I & I Editorial BoardHas there ever been a more hypocritically thin-skinned occupation than journalism?
Day after day these relatively uneducated writers piously dish out opprobrium on those they don’t like and then respond like whiny spoiled brats when anyone dares to criticize them.
The latest example of this involves Uri Berliner, a senior editor at National Public Radio who we learned on Tuesday was suspended without pay for having the temerity to complain that this taxpayer-supported enterprise had become hopelessly agenda-driven.
Berliner has worked at NPR for a quarter century and describes himself as a Sarah Lawrence College-educated child of a “lesbian peace activist mother” whose Spotify “listening habits are most similar to people in Berkeley.”
In other words, he’s a solid liberal. So, it’s worth listening to what he has to say.
“It’s true NPR has always had a liberal bent,” he writes, “but during most of my tenure here, an open-minded, curious culture prevailed.”
That culture no longer exists, he says, a transformation that started in earnest in 2016.
“What began as tough, straightforward coverage of a belligerent, truth-impaired president veered toward efforts to damage or topple Trump’s presidency,” he writes. He goes on to describe how the network’s ideological blinders caused it to swallow the Russia-hoax story whole, mishandle the COVID-19 and the Hunter Biden laptop stories, and how woke dogma infects everything NPR covers.
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.
Incredibly, journalists were even “required to ask everyone we interviewed their race, gender, and ethnicity (among other questions), and had to enter it in a centralized tracking system.”
Berliner makes it clear that he went public with his complaints only after getting nowhere internally. One top executive warned him “to be careful” how he talks about “diversity of thought.”
Now, instead of praising Berliner for his honesty, for bringing transparency to NPR, and for applying the same standards to NPR that it insists everyone else follow, and rather than using his expose as an opportunity to make changes, Katherine Maher – NPR’s new and now famously leftist CEO – screeched like the child who’s been told no for the first time.
She complained that Berliner’s article was “profoundly disrespectful, hurtful, and demeaning,” and amounted to “a criticism of our people on the basis of who we are.” On Tuesday, the news broke that NPR had suspended Berliner for five days without pay, most likely the first step to his dismissal.
Of course, this problem is far wider and deeper than NPR. What Berliner describes has happened to all mainstream news outlets that, while pretending to present facts, are always grinding their ideological axes. And, like Berliner, some old-school journalists have publicly denounced the trend.
Late last year, for example, former New York Times editorial page editor James Bennett penned an article titled “When the New York Times Lost Its Way,” which recounted how he was fired for publishing an op-ed by Republican Sen. Tom Cotton that the woke Times staff didn’t like.
Two years ago, former USA Today deputy editorial page editor Dave Mastio was demoted for a tweet that said: “People who are pregnant are also women.”
“I compounded my sin against this new orthodoxy by calling the idea that men can get pregnant an ‘opinion,’” he wrote in an essay for the New York Post after leaving the paper.
“At USA Today,” Mastio revealed, “members of the newsroom ‘diversity’ committee are allowed to edit ‘problematic’ opinion content. Members of this intolerant ‘diversity’ committee root around in unpublished articles and try to spike those that run afoul of their agenda.”
On and on the media malpractice goes.
But if you call out any of this, the truth-to-power journalists will scream that you’re a trans-hating, Trump-loving, privileged racist as they run to their safe spaces to hide.
— Written by the I&I Editorial Board
Using these vague “policy violations,” Google is now threatening to demonetize us. It’s part of Big Tech’s effort to silence conservative voices.
Journalistic should really be in quotes in the title
After Texaco lost a discrimination lawsuit to one black woman in the 1990s, a federal judge required all employees to be sheep dipped in diversity training. It was sold to employees as the need to have “diversity thought” in the work force. It quickly devolved into diversity of race and sex. Merit, ability and qualifications took a back seat. Engineers and geologists from second tier, “B” grade universities were hired. Ratings and promotions of staff were monitored and controlled by “goals” put into managers’ performance objectives; however, the terms “quotas” and “targets” were not allowed. The entire program became a distraction for both management and staff as unqualified people were put into critically important roles. Financial performance of the company dropped and Texaco was taken over by Chevron (it was not a merger) a few years later. The 99 year history of Texaco ended. DEI = DIE.
Dirt bags always get p.o.ed when their dirt baggery is exposed!
Liberals have a misunderstanding of hyperbole if they believe Trump lies when he speaks. He’s merely bloviating like most politicians except he’s actually funny.
Let me explain NPR for all of you.
They hired too many toxic feminists
All feminists do today, is mock masculinity.
They used up manplaining, manspreading, manslammng, manterruption, patrarchy, toxic masculinity. The bloviate about how women save the world and men contribute toxicity.
Now, there is little left to whine about, so they are whining about whining.
In the meantime all these Karens are happily using all the inventions and gadgets that were invented by white males: electricity, telephones, cars, washing machines, microwaves, internet and cell phones.
I do not know about tampons. That may have been invented by a Karen.
Hollywood did not understand it was failing to deliver entertainment and still has trouble grasping why they continue to fail. Likewise, the media fails to understand they are delivering opinion with extreme ideological bent instead of news and are grasping to understand why they are failing. People will turn you off in a heartbeat when they discover you are lying to them.
Katherine Maher is a 40 year old who grew up a rich kid in Connecticutt, studied years abroad in Cairo, and graduated from NYU with a BA in Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies. So it can be certain that she’s fully versed in hating her own country and most of the people in it.
Leftists like Maher are likely driven by arrogance, agenda, and lack of self-awareness. Her power comes from her real privilege & access from her family background, the kind most people don’t have. She either has no idea that she made Berliner’s case for him by firing him, but it’s more likely that she just doesn’t care because she is on a mission to make all of America think the way she and her fellow travelers want it to think… or else.
She is one of the reasons the US is falling into the vast chasm of what is said being vastly different than what is done by the people who should know better.
Nice editorial. I&I says it all, and unlike NPR, says it concisely and without a condescending smirk. I really do enjoy the opinions and the writings of I&I and have since the old days of Investors Business Daily. One thing hasn’t changed: Their journalism is still “hard hitting” and “fact based.”
I believe NPR policies are the reason why our Founders warned against government involvement in journalism. I realize NPR doesn’t get all its funding from the federal government-but it does get some (via the Taxpayer)- and what I would consider is a substantial amount.
While others in the MSM are being supported by private funds- and this doesn’t guarantee honesty or accuracy (see Russian Collusion and Hunter’s laptop in the NY Times and Washington Post) in reporting- neither does it give a patina of governmental legitimacy to the reporting.
It is ironic that once NPR’s flaws were pointed out and its objectivity was questioned, NPR almost immediately (and eventually) blamed-not itself for the flaws, but blamed the reporter for reporting those flaws.
NPR should be a laughing stock and a Saturday Night Live skit; unfortunately, it will probably get a Government raise.
Can we still say, “calling a spade a spade?” Well done above.
NPR is a real bent spade when they head off into politics, policies, global warming, energy, EVs, micro-aggressions and all that. 1984 words and speech takes over and we are lowered to the level of college sophomores.
Many of their other programs are smart, unique, very interesting and from all over the world. That is the NPR that is universally admired.
However, they go all Berzerkley whenever they venture forth and intone their opinions. Well, none of “their opinions” are their own. All have been heard from the same soup kitchen liberal progressive zealot crazy people ladle out the same unhinged loopy opinions.
NPR, please show a spark of independence and intelligence whenever tempted to go back to that Berzerkley soup kitchen again.
Since the early 90’s I used to tune into NPR once in a while to find out what the left was thinking. Why did it take more than 30 years to unmask NPR?
Our government needs to stop supporting them and let them survive alone as a Democrat opinion station.
Step 1: Create a taxpayer funded media company that advances communism and the interests of The Party™ with a dash of programming said to contain redeemable value.
Step 2: In response to calls for its abolition, scream about Big Bird being taken away.
Step 3: Profit.
“It’s almost like an assembly line”, Berlinger writes.
That’s what all the news seems like to all of us trying to make sense of the nonsense that is being “reported”.
NPR has ALWAYS been a waste of the taxpayers money
Not for one second would we tolerate the level of malpractice we see in our fake news media in other professions such as health care providers and many other licensed professions. Therefore, it is time to require occupational licensing to practice journalism. Now, pseudo journalists will scream and cry that would inhibit their “journalism.” No it wouldn’t, it would only impact on your relentless lying.