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.
