NPR and saying the quiet part out loud

[brenthutch 384]

https://www.thefp.com/p/npr-editor-how-npr-lost-americas-trust

“It’s true NPR has always had a liberal bent, but during most of my tenure here, an open-minded, curious culture prevailed. We were nerdy, but not knee-jerk, activist, or scolding. 

In recent years, however, that has changed. Today, those who listen to NPR or read its coverage online find something different: the distilled worldview of a very small segment of the U.S. population…

There’s an unspoken consensus about the stories we should pursue and how they should be framed. It’s frictionless—one story after another about instances of supposed racism, transphobia, signs of the climate apocalypse, Israel doing something bad, and the dire threat of Republican policies. It’s almost like an assembly line.”…

Our news audience doesn’t come close to reflecting America. It’s overwhelmingly white and progressive, and clustered around coastal cities and college towns.“

I guess I am one of the small minority of right leaning folks who listen to NPR and I have to say I have made the same observation. If not for queer, climate change and and all things urban, aka black (which is ironic given only six percent of the audience is black) there would be radio silence for 75% of the day. BTW in NPR’s Washington headquarters there are 80+ registered Democrats and exactly ZERO Republicans. So much for diversity.

 

 

Edited April 10 by brenthutch

[airdvr 197]

He’ll be shown the door shortly 

[normiss 622]

White wingers appear to want to hire based on religious and political party associations.

The America we know is dying, and it's ugly.

Thank you to the Russian Republican Party.

[brenthutch 384]

22 minutes ago, normiss said:

White wingers appear to want to hire based on religious and political party associations.

The America we know is dying, and it's ugly.

Thank you to the Russian Republican Party.

What in the world does that have to do with this topic?  Did you intend to post elsewhere?

[brenthutch 384]

1 hour ago, airdvr said:

He’ll be shown the door shortly 

I don’t think they can, it will confirm all of his criticisms. Then again they might be so deep into the cool aid that they don’t recognize it and fire him anyway.

[normiss 622]

57 minutes ago, brenthutch said:

What in the world does that have to do with this topic?  Did you intend to post elsewhere?

Apparently you missed the part where you were complaining about NPR employee's political affiliations.

Color me not surprised.

[SkyDekker 1,127]

1 hour ago, brenthutch said:

I don’t think they can, it will confirm all of his criticisms. Then again they might be so deep into the cool aid that they don’t recognize it and fire him anyway.

He is complaining about institutional bias, something you don't think exists.

 

Oops, forgot, you don't have consistency in principles.

[brenthutch 384]

43 minutes ago, SkyDekker said:

He is complaining about institutional bias, something you don't think exists.

 

Oops, forgot, you don't have consistency in principles.

Why do you have a preoccupation with making things about me. 

[SkyDekker 1,127]

2 minutes ago, brenthutch said:

Why do you have a preoccupation with making things about me. 

Why do you have a preoccupation with trolling?

[brenthutch 384]

1 hour ago, normiss said:

Apparently you missed the part where you were complaining about NPR employee's political affiliations.

Color me not surprised.

Not complaining, just pointing out the hypocrisy of those who claim to cherish the concept of diversity, when nothing could be further from the truth. Unfortunately NPR has devolved into a left-wing cesspool of intellectual incest. (As revealed by one of their own)

[brenthutch 384]

4 minutes ago, SkyDekker said:

Why do you have a preoccupation with trolling?

Why are you so triggered by the truth?  Is your worldview so fragile that you resort to name calling when it is challenged by facts?

[jakee 1,257]

12 minutes ago, brenthutch said:

Not complaining, just pointing out the hypocrisy of those who claim to cherish the concept of diversity, when nothing could be further from the truth. Unfortunately NPR has devolved into a left-wing cesspool of intellectual incest. (As revealed by one of their own)

Another knock on effect from the mainstream right’s embrace of Trumpism. You can’t report honestly on Trump without the coverage sounding like a hatchet job, so when the majority of right wingers choose to throw away their principles and support him anyway they’re not going to want to work for an organisation that makes them feel bad about that. 
 

Now, given how much your guy moans about lack of Hunter coverage (whose misdeeds he conflates with Joe, which is a pretty big red flag) I’d be interested to know how much time NPR spent covering Jared’s far more successful influence peddling from inside the White House vs Hunter’s solo efforts. Would anyone here really be surprised if the bias was actually in the other direction?

[billvon 2,402]

15 minutes ago, jakee said:

Another knock on effect from the mainstream right’s embrace of Trumpism. You can’t report honestly on Trump without the coverage sounding like a hatchet job

Yep.  When you factually report on the trial that found that Trump sexually assaulted E Jean Carroll, it makes him sound like a rapist (since, objectively, he is one.)  Then when you factually report on the sexual improprieties of Joe Biden, the report sounds . . . not that bad, since he has not sexually assaulted anyone.  Conservatives demand that the media make both reports sound the same.

Even if you report on the accusations, it makes Trump sound worse, since 13 women have accused him of sexual assault (one of which was proven) and he's admitted to sexual assault on TV.  Then you report on the one woman who's accused Biden, and it makes it sound like Trump is much, much worse.

Trump supporters demand enforced equality.  If you spend 15 minutes listing all of Trump's accusers, you have to spend 15 minutes on Biden's one accuser.  If you make it sound like Trump raped someone, you have to make it sound like Biden raped someone too.  They want rapists made equal to non-rapists, criminals made equal to non-criminals, and people who pay to cover up their banging a porn star made equal to people who don't bang porn stars.

This demand for equality in everything is, ironically, something they vociferously oppose when applied to the rest of society, and indeed regularly claim that people are NOT equal and should not be forced to be.  Unless their last name is Biden.  Then they should be made equal to Trump.

[SkyDekker 1,127]

1 hour ago, brenthutch said:

Why are you so triggered by the truth?  Is your worldview so fragile that you resort to name calling when it is challenged by facts?

Why are you triggered when asked about institutional bias when you post an article positing about an "unspoken consensus"?

Why are you so fragile that when I post that I trolling, you are accusing me of calling you names?

Do I think there is some bias within NPR, yes I do. Have you posted any facts, no you haven't.

[brenthutch 384]

51 minutes ago, jakee said:
 

Now, given how much your guy moans about lack of Hunter coverage (whose misdeeds he conflates with Joe, which is a pretty big red flag) I’d be interested to know how much time NPR spent covering Jared’s far more successful influence peddling from inside the White House vs Hunter’s solo efforts. Would anyone here really be surprised if the bias was actually in the other direction?

No Hunter was covered. NPR claimed it was a Russian hoax.

[brenthutch 384]

8 minutes ago, SkyDekker said:

Why are you triggered when asked about institutional bias when you post an article positing about an "unspoken consensus"?

Why are you so fragile that when I post that I trolling, you are accusing me of calling you names?

Do I think there is some bias within NPR, yes I do. Have you posted any facts, no you haven't.

Read the article, I only posted snippets.

[SkyDekker 1,127]

6 minutes ago, brenthutch said:

Read the article, I only posted snippets.

Sure and both the snippets and the rest of the article imply a lot of correlations, but don't provide any facts around causation.

If you think it does, please provide snippets that contains facts establishing how American at one point trusted NPR and how that trust has been lost directly caused by actions NPS has taken.

 

[SkyDekker 1,127]

2 hours ago, brenthutch said:

No Hunter was covered. NPR claimed it was a Russian hoax.

Yeah totally:

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

There's fresh scrutiny on Hunter Biden, the president's son, as he is under investigation. Part of that investigation appears to center on emails that showed up on a notorious laptop that was publicized before the 2020 election and then dismissed by much of the news media. Many of these emails have now been authenticated. NPR's David Folkenflik joins us now. David, thanks so much for being with us.

DAVID FOLKENFLIK, BYLINE: Pleasure.

SIMON: And what have we learned so far?

FOLKENFLIK: We've learned a bunch more detail about Hunter Biden's vision to help a Ukrainian natural gas company called Burisma handle bad press in the U.S. and some other ramifications here although he didn't register as a lobbyist. We also learned about a Chinese energy company presumably with links to the Chinese communist government that made Hunter Biden seven figures in a short amount of time. To be clear, Hunter Biden has not been charged with any wrongdoing on this. He's said in the past that he's done stupid things but nothing illegal.

SIMON: How did that information surface?

FOLKENFLIK: Mostly through new reporting. You got to start with revelations in a book last fall by Politico's Ben Schreckinger and more recently in articles in The New York Times and The Washington Post. Much of these reports appear to center on materials related to the federal investigation of Hunter Biden. And there are a lot of witnesses and a lot of lawyers who have been asked about some of those Hunter Biden emails and correspondence and documents between him and some of his associates.

SIMON: The New York Post broke this story just weeks before the 2020 election. Remind us of what ensued then.

FOLKENFLIK: So The New York Post presented this story as a bombshell, and it said the emails were a smoking gun showing effectively Hunter Biden's corruption and suggesting much the same about candidate Joe Biden. Yet, its scoops were based on emails that could not at the time be independently authenticated, on a laptop that had not been positively identified as belonging to Hunter Biden, which was said to be abandoned at a repair shop.

The laptop was provided, it's worth remembering, by President Trump's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, to The New York Post. That's a tabloid owned by Rupert Murdoch, a political ally of Donald Trump. And I think it's also worth noting, Murdoch's Wall Street Journal and Fox News had reporters who had the same material. They passed on the story concerned about how authentic it might be.

SIMON: Hmm. Are conservative critics of the president correct, though, in saying that in retrospect, the media was just too deferential to the Bidens?

FOLKENFLIK: Maybe. I do think you have to understand the context of the moment. Think of what happened in 2016. You had the Russian involvement in the leaking of hacked emails from Hillary Clinton and the Democrats, and that caused incredible havoc during the election season. And think, too, a bit later of the so-called Steele dossier that attracted a ton of press coverage. It was posted in full by BuzzFeed News, and it turned out that contained a lot of misinformation not about Hillary Clinton and Democrats, but about the conduct of Donald Trump.

SIMON: Hmm. Does that let off the media too easily? You wrote at the time that the mainstream press was right to be wary of the reporting at The New York Post.

FOLKENFLIK: And I still think so. I don't think it lets them off too easily. I do think, though, there are two important points I want to make here. First, let's acknowledge social media's role. A number of platforms tamped down on sharing of the Post's story. In the case of Twitter, not only did they try to block sharing of it, they suspended The New York Post's actual Twitter account for sharing its own article. That was a wild overreach, and even Twitter had to acknowledge that.

And then there was this cohort of paid pundits - 50 former national security officials, many of them appearing frequently in mainstream media outlets - who came together for a statement saying that this surfacing of the laptop bore all the hallmarks of a Russian misinformation campaign. And they pointed to the Russia's hacking of emails back in 2016, and their claims were not sufficiently and rigorously enough tested and questioned.

I will go back to what I wrote at the time. None of the criticism from conservatives to do this seeming expose on Hunter Biden should force reporters to accept The New York Post's claims as true without additional reporting and additional verification.

SIMON: And there are now Republicans and conservatives who say what we do know now, in their mind, demonstrates corruption by a sitting president.

FOLKENFLIK: You know, from the evidence we have now - and that's important to note, the timing - President Joe Biden's actions have not been shown to be corrupt. What has been shown is a seeming tolerance for close family members - Hunter Biden, the president's brother - who are willing to trade on the family name in a way that seems, if not corrupt, untoward. And there is now more heft to a storyline that we already knew a lot about and yet remains one we're still pursuing.

SIMON: NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik, thanks so much.

FOLKENFLIK: You bet.

 

https://www.npr.org/2022/04/09/1091859822/more-details-emerge-in-federal-investigation-into-hunter-biden

[billvon 2,402]

1 hour ago, SkyDekker said:

Yeah totally:

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

There's fresh scrutiny on Hunter Biden, the president's son, as he is under investigationen

You posted the actual story out loud.  You're not supposed to do that.  You're supposed to believe whatever BH says without question.  I mean, he does that for FOX News - can't you extend him the courtesy of doing the same for him?

[brenthutch 384]

2 hours ago, SkyDekker said:

Yeah totally:

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

There's fresh scrutiny on Hunter Biden, the president's son, as he is under investigation. Part of that investigation appears to center on emails that showed up on a notorious laptop that was publicized before the 2020 election and then dismissed by much of the news media. Many of these emails have now been authenticated. NPR's David Folkenflik joins us now. David, thanks so much for being with us.

DAVID FOLKENFLIK, BYLINE: Pleasure.

SIMON: And what have we learned so far?

FOLKENFLIK: We've learned a bunch more detail about Hunter Biden's vision to help a Ukrainian natural gas company called Burisma handle bad press in the U.S. and some other ramifications here although he didn't register as a lobbyist. We also learned about a Chinese energy company presumably with links to the Chinese communist government that made Hunter Biden seven figures in a short amount of time. To be clear, Hunter Biden has not been charged with any wrongdoing on this. He's said in the past that he's done stupid things but nothing illegal.

SIMON: How did that information surface?

FOLKENFLIK: Mostly through new reporting. You got to start with revelations in a book last fall by Politico's Ben Schreckinger and more recently in articles in The New York Times and The Washington Post. Much of these reports appear to center on materials related to the federal investigation of Hunter Biden. And there are a lot of witnesses and a lot of lawyers who have been asked about some of those Hunter Biden emails and correspondence and documents between him and some of his associates.

SIMON: The New York Post broke this story just weeks before the 2020 election. Remind us of what ensued then.

FOLKENFLIK: So The New York Post presented this story as a bombshell, and it said the emails were a smoking gun showing effectively Hunter Biden's corruption and suggesting much the same about candidate Joe Biden. Yet, its scoops were based on emails that could not at the time be independently authenticated, on a laptop that had not been positively identified as belonging to Hunter Biden, which was said to be abandoned at a repair shop.

The laptop was provided, it's worth remembering, by President Trump's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, to The New York Post. That's a tabloid owned by Rupert Murdoch, a political ally of Donald Trump. And I think it's also worth noting, Murdoch's Wall Street Journal and Fox News had reporters who had the same material. They passed on the story concerned about how authentic it might be.

SIMON: Hmm. Are conservative critics of the president correct, though, in saying that in retrospect, the media was just too deferential to the Bidens?

FOLKENFLIK: Maybe. I do think you have to understand the context of the moment. Think of what happened in 2016. You had the Russian involvement in the leaking of hacked emails from Hillary Clinton and the Democrats, and that caused incredible havoc during the election season. And think, too, a bit later of the so-called Steele dossier that attracted a ton of press coverage. It was posted in full by BuzzFeed News, and it turned out that contained a lot of misinformation not about Hillary Clinton and Democrats, but about the conduct of Donald Trump.

SIMON: Hmm. Does that let off the media too easily? You wrote at the time that the mainstream press was right to be wary of the reporting at The New York Post.

FOLKENFLIK: And I still think so. I don't think it lets them off too easily. I do think, though, there are two important points I want to make here. First, let's acknowledge social media's role. A number of platforms tamped down on sharing of the Post's story. In the case of Twitter, not only did they try to block sharing of it, they suspended The New York Post's actual Twitter account for sharing its own article. That was a wild overreach, and even Twitter had to acknowledge that.

And then there was this cohort of paid pundits - 50 former national security officials, many of them appearing frequently in mainstream media outlets - who came together for a statement saying that this surfacing of the laptop bore all the hallmarks of a Russian misinformation campaign. And they pointed to the Russia's hacking of emails back in 2016, and their claims were not sufficiently and rigorously enough tested and questioned.

I will go back to what I wrote at the time. None of the criticism from conservatives to do this seeming expose on Hunter Biden should force reporters to accept The New York Post's claims as true without additional reporting and additional verification.

SIMON: And there are now Republicans and conservatives who say what we do know now, in their mind, demonstrates corruption by a sitting president.

FOLKENFLIK: You know, from the evidence we have now - and that's important to note, the timing - President Joe Biden's actions have not been shown to be corrupt. What has been shown is a seeming tolerance for close family members - Hunter Biden, the president's brother - who are willing to trade on the family name in a way that seems, if not corrupt, untoward. And there is now more heft to a storyline that we already knew a lot about and yet remains one we're still pursuing.

SIMON: NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik, thanks so much.

FOLKENFLIK: You bet.

 

https://www.npr.org/2022/04/09/1091859822/more-details-emerge-in-federal-investigation-into-hunter-biden

Once the election was over they were free to report the truth (and cover their asses)

[SkyDekker 1,127]

10 minutes ago, brenthutch said:

Once the election was over they were free to report the truth (and cover their asses)

Post it. Show those facts you like to talk about so much.

[brenthutch 384]

12 minutes ago, SkyDekker said:

Post it. Show those facts you like to talk about so much.

The election was in 2020…fact

The mea culpa was in 2022…fact

[SkyDekker 1,127]

 

5 hours ago, brenthutch said:

No Hunter was covered. NPR claimed it was a Russian hoax.

Made up.

[brenthutch 384]

53 minutes ago, SkyDekker said:

 

Made up.

“NPR’s managing editor for news at the time said that the outlet had no interest in “[wast[ing] our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don’t want to waste the listeners’ and readers’ time on stories that are just pure distractions.”‘[wast[ing] our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don’t want to waste the listeners’ and readers’ time on stories that are just pure distractions”

[SkyDekker 1,127]

1 minute ago, brenthutch said:

“NPR’s managing editor for news at the time said that the outlet had no interest in “[wast[ing] our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don’t want to waste the listeners’ and readers’ time on stories that are just pure distractions.”‘[wast[ing] our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don’t want to waste the listeners’ and readers’ time on stories that are just pure distractions”

Here you post saying Hunter wasn't covered.

6 hours ago, brenthutch said:

No Hunter was covered. NPR claimed it was a Russian hoax.

Here you post emphasizing he was covered.

 

I know, this stuff gets really hard when you have to think for yourself and you can't just regurgitate.