I'm not educated enough in journalism to distinguish high quality from low quality, but as a listener/reader, some of NPR feels like good, original journalism (my ears perk up whenever I hear Eleanor Beardsley, for example); other content feels like it is just parroting the NY Times (which itself is a weird mixture of thought-provoking articles and clickbait headlines).
I guess you missed the op-ed written by a senior NPR editor recently. He admitted that NPR suppressed stories because they might help Trump and pursued poorly sourced (and ultimately false) stories because they would hurt Trump.
What more could NPR say about those slap fights (Hunter Biden, COVID-19) that wasn't already beaten to death by the credulous corporate media? Is every news outlet required to be subsumed by the right-wing noise machine's narrative?
Uri turning to Bari to air his grievances is pretty much all any one needs to know about his POV.
"But when the Mueller report found no credible evidence of collusion, NPR’s coverage was notably sparse. Russiagate quietly faded from our programming."
That's no slap fight, those were serious allegations and the fact that they were false is equally important.
NPR happily participated in spreading those left wing falsehoods, but was unwilling to spread the truth with equal vigor.
I agree it's a shame that Uri had to turn outside NPR to discuss this. But you know as well as I do that NPR would not have published this.
And while COVID-19 was certainly a controversial topic, it was no "slap fight" either. It was the most important issue in the nation for two years or more.
You're dismissing important issues as "slap fights" and dismissing serious discussion because you suspect someone has a different point of view. Does that tell us all we need to know about you?
What could NPR possibly add to any of those 3 food fights? In addition to the 100s of hours and 1,000s of column inches already wasted? New evidence, witnesses, analysis, pizza toppings, anything? Nope.
Was yet another rehash more important than every thing else? There are 1,000s of newsworthy topics and issues every single day. Was relitigating the precise definition of "collusion" really the most important topic? Again?
Was there any risk that any one any where wouldn't have already been fully immersed in those jello wrestling matches? (Benghazi!)
FWIW: Every side have long claimed "the media" censors their favored tickle fights. aka "Working the refs", public relations. Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent explains how that endless meta-slapfight works.
To their credit, the right-wing noise machine created their own media ecosystem. (Though it's weird they continue to say they're being ignored, when conservatives dominate every medium.) The left, greens, socialists, grannies knitting for world peace, etc should all do the same.
> Does that tell us all we need to know about you?
Gods, I certainly hope so. Firstly, that the "news" actually be "new".
> The left, greens, socialists, grannies knitting for world peace, etc should all do the same [create their own media ecosystem]
You're proving my point there. Those are all relatively fringe groups, outside the mainstream of the Democratic party and the majority of elected officials. Prominent elected Democrats can rely on "the media" to get their message out and to protect them from criticism. (Both from the far-left and from the right, as we saw from their treatment of Bernie Sanders.)
The "right wing" (meaning mainstream Republicans and elected officials), had to create their own media because the "leans left" media will not report fairly about them. Twitter banned the POTUS. The NY Times forced an editor to resign for publishing an op-ed from a sitting Senator. And NPR targeted the President, according to that senior editor.
> Though it's weird they continue to say they're being ignored, when conservatives dominate every medium.
No one claimed they're being ignored. They're being attacked. When the left-leaning media, like NPR, covers conservatives, it's usually to take their statements and actions out of context and criticize them.
> Firstly, that the "news" actually be "new".
I agree completely, but we don't see much of that these days.
What we see is the neoliberal media chanting the neoliberal chorus, trying to silence both the right and (as you pointed out), the greens, socialists, and others to their left.
Most people misunderstood the role of NYT, WaPo, and NPR. They aren't left, right, up, widdershins, liberal, conservative, whatever.
Rather, their (self-appointed) role is to defend the status quo. aka the establishment, the beltway, the village.
NYT only looks "center-right" to me because I'm way far to the left, "left wing" to you because you're conservative. But those views aren't really helpful for understanding them. Those labels don't mean anything inside the bubble. (As revealed by their evergreen appeals for "bipartisanship", "compromise", and "consensus".)
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Not that you asked, but there's a similar disconnect between the folk understanding of politics and how politicos behave.
I've run for office. Dialing for dollars, campaigning statewide, door belling, interviews, endorsements, messaging & framing, debate prep, costumes and makeup, all of it. Very illuminating. And now I totally get why everyone in that ecosystem behaves as they do.
Everyone should run for office, do some policy work, try to get published, etc. We'd all be better off if more people had first-hand experience in the sausage factory.
