relied upon as a useful source of objective and accurate information.
In this sense, C-SPAN is as journalism as it can get: Unedited recordings and presentations of the goings-on inside Congress insofar as Congress will allow.
Ah, yes, this is also why my dictionary should solely tell me how to say words, and never tell me their definitions, since the word diction is predominantly associated with speech and comes from the Latin dictare, which is a conjugation of dicere, which means to speak.
Dictionaries have no business in providing definitions! Their business is diction!
What you've described is literal propaganda. Your description leaves our several of the core tenets of journalism, among them: independent verification and contextualization.
Congress generally controls the cameras though. Although, not until after they elected a majority leader and do some house keeping.
That said, unedited broadcasts of meetings isn't really journalism. Journalism is highlighting the portions of the proceedings that need highlighting. It's an editorial process by nature.
That's not to say what C-SPAN does isn't important; it absolutely is valuable and important to have a record of the proceedings, and with video and audio rather than just a transcript or minutes is quite useful.
I loved watching C-SPAN and then comparing to the "news" who picked one or two sentences from a 45 minute speech to yammer about for the next three days.
C-SPAN's mission is to cover, and merely cover, Congressional proceedings and some other governmental affairs, and I would say they are very successful in that endeavour.
I won't say the same of any other "news" or "journalism" outfit in their mission to journal goings-ons. Everyone from CNN to BBC to NHK to Al Jazeera to Wall Street Journal to New York Times can all go screw themselves for being propagandists disguised as journalists.
But by covering Congressional proceedings in that way, they ignore the way laws are actually made.
If you watch only C-SPAN you might think that laws are enacted by Congress after some debate or deliberation on camera about the content of those laws.
But that's not how it works. The way it works is that members of Congress spend a huge amount of time, sometimes the majority of their time, soliciting donations. And then a lobbyist for a company that has donated money to a member of Congress will give them the exact text of a law that they want enacted. The member of Congress will get that into a bill that makes it through committee, possibly by trading votes. Then the bill will come up to a vote, no one will have read the whole bill they are voting on, in some cases that would be impossible, the bill will be hundreds of pages long and it is only given to the members of Congress a few hours before the vote.
Then they vote on the bill that lobbyists wrote without any idea what is in it.
Is that what they show on C-SPAN? If not, why not?
Because someone made a very non-neutral decision that that is what they will show on C-SPAN.
Fact A) Carrots are healthy.
Fact B) Carrots may be carcinogenic.
These are both inherently important facts to any story talking about the health, or danger, of carrots. To present a position on if one should be eating carrots or not, without including both of these facts, is to handpick facts to tell the story you want to tell.
Handpicking, aka gatekeeping, is a core tenet of journalism. It's a requirement of the newsgathering process and determining which facts are relevant (newsworthy) _is_ a reporter's job, while the editorial process provides the necessary checks and balances.
Yeah and what's his bias? Or in his case, agenda. Absolutely every reporter in the history of journalism has bias. That's human nature. NPR is highly factual, broad-based and reliable. Having per-story bias, writing a bad headline, missing a detail. You may as well criticize them for not all having washboard abs. It's an unrealistic standard. FOX news is taking dictation from politicians and consulting their stock price while writing scripts for things they know are false.
I actually took some classes from professor Boghossian. His agenda is to make you think, I'd put money on it. He loves the discussion and debate. He's a true philosopher, loves digging into things for the sake of it and to discover what's there.
If there were a per-story bias, or even a per-author bias, I might agree with you, but NPR has a very clear per-topic bias. And the goal of every reporter should be to eliminate their personal bias and report the facts. NPR's bias is so pervasive on certain topics though that one can only conclude that they too are taking dictation from some overlord, or are so caught up in group-think that they have fundamentally misunderstood reality.
I don't actually think this is too bad, as long as you know what you're getting and can correct for the bias.
I think the most tragic part about NPR's decline is that they veered so far into activism, they often don't bother presenting the other side of contentious issues. As another commenter pointed out, NPR covered a variety of perspectives on the American War on Terror. That seems to happen less often nowadays.
News orgs are not obligated to present sides of issues as though they're equivalent. Just because a point of view is prevalent doesn't mean it's valid. But as I've pointed elsewhere in the thread, On the Media handles controversial topics better than anyone. They are exceptionally good and digging in to even the most conspiracy-laden topics with clarity and fairness.
Consider the most recent geopolitical conflict involving the US, the war in Ukraine. There are a number of articles on NPR's website about the possibility of the US sending F-16 jets to Ukraine.
I've read many of them, and they tend to support the US sending planes. Some of these articles include quotes from Ukrainian defense officials who are obviously in favor. Some articles speculate as to why the US has not done so (e.g. the overhead of training pilots).
My issue with the reporting is that the writers never really bothered to explain the arguments from the opposing side. Obviously, this decision involves many tradeoffs and it was not taken lightly. NPR's reporting on this subject was not very informative and it just left me asking more questions. As a reader, I want to understand the tradeoffs behind important decisions.
This isn't the only topic with shoddy reporting. It's just the first one I noticed where activism got in the way of journalism. There are legitimate arguments in support of both sides of this issue (and I say this as a supporter of Ukraine). Readers are entitled to read/hear them, and writers should present them fairly.
Bias is not propaganda - journalistic standards are about processes and methods that mean you can rely on the factual content of the reporting, and things like who is doing the reporting, who is finding the reporting, etc. That you don’t like what they are saying doesn’t make it propaganda. JFC
There's a huge divide between the senior reporters and journalists doing the radio programming and the younger folk who run their website and handle publishing. While I still have a positive view on NPR as a whole, the online side deserves a lot less respect.
Here’s a specific example that I can’t exactly link:
Shortly after Trump won the election they had a round table of journalists (including some of their own) on and they basically said “we need to fight him.” So, during Trump’s presidency I specifically listened for any positive coverage of literally anything he did.
None. Zip. Nada. I probably heard hundreds of negative stories.
Guess what? About a month or so after Trump lost his re-election bid I finally heard a tempered positive sentence on All Things Considered.
I consider that propaganda. I also remember a specific moment on All Things Considered back in the earlier days of COVID where they stated the lab leak theory was debunked because - get this - China said it didn’t happen.
NPR was clearly executing the same crisis management PR strategy, as instructed to all the politically aligned media outlets.
Unfortunate; I recall many driveway moments some 10-15 years ago, where the topic discussed was so compelling (this american life in particular) that I just had to stay in the car and keep listening.
I used to be an avid NPR listener myself until I started noticing their extreme left bias with a big push for the government propaganda…I cannot stand them anymore!
I, for one, would like to know a few things about flat earthers. Do they actually exist? How many of them really are out there? What arguments to they use to try and make their points?
These are valuable things to know, especially on issues that mostly settled. They make you, the reader, better understand the issue and better prepared to deal with people you encounter who hold this belief. I'm not Neil Armstrong, I don't have the cache to simply punch moon landing deniers in the nose, I need some true facts to use when talking to one.
As a consumer of journalism I'm way more interested in stuff like that than simple sneering scorn about people who clearly believe "wrong" things.
When it comes to topics that I don't personally understand, perhaps wheat tariffs, I'm going to be way more likely to agree to the "right" answer when I understand both sides and can see how exactly it is that the "wrong" side is wrong. But the very minute I find out that the story is being spun by omitting certain facts or arguments, I'm going to assume the author is lying about pretty much everything.
Thus, neutrality. You've got to show me both sides honestly for me to be able to believe that what you're saying is actual truth, not just your "truth".
It is hard because one of the parties has become completely disconnected from reality. I mean, they had the choices of either airing propaganda or just not airing any statements from the previous administration. Hard time to be a reported I guess.
As one example, NPR made a very public decision not to carry the Hunter Biden laptop story just before an election, with no solid basis for doing so. It was a legitimate story, it was newsworthy, but NPR intentionally spiked the story.
Major daily newspapers are very good about this already.
Every time the Washington post uses the word ‘Amazon’ they note who their owner is. The New York Times has a public editor whose sole job it is to crap on the broader NYT organization when they get stuff exactly like this wrong.
There are many, many lower quality organizations which aren’t careful, but the major newspapers are good on this.
This is good that individual stories are not externally censored.
But.. I don't know the org structure of NPR, but it's possible that over the long run for the NPR suits to fire journalists who don't toe the "party line", or refuse to give them promotions or salary increases. If they can, or have in the past, there would still be self-censorship of stories by journalists.
They don't because they can't. That is, most everything is "filtered" by the suits. If it wasn't we'd see more of the transparency / disclaimers you're hoping for.
Besides great podcasts like Embedded and Planet Money, NPR is also home to NPR Training which has lots of helpful information.[1] Their ear traing guide is great. [2].
Planet Money is just sad now. It used to be some of the best financial reporting out there -- almost as good as Money Stuff by Matt Levine.
Now it's always falling over itself to be cute and talks down to its audience. It's like they think they're a podcast for middle schoolers, and if they're not cracking lame jokes and playing silly songs nobody will listen.
I’m curious how long ago you think Planet Money was good. I was never a regular listener, but I can remember 5 years ago being turned off by the relative lack of depth and time consuming humor.
I always wrote it off as “not my style” or “for a different audience” as opposed to thinking it was objectively bad.
Sad? Are you expecting lectures from economists? I’m sure you can find that somewhere, but I would expect podcast from a major media outlet to sim to be more accessible. There’s a lot of complex economics involved and I think they do a good job of explaining it in a layman’s terms.
Slightly offtopic, but I feel like America's lack of a true public broadcaster like the BBC in the UK, ABC in Australia, CBC in Canada etc. is a major contributor to America's polarization issues. NPR is okay but it doesn't fully fill the void that's missing there. Since Americans don't have a public broadcaster that they all have a stake in as taxpayers, Americans pick and choose which news sources they listen to, which inevitably leads people to listen to news that confirms their personal biases. Of course, Americans are allergic to such things as "state run propaganda".
PBS has some great stuff, but people don't watch it. Their news program is actually good - if you're someone in the US that likes an evening news program but gets exhausted by local stations that don't actually do news beyond warm fuzzies and outright terror, and major outlets that do some news then flog it for 48 hours until their opinions are indistinguishable from their reporting, it's worth checking out.
PBS and NPR are the same. They are private non-profits whose existence is blessed by Congress and given partial, indirect financial support by government. By contrast, the BBC is full on government agency whose revenue comes from a specific tax.
They don't advertise it enough, but if you donate something like $6/mo. you get "PBS passport" access on the PBS app that lets you watch years of old PBS stuff. It's like Netflix with way better content.
PBS News Hour is a great resource. They now have a YouTube channel with all their content, including live streams. They tend to have a very sensible approach to news. They don't have sponsors to please or audience numbers to hit. They also broadcast considerably less than the 24-hour news networks, which means the ratio of news to opinion is much higher. Their goal seems to be inform, not inflame. I like them.
The local radio station played the PBS news hour even though it’s a tv show. It works that way too. My drive schedule changed so I’m not sure they do anymore. (WGBH Boston)
Funny that you say this, because people that are pushing polarization have picked public broadcasting exactly as one of their main targets in Germany (calling it fake news paid by the government) trying to defund it. In Germany public broadcasters for the first time have a budget of that passed 10 billion EUR.
There are also separate podcast channels, one with full broadcast episodes, one with specific segments. I'll dip into the latter most often for the PBS take on a story of interest.
> Of course, Americans are allergic to such things as "state run propaganda".
... for good reason.
Is there evidence to show that the BBC and CBC have reduced polarization in Britain and Canada? One could argue that they have plenty of their own biases and are not especially good at detecting or correcting for those.
The implausible claim needed proof here isn't that one. Those state broadcasters absolutely do have their own angle (pro-state, and pro whatever the editorial staff is into, vaguely left of centre stuff these days).
They aren't on the same level as major US news networks when it comes to distortion and agenda-pushing though. This is my opinion, but there are plenty of systematic studies that show the same thing. If you look but can't find any then I'll come back with links.
Not for any 'good' reason, given how they are not allergic to other utterly insane examples of state propaganda (constant glorification of the military, the executive, childhood recitation of the pledge of allegiance).
The only reason for why there isn't a CBC equivalent in the US is 'because it happened that way'. Trying to find some generalized reason in this particular artifact of a political culture is like trying to find reason in a drunkard's walk.
Canadian here: the CBC contributes to polarization more than any other media outlet in the country. It’s become a wedge issue that conservatives want to complete defund the public subsidies or even abolish it.
> is a major contributor to America's polarization issues.
To what extent is this an actual "issue?" What are we sacrificing for having a plethora of divergent ideas?
> Since Americans don't have a public broadcaster that they all have a stake in as taxpayers
I would really prefer not to have one, and in the era of the internet inside of a nation with a strong first amendment that these other countries do not enjoy, I'm not sure what it could possibly add.
> Americans pick and choose which news sources they listen to
Freedom of choice is wonderful, but what you are missing is that several media ownership rules were rescinded in the 1990s. There used to be _more_ choice. Strangely, that actually _reduced_ the "issue" of polarization.
> which inevitably leads people to listen to news that confirms their personal biases.
Then that probably isn't news. It's an opinion piece masquerading under a news masthead. I'm not sure how true news, that is factual information told by someone who's only interest is informing the public, creates bias.
> Americans are allergic to such things as "state run propaganda".
I contributed to NPR, right up until I felt they were veering into "state run propaganda." If they truly covered the news, I might donate again. It's a market, they should serve it, and not seek to survive as a tax driven entity answerable to a federal congress. I'm sure that would just make things worse.
> To what extent is this an actual "issue?" What are we sacrificing for having a plethora of divergent ideas?
There's nothing wrong with divergent ideas per se, but divergent ideas themselves don't really do anything. You and I probably have different ideas about something. And we can leave it at that and both go on with our lives, never interacting and learning about another idea than our own.
In the best case, nothing is gained by this, and that's OK and probably even describes the majority of interactions we will ever have with distinct people. But the "value" of divergent ideas is when they converge back together and generate brand new ideas their neither party would have on their own.
But, in the worst case we continue to diverge in our own ideas, only ever converging with people with the same ideas, building "echo chambers" that separate us from anything new and "in-groups" and "out-groups" that further divide us.
And this seems to be the problem with American politics, and bleeding into American society in general. Everything's a partisan issue and everything's on the extremes, so you're either a left-extremist, a right-extremist, or you're not even part of the conversation. If something isn't promoting our ideas, isn't serving us and shouldn't be supported.
So, what we seem to be sacrificing for having these divergent ideas is having any meaningful conversations that can create new ways forward. Which certainly does seem to be creating a lot of issues.
But for what it's worth, considering how our federal congress behaves these days, I'm inclinded to agree that a tax funded public broadcaster would probably not really be in our best interest.
I dont know. The CBC has a very clear political bent to it. It‘s national reporting is clearly from the angle of the upper-middle class who live in Toronto. Either that or just regurgitating the major outlets in the US.
So if you mean “America would benefit from a government run media outlet that mostly supports one party” then i’d have to disagree.
They do have CPB, which does fund the likes of PBS and NPR among others. But even that has been called into question not too long ago and they were trying to push to defund CPB (even though it's budget is around $450m).
> Since Americans don't have a public broadcaster that they all have a stake in as taxpayers, Americans pick and choose which news sources they listen to
If you disagree with the public broadcaster, you'll still choose a new source you agree with, along with a movement to defund the public broadcaster.
The UK is reversed; their TV is more like our print media and their print media is more like our TV.
i.e. all the newspapers just print Tory propaganda nonstop and don't report on any scandals until they suddenly notice something happened a year after when they decide to not like the PM anymore.
Funny thing is almost everyone and their dog in Britain thinks BBC has been controlled by the Tories. I've not seen any evidence of CBC being overwhelmed by lefties either. People on the left size of the political spectrum constantly moan about CBC having too many conservative commentators and such.
Neither CBC, ABC, or BBC are "infamously left-leaning". They are very much all center. That's literally one of their biggest criticisms, that they're too "boring" by not taking more of a stand on anything.
Also, important to note: Rupert Murdoch is directly involved in the funding of trying to convince people that these public broadcasters are "too left leaning". For his own profitable gains, as the more people turn away from them, the more they turn to stations he owns. Something to think about.
Which has very little meaning as "true" can mean whatever you want it to mean. BBC, ABC, and CBC have much higher journalistic integrity than their private counterparts.
True journalistic path is not about the truth but about the dispensation of facts in a way that will help the reader make an informed decision pertinent to themselves and its surrounding.
Otherwise, we have "National Enquirers" infestation and all those who are yellow-journaling in their chasing of the last revenue pool.
Oh please. Cry me a river. Australia’s right-wing government ran a decade-long ABC smear campaign which included multiple government-mandated enquires, of the government’s design mind you, to try to prove and weed out bias at the ABC.
1. They didn’t really find anything of note.
2. The whole exercise has scared many at the ABC into not doing good journalism
3. The decade of budget cuts which had a negligible effect on the bottom line but were a fantastic way to virtue signal to the party’s right-wing fan base took away from, among other things, the quality of the ABC’s journalistic output.
You’re looking at a news org that was run under a right-wing government for a decade, including them installing one of their own at the top, and telling me that there’s ‘left-ring bias’? The assertions you’re making about things “never happening” don’t reflect journalistic content I see being pumped out of the ABC ALL the time.
Starting with This American Life, podcasts were a daily part of my life at home for more than 15 years.
Then the pandemic happened and for reasons I can't fully explain I just stopped listening to all of them. Part of it was the subject matter became less compelling. There were also internal drama issues like with Reply All and I just lost interest.
Kind of a shame as the podcast format is great way to consume media when you're primarily doing something else like cooking or doing the dishes.
I’m right there with you and it’s the homogeneity that killed podcasts for me. To be fair, it started with This American Life, which managed to become so repetitive stylistically that the subject matter suffered. Then that approach was in large part copied by Planet Money and associated programs.
There were a couple novel podcasts worth a binge and then everything started getting turned into a podcast series nobody has time for.
In the end it’s the chasing of engagement over solid reporting and storytelling, a slide towards mediocrity that moves the needle right up until it doesn’t.
Nowadays I subscribe to nothing and trust if something is good, friends will clue me in. Plus I poll the BBC Radio iPlayer for the occasional gem.
I think you phrased this well and it's something I've been feeling about Youtube also. It's like Podcasters and Youtubers all follow some pre-baked format which they perceive as the one which gets most clicks or they are blindly following some other popular Podcast/Youtuber.
I find this especially grating on Youtube where all the title cards look the same, there is a lengthy intro/outro, person trying to add loads of "wacky" humor, constant shifts in tone and topic, basically seeming like it's made for people with the attention span of a fly.
I really just want something bare-bones, the bare minimum of music intros and interludes, not trying to be overly funny or preaching every episode, just give me the facts and details in depth, and don't try to over-produce it.
I had the same experience, but it was almost entirely due to the new podcasts NPR put out, and the content. Every single show has to have a chunk of time dedicated to race issues. Something like Planet Money I'm willing to just skip past, but most of them I just unsubscribed.
I am not convinced I could get into podcasts if I started today. They are filled with ads, unnecessary intro music, intros to the intros, and network readouts. On top of that, the corporate-ness of it has ramped up and it's really hard to find a good indie podcast these days.
I've adjusted my habits and now every time I start a podcast I immediately hit the "fast-forward-30-seconds" button 2-3 times and just start listening from whatever spot that lands me on. Once in a blue moon I'll rewind a bit if I really want more context. And for stupid podcasts (that I still listen to occasionally for some reason (like The Fifth Column)) I'll just keep fast-forwarding 30 seconds until the joking has stopped and there is only one person speaking at a time.
There are podcasts which are not, and which I find vastly more interesting. I do find US public broadcasting podcasts to be among the less tolerable of the set I do listen to in terms of ad / sponsorship spots, though they're probably far better than the run-of-the-mill example. (My standards are high, and tolerance of any advertising exceedingly low.)
Academic and informational channels tend to be better, with Peter Adamson's "History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps" and Stephen West's "Philosophize This" among my faves. Even here there are exceptions with intrusive spots (often dropped without any break / segue from the main content), with LSE and the New Books Network (otherwise both excellent) being notably annoying.
Learning to skip into/outro themes is part of the game. "You Are Not So Smart" wins my award for most annoying intro, and the opening monologue / ad break are highly skippable in most cases.
Otherwise, my principle problem with most US public-media pods is that they're overly popular (in the negative sense) and talk down excessively (Freakonomics, Planet Money, etc.), though there are exceptions. I find Fresh Air's long-form interviews typically excellent, for example, and its ad spots whilst excessive are clearly indicated and can be skipped pretty easily.
I agree times 1000. I don't care about any of the fluff, intros and outros, interludes, additional production values, constant music in the background. In fact, the more overproduced it is, the less I like them. I much preferred Dan Carlin's Common Sense style, it's just him and mic being honest and thoughtful.
1. I started driving a lot less, so I really couldn't get into a topic.
2. The conversations became very focused around the pandemic. There are pros and cons to escapism, but that was the main thing I wanted out of the medium.
> Part of it was the subject matter became less compelling. There were also internal drama issues like with Reply All and I just lost interest
I’ve had similar feelings toward a lot of media. The early iterations felt so much more special and genuine. Lately everything feels so overproduced, formulaic, and optimized to some generic blended target of what they think will drive the most clicks/views/listens.
The early days of a lot of media felt like they cared more about producing the content the creators wanted to make. The more recent material feels like everyone is just following a formula to produce content on schedule.
There was a very clear cultural shift at NPR. Outside of their straight news, it seemed like culturally they started to swing left on culture-war topics. Their reporting remains one of the least biased out there, but in terms of podcasts and shows, a pretty clear bias appeared. It was kind of strange, because I'm generally a pretty liberal person, and I appreciated NPR for frequently challenging my own biases with very well executed stories. I feel less and less challenged lately.
If I had to speculate, I'd say it came down the explosion in podcasts giving them a much larger audience than just folks listening to the radio, coupled with a sort of org-wide understanding that media had a hand in creating the culture war as it stood. You see the same sort of more-outspokenness in a lot of other media outlets doing their level best to balance out the impact of Fox News, with varying degrees of success.
For me, as a super liberal on nearly all topics, their non news stories seemed to have left me behind. I’ll be on the way to work listening to NPR and the segment will just be so off the wall I really have to do a double take. This happens with a lot of regularity I think and has turned me off on quite as much NPR as previously.
They became hyper focused on race, which I don't have much interest in, so also lost me. Also the reporting seemed more and more biased, I stick with apnews now.
2015 for me as well. The episode they did on Hilary Clinton where they tried so hard to make her sound like she's just another friendly normal everyday Jane running for president turned me off NPR. I didn't even mind Hilary as a presidential candidate, just the way NPR did it was so obvious.
I dont listen to this american life anymore. Mostly because half the episodes were reruns and after listening for 10+ years there was a good chance I'd already heard the episode. The other reason was that any new show seemed to be just so... Sad? Depressing? Melancholy?
That has always been part of the show. Typically the stories are snapshots of a moment in life and often life isnt bubbly and happy. But it seemed like every single episode was just depressing.
I still listen to Embedded which is good depending on the topic and Serial and occasionally pop the local NPR station on on drives but it does feel like there was a change for the worse around that time.
I listen to Wait Wait, which sometimes tries to promote other NPR podcasts but never in a way that makes them interesting. For like a year they had an ad that was just an out of context clip from a Matthew McConaughey interview that made absolutely no sense to me.
Anyway, Wait Wait and Planet Money have paid ad-free podcast tiers now.
The rest do seem to be serial podcasts about true crimes or otherwise why you should feel bad about someone somewhere.
Yeah, but SNL is famous for only being funny for three weeks every four years when the presidential elections roll around. I keep forgetting that SNL even exists. I would be embarrassed to be on SNL.
Yep, agreed. Most new shows seem “important” but not what I wanted to listen to at any point in time, and kinda depressing and without humor or levity. It felt like the social mission shifted and even if I agreed with some or many of the goals, that wasn’t why I was listening
> The other reason was that any new show seemed to be just so... Sad? Depressing? Melancholy?
Same. I couldn't do it anymore. I eventually realized that when I seek out specific media to consume, I need it to be less depressing than I found that show to be.
Something that made me realize what I don't like about NPR is listening to FT's Rachman Review. I hear nuanced views from a variety of experts. NPR feels much more watered-down.
I'm reminded of "I often find myself [a Socialist] explaining my preference for the pink paper of liberal capitalism over the Gray Lady of cultural liberalism. The answer is simple: by literally any measure, the Financial Times is just a better paper. It covers the world as it is—a global battle not of ideas or values, but of economic and political interests. [...] the reporting is usually more in-depth; the reporters generally have more expertise; the coverage is more comprehensive both geographically and substantively" [1]
Yes, I used to get a lot of my general news from NPR podcasts. I can't speak for their general news in other formats, but for podcasts I've gradually cut NPR for FT, the Economist, BBC (selectively), and even CNBC.
Among other things, NPR feels like among the most aggressive advertisers in podcasting, usually advertising for other NPR shows in which I have no interest.
Not OP, but I noticed around the same time an increase in focus of looking at every issue through the lens of racial inequities, which got worse during covid and the BLM protests. That being said, they sent out a survey a year ago asking specifically about this, and I think theres been an effort to not have so much tunnel vision.
Source: me, take this all with a huge grain of salt
Edit: Upon reading which podcasts were cancelled, I feel my theory is somewhat validated.
I don't even disagree with most of what they are saying, but it feels like it just became more about campaigning for what they had already decided was the truth rather than actually producing good journalism. There was a time where I actually started listening to old podcasts from years ago because my podcast feed had just became an endless barrage of BLM and culture wars.
I think it has gotten a bit better again over the last year or so, but maybe I just got used to it.
> it feels like it just became more about campaigning for what they had already decided was the truth rather than actually producing good journalism.
I'm really hoping at some point they'll come back because they were my favorite news source, but if they have views like many of the people I've discussed this with then they don't even realize there is a problem.
Note that I still like quite a bit of their content, but…
The frequency and aggressiveness with with some NPR folks try to seek out perceived “victims of society” can be eye-roll worthy. I realize that it’s a narrative that resonates with their audience, but they can definitely cherry-pick their sources to the point that one could reasonably argue that their sources are not representative of the population/group (often by a lot).
This has certainly been true when I’ve known the populations/groups well. Friends from other areas/domains have confirmed similar bias in their geographic areas and/or areas of professional expertise.
> The frequency and aggressiveness with with some NPR folks try to seek out perceived “victims of society” can be eye-roll worthy.
>> Matthew 25:40 “The King will reply, 'Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”
ps. re: a bible quote, I am either an atheist or at best a radical agnostic in the James Randi tradition of "I don't know - and you don't know either".
I think that most regular NPR listeners, including me, are on board with helping “the least of these brothers and sisters”.
The issue I have is when NPR uses sources theoretically representing “the least of these brothers and sisters” who do one or more of the following:
- refuse help
- actively sabotage themselves or their situation
- leave out key details of the story
- lie about key details of the story
It’s these types of folks who both undercut the veracity of NPR coverage and push away moderate listeners (again, most of whom are on board with helping those in need).
I disagree on this viewpoint entirely. You should not help the least, but the most. Collectivism improves society, which also includes individuals. Now, this isn't to say you should never take an individualistic standpoint. But to do so with balance.
Not the op but they became identity politics focused. I listened to them from the time my grandfather turned me on to them when I was around 11, he listened to the nightly jazz program and after that was an old fashioned radio drama rebroadcast. I continued listening for 27 years until every single story seemed to be about identity politics or issues of identity. I dont listen to anything unless I happen to catch hidden brain, this American life or planet money when I'm in the car.
There was a study that showed the number of times NYTimes used the words "racist", "sexist", etc went up 400% or so in the 2010's. I'm not sure if the study covered npr, but I definitely noticed that by 2015, every other story was about those subjects.
I'll post the source if I find it but, yes, npr changed their content to cover these subjects dramatically more at that point.
I wonder how much of that is riding the wave vs. being the wave though.
Contemporary with NPR and NYT talking about racism and sexism more is Twitter and other social media getting a lot more vocal about such topics (while #metoo really hit its stride in 2017, it started in 2006, for instance. Likewise, Black Lives Matter got its start in 2013), where individuals are sharing their stories a lot more.
That's not to say that I don't think it was a deliberate move on their part, but rather I think the move was part of a feedback loop that already existed.
I listened to NPR every day for 20 years, but around about 2006 they took on a clear bias in their reporting. Public Radio should be unbiased, nonpartisan, and provide programming enrichment for everyone. For me, it didn't matter who the bias was against, it was just the fact that this was supposed to be publicly funded programming, and I could no longer trust it's objectivity. Terri Gross and the whole lot abdicated their responsibility to be neutral.
Long enough, in other words, to grow quite significantly older.
> Terri Gross and the whole lot abdicated their responsibility to be neutral.
Gross was never a journalist, and her show never had any aspirations toward neutrality. It's an interview show at the intersection of culture, politics, art and science. Of all the people you would pick as having "abdicated their responsibility", she's probably the worst possible choice, because there never was any responsibility implied or explicit.
What news sources and content, if any, do you follow instead?
Personally, I started listening to NPR in 2007, and have consistently found them on point, unbiased, and including programming that enriches all. I tried to listen to talk radio (AM, some FM local) before that point and was decidedly turned off to most, if not all, of it (admittedly, I do not listen to every show).
I've been listening to Breaking Points with Krystal and Sagar a lot lately. Still not sure I "recommend" them, but they have solid representation on both sides of the political spectrum, and their takes are unique and usually interesting.
They do overwhelm my ears, however, and I can't often make it through a full episode in one sitting.
So is it that you think you can trust the objectivity, or just that they're private entities? Purely a coincidence that some of those have biases in the opposite direction as NPR?
If one applies your approach, a superior parsing is that they were noting parent comments claims of NPR's bias towards liberal, democratic values, rather than making a slight or firm argument outright.
They were always like that, just focused on New England where ethnic white identities still exist. Now they have anchors emphasizing their Latino identities rather than MIT educated car repairmen emphasizing their Italian identity or Peter Sagal making jokes about being Jewish.
What I would add to some of the other comments is the shameless bias. I used to find NPR objective in a left-leaning sort of way. But now when it comes to sociopolitical topics it's just lazy parrotting of the established narrative; too often ignoring details and questions that might be more revealing and honest.
They're quick to mock the right's media not realizing their biases and blindspot are just as bad, just in a different way.
Probably a joke about them going from having hosts very-occasionally acknowledge the names of big sponsors, to straight-up reading ads for them. Between ads for sponsors and ads for other NPR content or begging me to give them my car, they're almost as ad-heavy as any other station now. Maybe are as ad-heavy, if you count hours spent on pledge drives per year.
Sometime NPR can be great and sometimes I think "who is this for?".
Well, they would retourt "Not everything is for you". And that was fine when money was flowing, but when the spigot gets turned off it's time to run to the center, or for them center-left.
The entertainment industry as a whole has abandoned broadcasting during the 2010s in favor of narrowcasting. Your viewers and listeners are exhausted and begging you to just entertain us. All of us.
I listen to a ton of tech, current events/news and finance podcasts. Their radio programming seemed to weaken over the last few years so I lost touch. Are there any NPR podcasts worth listening to ?(asking honestly, looking for recs)
I like Up First. No frills daily news, 3x~4min stories. That being said- my news consumption is pretty limited, so the appeal for me is quickly catching me up with major stories. If you already keep up with current event/news it might be a bit basic for you
Radio Ambulante is great for people learning Spanish, especially because the episodes come with transcripts and the content is interesting (it presents stories from Latin America). It’s been a fantastic learning resource: https://radioambulante.org/en
I've been listening to Bloomberg more than NPR recently for general news. NPR often seems silly... also they have more ads than the ultra-capitalist Bloomberg.
One bright spot (but it's not NPR): Locally, WGBH has Jim and Margery of "Boston Public Radio"
I've similarly lost interest in most direct-broadcast listening on NPR, though I'll catch a newscast a few times a week, perhaps.
Among podcasts:
- Fresh Air. Terry Gross and Dave Davies are both consummate interviewers, the guest list is excellent, and long-form interviews (30--40+ minutes typically) allow real exploration of a topic, beyond what a 2--6 minute news segment might address. The topical coverage is broad and includes numerous aspects well beyond my own typical interests. There's also a tremendous back-catalogue in the Fresh Air Archive: <https://freshairarchive.org/>
- NPR Headlines: If you just want the most recent 5-minute rundown, that's its own podcast feed.
- Selected Shorts: Short stories --- narrative fiction. A nice break from nonfiction / news / political coverage, and a good end-of-day / end-of-week unwind. Very New-Yorkerish as a friend notes... <https://www.npr.org/podcasts/381443486/pri-selected-shorts>
- Radiolabs, Freakonomics, Planet Money, How I Built This, Ted Radio Hour: Variable quality IMO, but often good. For someone who's not especially interested in business-launch stories, HIBT has delivered some real hits. I'll sample from these streams. Many of these series have been around for a long time, and have gone through a few hosts. They're generally pretty solid. Most have become at least somewhat "popular" / watered down / formulaic, though original brilliance does sometimes shine through.
- On the Media (WNYC Studios): Distributed by NPR (and at one time directly affiliated), this is the left-central media-analysis programme out of NYC. I was greatly disturbed at the ejection of former co-host Bob Garfield (his own subsequent podcast has been shut down, though he still tweets and has a substack). The show remains relevant, though much more uneven and less compelling than previously. In part it's become a platform for showcasing other podcasts' and series' productions, some of which can be quite good. Currently (re)running a multi-episode bit on right wing talk radio.
- From the CBC, "Ideas" with Nahlah Ayad: <https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas>. This also has a very long back catalogue (notably with former host Paul Kennedy who helmed the programme from 1999--2019). The Massey Lecture segments are especially good.
I strongly favour less topical programmes, generally not affiliated with NPR/PBS or other US public broadcasters. Notably a number of philosophy-related podcasts (Adam Davidson "History of Philosophy", Stephen West "Philosophize This", Wesley Cecil "Humane Arts" (popular and error-prone, but engaging), the truly excellent "Talking Politics: The History of Ideas" with David Runciman, now concluded). A few Libravox books (variable in technical and speaker quality, but some gems), and histories (Rome, Byzantium, China).
I also listen to numerous author / academic podcasts, most especially from the New Books Network (<https://newbooksnetwork.com/>) and various university series (Yale, Harvard, Stanford, LSE, etc.) These may be public lecture series, university press, or specific departments of interest. Speaker quality varies tremendously, but topical knowledge is excellent and the material tends to be noncommercial and is generally only glancingly topical, with some exceptions.
I think NPR became way too focused on culture war issues or social issues. Planet Money has been doing a lot of things completely unrelated to finance and economics so I stopped listening.
I used to be a regular NPR donor. Sometime after 2016 there were a lot of changes on the legal immigration side of things that affected a lot of indians, and there was little to no coverage by NPR. That's when I realized I am not their intended audience and simply stopped listening and donating.
This part is at least good for me as an Embedded fan who has been frustrated by the irregularity of appearance:
> NPR says that the investigative podcast series Embedded, which has appeared irregularly, will become the umbrella under which all of NPR's investigative and enterprise narratives series will stream. Officials say it will become a frequent, dependable channel for listeners to consume NPR content.
It's the marginal tax rate we're concerned with, not the average. That's what you're deducting against.
Secondly, some people cite the 13% of taxpayers who itemize as the relevant number. The relevant number is the high-income taxpayers who itemize, and even more relevant is that same number but in high-tax states.
It's a legitimate debate whether public broadcasting serves a purpose, or whether it's biased. It's also a legitimate debate whether 501(c)(3) should exist at all. But whether we're subsidizing NPR through private deductions is not a debate. We are.
Likewise lots of 501(c)(3) organizations that are deeply controversial.
I'd been noting in recent weeks and considering commenting on the increased prevalence of sponsorship spots either highlighting service's own programmes and podcasts, or straight-up audience-support notices, across a range of podcasts, both NPR and from other organisations (e.g., WNYC Studios).
This suggests a longer-term and sharp weakness in the advertising market and spending. Given that public media sponsorships seem to be longer-term committments (I'm supposing quarterly or longer), this would mean a strong and likely lagging overall indicator.
Then was yesterday's news of layoffs and programme cancellations at NPR.
Given the significance of advertising to much of present Web / Mobile / online business space, this would seem to have a broader interest to HN's readership as well.
Why do the BBC and some other outlets try to use http/80 instead of https/443 for podcasts. Apologies for yet another tangent in this thread but discussion of podcasts, especially technical details, is relatively rare on HN.
I knew they were in trouble when I was catching up on Planet Money recently and they were giving multiple ad slots to a company selling dog treats to help dogs that get anxious during thunderstorms.
NPR is over, I'm afraid. I used to listen to their podcasts maybe 8-10 years ago, but lately I just find that I prefer a more personal touch and NPR podcasts feel too produced.
Also, there is an undercurrent of preachiness to NPR podcasts, and their hosts tend to have a "we think we're smart but we're trying to play that down and be relatable" vibe which I find incredibly off-putting.
And I literally never listen to the radio anymore.
I enjoyed Invisibilia, but it seemed like every episode ether directly or indirectly just had to touch on - or directly focus on! - how terrible Trump is/was.
I don’t particularly love Trump either, but it would also be nice to be able to listen to an NPR podcast without hearing about him on a regular basis.
Invisibilia took a real down turn after the first couple of seasons, especially after the hosts changed from the original ones. The original season or two of the show were amazing to me, and it fell off quick after that.
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned MaximumFun. It's worker owned co-operative podcast network with some really great shows. I'd recommend trying some of their stuff out if you're looking for something fresh.
As an FYI they also offer a bundle at https://plus.npr.org/ where one gets all the "plus versions" of the podcasts and your local station gets a percentage of that donation
Only KALW showed up for me, but I previously donated to them anyway because I prefer their programming and they were the original home of 99% Invisible for which I'll be eternally grateful
Oh, wow, that's absolutely terrible :-( I've never known NPR to play region locked games like that, and doubly so when turning away donations. But I guess that does explain why KQED isn't an option even out here
KQED pays NPR for NPR produced shows that KQED chooses to air. So, yes NPR gets some of that money indirectly. I believe it is possible to support NPR directly via their website.
I sort of do this already with my local public broadcaster. I give to OPB but I also make a separate donation to KMHD radio because I value what they are doing. The money all ends up under the same umbrella organization but I hope the separate stream shows that their listeners value this relatively small part of the overall mission.
It's a mix of both. NPR affiliates pay fees back to hq for the use of national programming based on audience size. Donations to your local station could cover local payroll, equipment, or their payments for national programming.
I started donating 50/50 to both my local affiliate and the national NPR non-profit a few years ago. I realized that about half my NPR listening was via the affiliate, and half was via NPR podcasts.
You can also support some of the podcasts directly by joining NPR+.
This audio piece explains the NPR/affiliate model pretty well. PBS is mostly the same.
Only difference is that as of a few months ago, NPR began accepting direct donations for the first time. I think they will send some of that donation to affiliates as well.
Because while it’s technically true (each American does contribute about $0.40 a year to NPR stations via federal taxes and the corporation for public broadcasting) it’s a tiny fraction of NPRs budget so the statement is misleading.
It would be similar to complaining that people are forced to pay Ford via taxes because the government uses F-150s
Factual truth is required, but it is not the only part of human communication by a long shot. "It's true" is a meaningless defense of expressions (past childhood) if nobody is claiming otherwise (downvotes don't mean "I think this is a lie").
The GP leaves the degree of taxation/funding, as well as the broader context of what other entities are tax funded and to what degree, unspoken; and they imply that, whatever those facts may be, it's a bad thing in this case. The parent (and other commenters) then provided some of that relevant information (and, assuming that information is true, you presumably would appreciate such a thing).
As for the downvoters, they may reasonably disagree with the parent's implication that it is a bad thing, or disapprove of their omission of details. You may reasonably disagree with this use of the downvote button, but it means they are not necessarily claiming the GP is stating an untruth.
Just as they are also supporting the Catholic Church, Atheist organizations, Mormons, Buddhists, etc and anyone else who fulfills the basic requirements to be tax deductible.
But the reality is only ~13% of US tax payers itemize deductions so in general there isn’t any such support when the average person donates to anything. It’s really just support for the kinds of people who can itemize their taxes rather than supporting charities.
Anyway, a more relevant “how many NPR contributors itemize their donations.” But of course it’s roughly in line other such charity’s, because when your talking about such a wide selection of the population it tends to look like the general population. Aka, when you start talking millions there aren’t enough billionaires for the group to mostly consist of billionaires.
I had an aunt who got a 7 figure refund after an IRS audit because she wasn’t bothering with minor donations. No idea how representative that is, but people are strange especially when you look at large numbers of them.
> how many NPR contributors itemize their donations.
what's your point? Who else's can you itemize?
> when you start talking millions there aren’t enough billionaires for the group to mostly consist of billionaires
who mentioned millionaires, or billionaires? For that matter, that entire paragraph doesn't make any sense. I proposed a very simple test, which we unfortunately can't get the data for (easily).
when you watch a PBS pledge drive, they do seem to emphasize "tax-deductible" a lot when they ask for your pledge. So they must think it matters, at least.
Many people who could deduct donations don’t because they don’t bother with the paperwork. It’s a very meaningful distinction because the option doesn’t inherently cost tax payers anything only those who actually use it do.
Being tax deductible on the other hand is an easy way to saying they’re a legit charity. Anything that isn’t tax deductible that still wants donations should raise major red flags.
OK, point taken. IF that's true. Where's your data on "Many people who could deduct donations don’t"?
Who would have this data, after all? Not the IRS, since by definition the taxpayer didn't file it.
Tax preparers would know if their clients decline to file itemized, but would they report it? Similarly, TurboTax or other servers might know, but I doubt they'd release such data.
Because it’s true of every single non profit in the US. You can say the same about random churches, but that level of support doesn’t keep the lights on.
because, while true, it doesn't tell the whole story. There would be a lot more than 4 podcasts being cancelled if it were solely relied on money through taxes.
Anyone who contributes $100 to NPR deducts $100 from their income for tax purposes. So the public is paying, in that he or she would have paid $40-50 in taxes on it otherwise.
Tax math: it's the marginal tax rate you have to look at for deductions, i.e. the rate you'll pay on the next dollar you earn, or save on the dollar you deduct. We don't have a flat tax at the Federal level, or most states.
We can find plenty of taxpayers in NY, CA, or MA who have a marginal rate of 40-50%. They are the highly affluent people that those PBS pledge drives featuring Baby Boomer musical acts are aimed at.
> California is easily close to that, when you add up Federal and State income taxes. As is New York.
No, it's not. Someone making $250k in California pays an effective Federal rate of 22% and state of 8%. Even someone making a million a year sees an effective rate of ~42%. (And that's before tax avoidance strategies they'll undoubtedly pursue.)
> Anyone who contributes $100 to NPR deducts $100 from their income for tax purposes.
Itemized deductions these days are either extremely small (limited to a few hundred dollars) or only for the very wealthy.
During the Trump years, the standard deduction was doubled, with the result that vastly fewer people now itemize deductions. Yes, you can report a limited amount of tax-deductible donations, but last time I looked it was around $300/yr (and even that was easy to overlook).
The $300 charitable deduction was just in 2021, you basically can't get a federal charitable deduction anymore. Might get one at the state level though.
If less than 4% of their funding came from the state, they wouldn't fight so hard to keep it coming. If the state contribution was that low, it would be in NPR's best interest to just get off it entirely.
I've heard this "debunked" many times before, but I looked it up this time for our local public radio [0]. Looking at this report for my state it looks like it's coming up on 29% government funds (state funds and CPB)! Listener and business support add up to about 50%. About 22% looks like it's basically income (proceeds on ticket sales, etc).
I'm not a total public radio hater or anything, but this definitely makes me take the idea that public radio is mostly listener supported a lot less seriously in the bigger scheme of things. Public radio fans can try to talk me down. I'd like to know where I'm wrong.
Edit: ... and I do know there is a distinction between the national entity and the member stations. It's just that tracing it up further feels like a shell game. Maybe all the other states are different and have way more donations, but I have no idea. I'm already confused about how many of WPR's "in kind" funding from the UW-system are state/federal funds and even if any of the state funds are from federal aid.
"Presently, NPR receives funding for less than 1% of its budget directly from the federal government, but receives almost 10% of its budget from federal, state, and local governments indirectly."
NPR does receive some public funding, but it only amounts to something like 2% of their overall revenue. [1] Based on a revenue of 200 million-ish, that means somewhere in the ballpark of $4 million/year, or 1-2 cents per US resident per year.
That's incorrect, our taxes go to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). NPR applies for and receives grants from the CPB. That distinction is important because NPR is competing with other public broadcasters for those grants.
Eh, ever since one half of the Car Talk duo died, and Wait Wait Don't Tell Me started being played in front of a live audience, there really hasn't been anything worth listening to on NPR.
"Wait Wait Don't Tell Me" has been playing in front of a live audience since 2005, except during COVID, and had been playing several shows a year before a live audience since 2000. They only were only exclusively not live for their first two years.
Oh. I assumed you misremembered when Wait Wait started live audiences, since you said that ever since one of the Car Talk guys died and Wait Wait started having live audiences NPR hasn't had anything worth listening to.
But that Car Talk guy died in 2014, 14 years after Wait Wait started recording some shows in front of live audience, and 9 years after they started recording almost always in front of a live audience.
Your comment doesn't really make sense if those two events aren't in the same general timeframe so I had assumed you probably didn't realize how early Wait Wait was having live audiences.
There's actually a bigger story to what you're saying. Public radio (NPR, APM, et al.) hasn't come up with new hit shows with longevity, while some are aging out. The format of Wait Wait is fine, but the references are 40 years too old. Terry Gross, while an amazing interviewer, is in her 70's. On KQED, Michael Krasny retired from forum, and his replacements aren't as good. As it currently exists, public radio in the US feels like a thing for coastal liberals between the ages of 50 and 70. It's trying here and there to find a new voice, but it hasn't.
Invisibilia, a show about investigating the hidden side of human behavior - was a ripoff of 99% invisible, a show that focuses on the unseen aspects of design?
I think your are confused about one of these shows at least, I don't see these as being relayed at all other than they are podcasts talking about things, which can hardly be claimed as original.
NPR is the equivalent of radio MSNBC: not doing much in the way of hard-hitting investigative journalism. It's target demo appears to be middle-age, middle-class people who want to believe everything is fine while sipping their coffee mug on the way to work.
Meanwhile, Democracy Now! has been going since February 19, 1996 with a daily worldwide summary somewhat better than the BBC and then proceeds to dig into long-form, important interviews on topics that don't get much CNN-MSNBC airtime.
“ Disclosure: This story was reported and written by NPR Media Correspondent David Folkenflik and NPR Intern Mary Yang. It was edited by Acting Chief Business Editor Emily Kopp. Under NPR's protocol for reporting on itself, no NPR corporate official or news executive reviewed this story before it was posted publicly. “
Ie., they reported on themselves without interference from the suits.