I wouldn't say NPR has lost my trust. I kind of think of NPR has suburban middle class nice type energy. Like, an old lady who doesn't want to be racist, and does so by just kind of going along...
I wouldn't say NPR has lost my trust. I kind of think of NPR has suburban middle class nice type energy. Like, an old lady who doesn't want to be racist, and does so by just kind of going along with what she thinks the kids are talking about.
For example, I rarely if ever hear people say "Latinx" except on NPR. There was a short period several years back where I think this was sorta in vogue, but people quickly abandoned it because it's very clunky and English-centric to try and fix a foreign language by injecting the American pronunciation of X into the word. But NPR seemed to have jumped on board and just stuck with it.
That doesn't really make me not trust NPR to give me information, it just is kinda cringe. I sometimes think NPR is trying too hard to seem woke as a result. But it's really a case by case basis, sometimes the segments are much more neutral and just summarizes the facts of stuff that's been going on recently. Sometimes they do investigative reports on stuff that doesn't immediately fall into obvious left/right wing dynamics. In those cases the reporting usually seems informative and well produced.
Just highlighting that Latinx (and increasingly Latine) is still used among queer people. I'm not surprised it doesn't land with the broader community but X was being used intentionally the same...
Just highlighting that Latinx (and increasingly Latine) is still used among queer people. I'm not surprised it doesn't land with the broader community but X was being used intentionally the same way womxn is used.
I don't know NPRs editorial policy on which language they use when so I won't claim it doesn't need updated on that, but I train on queer language and the backlash to queer terms is pretty consistent (why do we need so many labels, why do I have to change what I say, etc.)
To be clear, the term doesn't make sense if you're an English speaker (you can just say Latin, Latin American, Hispanic) or if you're a Spanish speaker (consonants can't be pronounced that way);...
To be clear, the term doesn't make sense if you're an English speaker (you can just say Latin, Latin American, Hispanic) or if you're a Spanish speaker (consonants can't be pronounced that way); the term is only useful if you're an English speaker that is Latin enough to want to use a Spanish word as part of your identity, but don't know enough Spanish to need to use basic articles like los and las, or common words like esos y estas. That community is a tiny fraction of the wider Latin community, and usually skews middle class, young and white.
It's not enough to switch my vote or anything because holy shit Trump is standing behind me with a knife, but I know it pisses my family off whenever they hear the term. Particularly Puerto Ricans have a bone when you anglicise our words, and now our identity is being anglisised, it feels like? Fuck, we almost went to war trying to get the US to stop referring to us officially as Porto Rico, because that wasn't our name. Our governor at to directly appeal to Congress in person to cut that shit out.
It's not meant that way by the LBGT+ community, but perhaps NPR should've talked to 10 random Latin Americans before changing the word for an identity of people. Yes, there's always backlash against new identity terms. But usually whole ethnic labels aren't being changed, is my understanding.
Most English speakers say Latino or Latina in my experience, I don't see Latin used very often and Hispanic gets used in slightly different contexts in my experience (universities track Hispanic...
Most English speakers say Latino or Latina in my experience, I don't see Latin used very often and Hispanic gets used in slightly different contexts in my experience (universities track Hispanic in a particular way for example.)
There's no clear origin of the term, but it was definitely used in Puerto Rico and like Xicano (and Xicanx) the X is an intentional replacement, though because of a lack of clear origin whether it's a Nahuatl reference or a queer theory/feminism reference ala womxn isn't clear.
I agree that most of the use has been in the US, though online spaces are harder to localize, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the users aren't fluent/native Spanish speakers. The Feministas Unidas was one of the frequent 'origin' possibilities for the term, and LULAC just stopped using it in the past few years. I think it's fair to say it's not popular outside queer communities and that the shift to using it as a population label was premature, but it wasn't just NPR making that attempt*.
It's something I bring up when I see it because too often people erase the actual Latinx youth that use the term. I do see a slow pivot to using Latine - here's one example - and I'm all on board with whatever labels want to use.
In short, it makes full sense why the shift away from Latinx is happening and why the term frustrates some folks. I just try to speak up for my queer college kids when I can since that label is valid for them.
*It's not clear what NPR was doing when, I can only see their current style guide and things like AltLatino have been around more than a decade. In the past year they've used Latinx mostly for music when non-binary/queer artists have been involved (this is all depending on google so YMMV).
It was used by Puerto Ricans, but I struggle to think that it was used in Puerto Rico, because again, the word isn't pronounceable. I can see it though, in an University campus, probably Rio...
It was used by Puerto Ricans, but I struggle to think that it was used in Puerto Rico, because again, the word isn't pronounceable. I can see it though, in an University campus, probably Rio Piedras (my alma mater). But mate, people using English as a primary conversation language in Puerto Rico is a fraction of a fraction. And I should know, I was one of them. I'd talk about DBZ and Pokemon in English because English was cool. The word Latinx (with the x being pronounced as ecks) didn't exist, because Latin people don't pronounce x as ecks, they pronounce is as eh-khees. And also you don't pronounce consonants like that in the middle of words. The term could not have been thought up by Spanish speakers. The logic of the word only exists if you're already fluent in English, which most of Puerto Rico isn't.
The x has nothing to do with Nahuatl, and if it does, then I can categorically rule out Puerto Rico. We had our own indigenous people, the taínos. They had words like cacique, bohío, huracán, hamaca. I can't think of any taíno word that we latinise with an x. Mexicans have chicano/xicano, which makes sense because of their Mesoamerican origins and influence. We don't. We're boricuas (another taíno word).
I'm not trying to undermine your experiences, or the experiences of those in your care. Like I said, the term wasn't meant in bad faith. But it is a term that is broadly unrepresentative, and most Latin people hate it.
One thing that confuses me is the point that Latin isn't usually used in that context. Firstly, I mean it is sometimes. Latin food, Latin music, Latin America, etc. Second, I agree. But then why is the solution to use a term that's used even less?
Like I said the origins are murky. Xicano used the X for Nahuatl but since no one knows who started Latinx, no one knows what the original intent was because maybe it was similar to Xicano but...
Like I said the origins are murky. Xicano used the X for Nahuatl but since no one knows who started Latinx, no one knows what the original intent was because maybe it was similar to Xicano but adopted by others or maybe it has feminist roots. Wiki's rundown is about as thorough as any I can find online.
But yes, I get that the Nahuatl doesn't track if it was originating in PR!
I don't think you're trying to undermine my experience or my students' or anyone's, just sharing yours. I am absolutely the well meaning white person here who's not really trying to defend NPR's well meaning whiteness, but I am trying to speak for the queer language aspect that gets ignored sometimes when discussing the broader Latino community's dislike for the phrase.
I don't see Latin used to describe people in English at least in the US, Latin American yes but not just Latin. Not sure if that's because of Rome or because Latino/a is more prevalent or what. See when it isn't queer language I don't know much! 😅
Oh, I'd fully believe it was invented by Puerto Ricans. But it would've been either Puerto Ricans living in the US, or in one of the major University campuses, probably the former. It's a word...
Oh, I'd fully believe it was invented by Puerto Ricans. But it would've been either Puerto Ricans living in the US, or in one of the major University campuses, probably the former. It's a word that can only be thought up by people who are codeswitching. Both possibilities (Nahuatl or English speaking feminist circles) should involve not being in the island. Nothing wrong with this, I just wanted to make my point that it's not as native as, say, pan sobao or vegigantes. I consider it an American word, not a Puerto Rican one. Which is fine, it's being used to describe Americans. But the status of Puerto Rico can confuse the origins of things.
I don't think I'd mind the term at all if someone picked it as their identity. People can take on whatever identities they want, I don't have to agree or understand it. I mind the term being applied on me. Latino, Hispanic and Latin are already compromises. for non-US Latin folk, no one's primary identity is any of these words. My primary identity is Puerto Rican, a Peruvian's primary identity is Peruvian. Now I'm being asked to compromise again, by foreigners, and this time the word's not even pronounceable? Blegh.
It's just what we're used to. Latino is just the Spanish word for Latin (when referring to the people, not the language). So if you read about the Social War in Spanish, you'll see that the latinos are fighting the romanos for further rights. And if you study the Fourth Crusade, you'll see the latinos again sacking Constantinopla. In English, both of these groups are referred to as the Latins. A proper English translation of "los latinos/las latinas" is "the Latins", just like "los romanos/las romanas" is "the Romans".
And you definitely have the adjective. When I talk about Latin music, do you think of Despactito or church choir? I don't see Latin American music or Latino music. The word is there, it's just not the one nbs went for.
Oh I know that Latin vs Latino is just translation, I just think most Americans (US) have adopted the Latino/a terminology and I'm it sure there's a reason other than increased exposure to Spanish...
Oh I know that Latin vs Latino is just translation, I just think most Americans (US) have adopted the Latino/a terminology and I'm it sure there's a reason other than increased exposure to Spanish and advocacy from folks self-identifying. I like how much more common it is to get bits of Spanish in my day to day (and unrelatedly Haitian Creole lately) even if I don't speak it.
I did grow up Catholic so Latin music can depend a bit on the context, (although I end up listening to World Cup playlists more than general Latin pop) but yes as an adjective vs noun it's clear the context 99% of the time ;-)
Yeah, you can see the progression for sure. Latin American becomes Latino, which seems closer to their endonym. Gender neutrality in English starts taking off, Latin English speakers are part of...
Yeah, you can see the progression for sure. Latin American becomes Latino, which seems closer to their endonym. Gender neutrality in English starts taking off, Latin English speakers are part of this culture and want to export it into their identity, but the language is hard coded into being gendered. Bam, latinx.
I grew up Catholic too, and I honestly don't remember much Latin growing up, even for choir! It was all in Spanish. I wonder if English speaking Catholics stuck to it longer. Given that Spanish comes from Latin, maybe we didn't see the point.
Vatican II killed a lot of the Latin for most parishes but you'd get more of it during Easter or Christmas. And more often for particular parts of the Mass. Some kept a full Latin Mass but not...
Vatican II killed a lot of the Latin for most parishes but you'd get more of it during Easter or Christmas. And more often for particular parts of the Mass. Some kept a full Latin Mass but not mine. I also didn't grow up taking Latin like some folks I met in college though so my knowledge of the language is 50% religion, 25% dinosaur names, 25% medical terminology.
My knowledge of Latin of confined entirely to Spanish words that didn't change very much. Like, imperium romanum to imperio romano, or sena to cena. But it can be hard to tell since Spanish has so...
My knowledge of Latin of confined entirely to Spanish words that didn't change very much. Like, imperium romanum to imperio romano, or sena to cena. But it can be hard to tell since Spanish has so much Arabic in it, plus increasing anglisisation in the Puerto Rican variant.
Rex means king! I'll never forget. I took French in school (and via Duolingo) so while there are absolutely cognates the vowel shifts are so much starker that I don't correlate them to Latin (or...
Rex means king! I'll never forget.
I took French in school (and via Duolingo) so while there are absolutely cognates the vowel shifts are so much starker that I don't correlate them to Latin (or Romance languages more broadly) much at all. It's easier to catch the French to English cognates for me since England and France did a lot of swapping later on.
Could you throw out some England to France examples? I could think of dozens of France to England, like chimney, but I’ve got nothing (that isn’t really modern) going the other way?
Could you throw out some England to France examples? I could think of dozens of France to England, like chimney, but I’ve got nothing (that isn’t really modern) going the other way?
That may be what the article claims but that's not factually correct: Per their style guide it says it "may be used in all contexts without explanation" which is more about "you can use it without...
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That may be what the article claims but that's not factually correct:
Per their style guide it says it "may be used in all contexts without explanation" which is more about "you can use it without having to add an explanatory comma" and from a search they don't seem to use it often at all
I obviously cannot listen to every minute of coverage across the country, but it seems to be that Latinx gets used when queer and non-binary Latinx people are in the mix of the conversation. Maybe not entirely. Maybe their standards need updating. But the claim is not correct.
So I cannot find a link to this, as it was awhile ago, but i'd swear I read that NPR was dialing back the Latinx use requirements a year or more ago? The style guide was last updated on Nov. 2,...
So I cannot find a link to this, as it was awhile ago, but i'd swear I read that NPR was dialing back the Latinx use requirements a year or more ago? The style guide was last updated on Nov. 2, 2023, so it could've been then, or it could've been earlier. I'm not sure I have time to dig through archive or other things to investigate, but I do have memories of reading about it, and had conversations with the NPR listeners I know who said it had felt overly forced and was probably the right move.
I doubt most people even know how to pronounce it properly. I certainly don't, as there is clearly a vowel missing somewhere. It's kind of a weird problem to solve. In English, adjectives like...
it's very clunky and English-centric to try and fix a foreign language by injecting the American pronunciation of X into the word.
I doubt most people even know how to pronounce it properly. I certainly don't, as there is clearly a vowel missing somewhere.
It's kind of a weird problem to solve. In English, adjectives like that are rarely if ever gendered. If we want to invent a new gender-neutral version of Latino/Latina to use in English, maybe it should be a bit more anglicized to make adoption easier?
It’s funny. I lost trust in NPR but not for the reasons mentioned. What I’ve noticed over the years has been a tilt toward corporate friendly coverage. There was an “interview” with Charles Koch...
It’s funny. I lost trust in NPR but not for the reasons mentioned. What I’ve noticed over the years has been a tilt toward corporate friendly coverage. There was an “interview” with Charles Koch by Kai Rissdal which felt like a gush fest with softball after softball. Granted this was during the “marketplace” show, but you could have been forgiven for thinking this was CNBC and not NPR. Along these times, Bernie Sanders was picking up steam in his presidential bid, and I noticed frequent attempts to dampen, distort or just ignore his successes. Something that may have been expected on right leaning outlets, but not supposedly granola eating tree hugging “NPR”. Over time, the socially conscientious coverage weakened and was replaced by cookie cutter stories covering “both sides” (especially maddening with Trump, climate change deniers, vaccine skeptics and other fringe groups). There were also too many “feel good / human interest” pieces that further diluted and cheapened the experience .
IIRC Charles Koch was a major doner to both NPR and PBS, so it kind of makes sense that they would give him softballs and make him look good. Not that it really excuses them for it. I stopped...
IIRC Charles Koch was a major doner to both NPR and PBS, so it kind of makes sense that they would give him softballs and make him look good. Not that it really excuses them for it.
I stopped listening to their news programs for largely the same reasons, but I think it's worth mentioning that NPR probably is still the least "corporate" news outlet outside of brokers like AP and Reuters. The change can be viewed as them getting with the times. Which, once again, does not make it a good thing.
These days the closest thing to news that I consume is commentary about news coverage - which ironically keeps me fairly well informed because it covers topics after the dust has had time to settle, the facts are well established, and there's considerably less opportunity to be blinded rage. I do occasionally read a news article as part of a social exchange, but I treat those with extreme skepticism.
I felt very similarly. I stopped listening to NPR regularly in 2016 when I thought it was weird how dismissively they talked about Bernie Sanders when I thought elements of his platform (universal...
I felt very similarly. I stopped listening to NPR regularly in 2016 when I thought it was weird how dismissively they talked about Bernie Sanders when I thought elements of his platform (universal healthcare) were interesting and were the kind of thing I expected to get more discussion on NPR. I remember also thinking they were a bit too both-sidesy on other issues that didn't warrant it.
And now this article is mostly just "Our mistakes were we focused too much on Mueller investigations and not enough on Hunter Biden's laptop, we were too mindful of gay and trans people, and said 'latinx' too often".
Okay, the article might be pointing toward something real in that NPR re-imagined itself firstly as a political organization and then was awkward and uncompelling at that. I'm just very skeptical of the article's implied solutions of hiring more republicans and making sure to give air time to whatever nonsense republican media is going on about. It's possible that NPR would benefit from re-evaluating how exactly it chooses to portray and endorse political positions (including being against discrimination, which I think is great to endorse), without trying to shift right or otherwise away from its politics.
I still listen to NPR, but I cancelled my contributions to them when I heard them give a rundown of the primary candidates and the candidate leading in the polls (at the time) wasn't even...
Along these times, Bernie Sanders was picking up steam in his presidential bid, and I noticed frequent attempts to dampen, distort or just ignore his successes.
I still listen to NPR, but I cancelled my contributions to them when I heard them give a rundown of the primary candidates and the candidate leading in the polls (at the time) wasn't even mentioned.
Whomever made decisions regarding their campaign coverage had an obvious preference for some candidates over others and that really bothered me.
These are my thoughts, as well. Lately I've been extremely disappointed by their willingness to toe the party line on the genocide happening in Gaza. They don't seem interested in challenging...
These are my thoughts, as well. Lately I've been extremely disappointed by their willingness to toe the party line on the genocide happening in Gaza. They don't seem interested in challenging folks with actual power.
NPR's top news executive defended its journalism and its commitment to reflecting a diverse array of views on Tuesday after a senior NPR editor wrote a broad critique of how the network has covered some of the most important stories of the age.
"An open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR, and now, predictably, we don't have an audience that reflects America," writes Uri Berliner.
A strategic emphasis on diversity and inclusion on the basis of race, ethnicity and sexual orientation, promoted by NPR's former CEO, John Lansing, has fed "the absence of viewpoint diversity," Berliner writes.
…
Berliner is a senior editor on NPR's Business Desk. (Disclosure: I, too, am part of the Business Desk, and Berliner has edited many of my past stories. He did not see any version of this article or participate in its preparation before it was posted publicly.)
Berliner's essay, titled "I've Been at NPR for 25 years. Here's How We Lost America's Trust," was published by The Free Press, a website that has welcomed journalists who have concluded that mainstream news outlets have become reflexively liberal.
Berliner writes that as a Subaru-driving, Sarah Lawrence College graduate who "was raised by a lesbian peace activist mother," he fits the mold of a loyal NPR fan.
Yet Berliner says NPR's news coverage has fallen short on some of the most controversial stories of recent years, from the question of whether former President Donald Trump colluded with Russia in the 2016 election, to the origins of the virus that causes COVID-19, to the significance and provenance of emails leaked from a laptop owned by Hunter Biden weeks before the 2020 election. In addition, he blasted NPR's coverage of the Israel-Hamas conflict.
…
Given Berliner's account of private conversations, several NPR journalists question whether they can now trust him with unguarded assessments about stories in real time. Others express frustration that he had not sought out comment in advance of publication. Berliner acknowledged to me that for this story, he did not seek NPR's approval to publish the piece, nor did he give the network advance notice.
Some of Berliner's NPR colleagues are responding heatedly. Fernando Alfonso, a senior supervising editor for digital news, wrote that he wholeheartedly rejected Berliner's critique of the coverage of the Israel-Hamas conflict, for which NPR's journalists, like their peers, periodically put themselves at risk.
It sounds like it boils down to "we've lost the public's trust because a huge portion of the public believes in conspiracy theories and right-wing nonsense and we aren't catering to them." It...
It sounds like it boils down to "we've lost the public's trust because a huge portion of the public believes in conspiracy theories and right-wing nonsense and we aren't catering to them." It doesn't seem like an NPR problem, it seems like a broader media landscape problem.
Yeah, I really don’t think that reflecting the worldview of a mob of insane fascists is something to aspire to. And Berliner is factually wrong about the specific areas where he says NPR has...
Yeah, I really don’t think that reflecting the worldview of a mob of insane fascists is something to aspire to. And Berliner is factually wrong about the specific areas where he says NPR has fallen short. Hunter Biden’s laptop, of all things!
Possibly, but, “it’s not us, it’s them” seems rather self-serving and close-minded, so I think we should be a little wary of it. I think he’s pointed out some stories where they should have done...
Possibly, but, “it’s not us, it’s them” seems rather self-serving and close-minded, so I think we should be a little wary of it. I think he’s pointed out some stories where they should have done better?
There are cases in which catering to conspiracy nutters is arguably what they should have done.
On Covid virus origins, for example, I recently posted about an extensive debate on that. I think it wasn’t a lab leak, but the evidence isn’t conclusive and there was much less evidence available in the early days of the pandemic. The origins of the pandemic should have been covered as an open question that there’s legitimate scientific debate about.
That’s a topic where there really are conspiracy nutters out there, but their existence doesn’t settle the debate. It’s not a shortcut to understanding what happened.
Instead, it’s a sign that there is (or was) widespread public interest about the controversy.
The widespread “fact checking” articles are also catering to a conspiracy-minded public, in their way.
The main reason the mainstream news sources rejected the lab leak theory was because it was clearly just a jingoistic attempt at racist yellow journalism. Ultimately, what difference did it make?...
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On Covid virus origins, for example, I recently posted about an extensive debate on that.
The main reason the mainstream news sources rejected the lab leak theory was because it was clearly just a jingoistic attempt at racist yellow journalism. Ultimately, what difference did it make? Whether a bat bit someone naturally or a scientists collected some bat blood and later the vial broke, what real difference does it matter?
Yes, it is possible that the virus accidentally found its way out of a lab. But that isn't really what the conspiracy theorists were getting at. They were trying to argue or insinuate that the virus was a bioweapon deliberately released onto the world by some nefarious Chinese plot. It was no different than a thousand other racist conspiracy theories that have accompanied disease outbreaks over the centuries. Consider all the pogroms that Jews found themselves victims of, accused of spreading disease or poisoning wells. Virulent racism and disease outbreaks have always gone together.
This is the context the lab leak theory needs to be considered in. The mainstream media rightfully brushed it aside, because they were rightfully on guard for the kind of racist conspiracy theories that always accompany disease outbreaks. And ultimately, it would make zero difference. Whether the disease leaked from some blood of a bat someone ate or from a vial of bat blood kept in a lab, the difference is irrelevant. On one, a scientist screwed up. In another, a butcher screwed up. The conspiracy theory is only of any relevance if you insist on taking it all the way to the insane bioweapon direction. The media rightfully shut it down because we didn't need to be arguing racist conspiracy theories when we were trying to contain a global outbreak.
Discussing the relevance of it would have validated the coverage of it, even if it has no relevance in the event it was a lab leak. Otherwise it just looks like you're covering it up by not...
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Discussing the relevance of it would have validated the coverage of it, even if it has no relevance in the event it was a lab leak. Otherwise it just looks like you're covering it up by not discussing it. It might fall on deaf ears if someone sees a thorough and detailed write-up that concludes the difference is minimal between it being a lab leak or some more natural spread, but at least you did your due diligence in attempting to inform and educate, rather than looking down on the public and deciding that instead of attempting to inform them because they might take it the wrong way, you selectively ignore it and ultimately they're going to take that the wrong way anyhow, yet in this case you leave more grey area for people to make assumptions about your motivations.
Also there is arguably a difference between a lab leak and a more natural spread, which is not isolated to China or any country but rather puts processes under more scrutiny when doing things that might introduce more risk to humanity. Granted the good that comes from research should outweigh the risk in the event that there is an accident. It also highlights that on a global scale there's no border insulation from diseases or illnesses like this, meaning there's got to be a global responsibility to policy surrounding human-caused accidents. China should have as much interest in the US or other countries managing their disease research properly as the US or other countries should of China because in this case, we're all in it together. If someone fucks up, we all pay the price.
Assuming everyone who has any wonderment or consideration of the origins of a global pandemic is racist or that their questioning of it is based in racism is mind-boggling to me. I think it's natural for people to question it, and if the only people willing to have a conversation about it are the conspiracy nuts because all the mainstream media shirked their duties and "rightfully brushed it aside", then what you have left is a vacuum of information filled by people who are less reputable and aren't going to go the extra mile to explain the relevance or difference of a lab leak and a more natural cause. That fuels conspiracies far more than responsible journalism would.
I agree that it was a debate of little practical use to most people. For most purposes, it didn't matter where the virus came from, since we had to deal with it anyway. (I've made that argument...
I agree that it was a debate of little practical use to most people. For most purposes, it didn't matter where the virus came from, since we had to deal with it anyway. (I've made that argument myself when it came up here.) And if anyone wants to tune out for any given story, I think that's fine. I didn't follow the lab leak debate all that closely either.
However, reporting on investigations into how the pandemic started is not "yellow journalism." Whenever there's a major accident, there's legitimate public interest in knowing how it happened, so that we can have a better idea of what to do to keep it from happening again. Most of us play no direct role in that, just like we play no direct role in improving airline safety after a crash. But that's true of many specialized topics that are still legitimate news. And there's no doubt that this was a newsworthy topic - the pandemic was one of the biggest stories of the decade.
Being incurious or afraid to report on things because you think they might have unwelcome political implications is the sort of thing that journalism critics say has gone wrong in many newsrooms. The attitude you're taking, that journalists shouldn't report on something because the public is curious for bad reasons, is also part of the problem.
It's fine to be skeptical of some people's motives. I am too, as there was plenty of evidence of that. There are racists out there! But that's the sort of context that journalists should ignore. Opposing discrimination against minorities is a fine motive for a lot of political action, but not for suppressing reporting on legitimate news stories. It's like saying that we shouldn't investigate 737 crashes because it's bad for Boeing and will upset people unnecessarily.
There are both good and bad reasons why people would want to follow the debate, and the bad reasons should play no role in the decision about whether something is newsworthy. Journalists are supposed to be curious about what's going on! You do need to trust the public a little. Trust that, even though your reporting will inevitably be misused, reporting the truth will do more good than harm.
Of course it was also very difficult to investigate, because Chinese governments weren't cooperating and were actively suppressing evidence. That's part of the story too. Government suppression comes from the same bad instinct, that there are things the public shouldn't know, since it was embarrassing and would create unrest.
Reporting the truth in this case was not going to be making a call on covid virus origins. That's for scientists to debate. The job of journalists was to report on the scientific debate, for the benefit of curious members of the public who wanted to know how the investigations were going.
Edit: I made a pretty standard defense of traditional journalistic values, but I'll admit that it's putting things in rather binary terms. It's not like the covid origin debate wasn't covered at all! There are more subtle issues about how a story gets covered, what sort of headlines are used, and so on, and I haven't investigated how well NPR did on that.
In this specific case, NPR does indeed have reporting in regard to the debate over COVID-19’s origins. Nowhere does the author point to this in his essay. Indeed, he points to the contrary,...
In this specific case, NPR does indeed have reporting in regard to the debate over COVID-19’s origins. Nowhere does the author point to this in his essay. Indeed, he points to the contrary, saying:
Instead, we introduced our coverage of that development on February 28, 2023, by asserting confidently that “the scientific evidence overwhelmingly points to a natural origin for the virus.”
Note, the date he cites is the date of the article that I’ve linked. Given that example, I find it hard to believe that he is arguing in good faith.
Especially in the throws of 2020, the internet was awash with COVID misinformation. Much of it was politically-driven, aimed at discrediting health officials in the US. Research and study now may be handled and reported differently than it was then, and it should be.
Yeah, that story seems pretty good. I'm not going to get into whether NPR's coverage was good enough or not before that. (I just added an edit to my post.) I find it hard to believe that he's not...
Yeah, that story seems pretty good. I'm not going to get into whether NPR's coverage was good enough or not before that. (I just added an edit to my post.)
I find it hard to believe that he's not arguing in good faith. He sounds sincerely frustrated.
He does, but for example he talks about viewpoint diversity. During the time he's been there NPR has become much more diverse, which inherently brings along viewpoint diversity. It's just not the...
He does, but for example he talks about viewpoint diversity. During the time he's been there NPR has become much more diverse, which inherently brings along viewpoint diversity. It's just not the type he's looking for. And I think he's ignoring that to some extent in favor of his particular point. And he's done a thing that, in this economy, most minoritized people wouldn't feel safe doing: writing a scathing public takedown of his employer. I don't think he's in bad faith per se, but I think his viewpoint is quite narrow and that may be causing him to err in his statements to prove said point.
As I understand it, "viewpoint diversity" means something different than traditional diversity measures (race, gender, and so on). He specifically wrote about NPR having no Republicans, and what...
As I understand it, "viewpoint diversity" means something different than traditional diversity measures (race, gender, and so on). He specifically wrote about NPR having no Republicans, and what happened when he brought it up:
In a follow-up email exchange, a top NPR news executive told me that she had been “skewered” for bringing up diversity of thought when she arrived at NPR. So, she said, “I want to be careful how we discuss this publicly.”
So I think he has a more expansive view of diversity, rather than a narrower one? He's not saying that the other kinds of diversity are bad.
It's true, not that many people speak out, but I think it does happen rather a lot in newsrooms.
If his only perspective of "viewpoint diversity" is one of two politic categories he's factually misunderstanding or misusing the term. The whole point of viewpoint diversity is that people have...
If his only perspective of "viewpoint diversity" is one of two politic categories he's factually misunderstanding or misusing the term. The whole point of viewpoint diversity is that people have different POV due to the broad categories of diversity, not your registered political party.
Bringing in more diverse reporters and anchors and editors is in fact bringing in more viewpoint diversity. Even if they both vote for Biden in the fall.
I don't see it as saying that it's only thing he cares about? It seems like you're deliberately misunderstanding the argument: when people all have similar political beliefs, there's a dimension...
I don't see it as saying that it's only thing he cares about? It seems like you're deliberately misunderstanding the argument: when people all have similar political beliefs, there's a dimension where they're not as diverse as they look, even if they are different in a lot of other ways.
It's similar to if you had people of many races, genders, and sexual orientations, but they're all rich. Could you see why that might be a problem?
I don't believe I am deliberately misunderstanding. I'm disagreeing with his interpretation and with his conclusions. In the past 20 years, I believe that viewpoint diversity has grown at NPR from...
I don't believe I am deliberately misunderstanding. I'm disagreeing with his interpretation and with his conclusions.
In the past 20 years, I believe that viewpoint diversity has grown at NPR from the huge increase in the voices of POC. He feels a particular angle is lacking, and I'm not saying that isn't his genuine belief. I suspect the Trump takeover of the Republican party and his demonization of anything left of OAN has more to do with whether Republicans are interested in working at NPR and that the lack of trust from the public is partially from that, but maybe I'm wrong. I suspect that left wing folks are frustrated with NPR's both sidesing of some issues too leading to that 3 out of 10 but still being higher than CNN.
He doesn't like the DEI efforts of his organization, which is a valid opinion, and in the process ignores that all of those efforts are about trying to establish viewpoint diversity on a dozen axes. He only speaks about one axis. And frames every other axis as buying into the idea that systemic oppression exists but not contributing to the diversity NPR deeply lacked decades ago.
I think he's genuine and I think he's wrong. Both on many of his facts, as portrayed in discussions here and elsewhere and in his conclusions. I don't think I misunderstand him in either of those areas.
If you think that everyone being the same political party is completely fine, no cause for concern that there might be a problem, then it seems like a blind spot to me, but I guess we'll just have...
If you think that everyone being the same political party is completely fine, no cause for concern that there might be a problem, then it seems like a blind spot to me, but I guess we'll just have to disagree.
I think Fae is differentiating between viewpoint diversity and political diversity, and I suspect many folks who talk about the former really are interested in the latter instead.
I think Fae is differentiating between viewpoint diversity and political diversity, and I suspect many folks who talk about the former really are interested in the latter instead.
It seems like political diversity is a subset of viewpoint diversity. It's an easy thing to ask about, but other questions you might ask to get at it are if there's anyone has served in the...
It seems like political diversity is a subset of viewpoint diversity. It's an easy thing to ask about, but other questions you might ask to get at it are if there's anyone has served in the military or if there is anyone who never went to college.
As I understand it, reporting used to be a pretty low-paid job where they used to hire people right off the street and train them on the job, and now it's a pretty low-paid job where most people have college degrees, so in that sense viewpoint diversity went down. (Or at least, I remember reading an article about that once; I'm not actually all that knowledgable about newsrooms.)
But being interested in political diversity isn't wrong, and it doesn't mean you don't have other concerns too.
Yeah he clearly means diversity political affiliation between the two parties, not even actual political diversity which is more than a binary setting. But what he says, as the senior editor for a...
Yeah he clearly means diversity political affiliation between the two parties, not even actual political diversity which is more than a binary setting. But what he says, as the senior editor for a news org, is "viewpoint diversity" and either he doesn't understand the definition of that phrase or is willfully ignoring the breadth of the term to focus on one singular axis that he's falsely coding in the binary and ignoring external factors.
I'm willing to bet that everyone at NPR's political beliefs aren't the same even if no one (in the room he was in at the time) admitted to being a registered Republican. Add in that historically many journalists wouldn't register a political affiliation or publicly go on record as such (depending on the public records of their state) and the most generous read is that he has a genuine concern and some major blindspots along with some real faulty memory on a few of the topics mentioned.
Less generously, he doesn't seem to buy into systemic oppression until he perceives Republicans and their viewpoints as being repressed. And this is a setup where if nothing happens in response he keeps his high level administration job, and if he gets disciplined or fired he's a martyr who gets job offers immediately and becomes the guy pointed to to defund NPR. I work for the government and am thus essentially legally immune from retaliation for speech and I wouldn't have published something so public and scathing about my job. Oof the privilege.
It seems like this actually is all about internal politics. In recent years, it seems that the internal politics of many organizations has heated up quite a lot, news organizations definitely...
It seems like this actually is all about internal politics. In recent years, it seems that the internal politics of many organizations has heated up quite a lot, news organizations definitely included. Going public is an escalation, apparently due to frustration.
For some context, George Floyd's death created a schism in American journalism that led to multiple high-profile resignations. Top editors at the LA Times, New York Times, Philadelphia Enquirer,...
Exemplary
For some context, George Floyd's death created a schism in American journalism that led to multiple high-profile resignations. Top editors at the LA Times, New York Times, Philadelphia Enquirer, and even Bon Appetit faced staff mutinies over their coverage.
At the LA Times, for instance, one Black journalist was quoted as saying the paper's focus on looting pandered to their primarily White audience and alienated the audience they were trying to attract. Her boss eventually lost his job.
As we talk about what should and should not be reported on, I think the questions that Berliner raises are important ones. Do we ignore possibly inconvenient facts that don't fit our staff's or our ideal audience's preferred narrative? If so, how far can we stretch that before we're writing propaganda? Or are all facts equally important, and if so, how do we decide which facts to emphasize? Something has to lead, after all.
In any case, I personally think it's a good thing when media takes time to reflect and become critical of itself.
The notion of all facts being equally important is absurd on its face. One of the critical parts of good journalism is deciding how important what is and how to cover a thing. That's basically...
The notion of all facts being equally important is absurd on its face. One of the critical parts of good journalism is deciding how important what is and how to cover a thing. That's basically what the entire profession is.
Surely you don't suggest that the size of shirt a murderer wears is as important as their motive, or that the color of a boat that crashes into a bridge is as important as what it was containing....
Surely you don't suggest that the size of shirt a murderer wears is as important as their motive, or that the color of a boat that crashes into a bridge is as important as what it was containing.
The fact that it's difficult but important to decide what's important and how it's presented is why it's so important to have a lot of eyes on things. Different perspectives are critical.
Why not treat all facts as equally important and use the sortition of the RNG to choose the day's top stories? The significant stories will cause knock-on stories for days and days on end....
Why not treat all facts as equally important and use the sortition of the RNG to choose the day's top stories? The significant stories will cause knock-on stories for days and days on end. Eventually, one of their numbers will surface at the top. A flash-in-the-pan, non-news story, even if it gets lucky with the PowerBall, will disappear as quickly as it arose due to a lack of follow-up. It happened, the end.
Alright, this thread has had like 5 different antagonistic arguments going on, and they don't seem to be stopping. I'm tired of needing to check back in on it constantly.
Alright, this thread has had like 5 different antagonistic arguments going on, and they don't seem to be stopping. I'm tired of needing to check back in on it constantly.
I have my issues with the article, especially Berliner’s characterization of the Trump-Russia scandal. However, I do think that NPR has swung to the left a bit in recent years. What he...
I have my issues with the article, especially Berliner’s characterization of the Trump-Russia scandal. However, I do think that NPR has swung to the left a bit in recent years. What he (annoyingly) doesn’t talk about is the reliance on donations/sponsorships for revenue (versus government funding) and how that leads to a feedback loop in terms of content (similar to the New York Times with subscriptions versus advertising).
I also find that their radio news isn’t as broad as I’d want. I learn more about what’s happening today in the five minute snippets at the top of the hour versus the remaining 55 minutes of the program.
I feel like there's a parallel Canadian perspective to offer here about the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation - something that I hope sticks to its own sub thread if people want to talk about it....
I feel like there's a parallel Canadian perspective to offer here about the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation - something that I hope sticks to its own sub thread if people want to talk about it.
I'm close to 40 and in the last five years, have spent a good deal of time reading CBC journalism and listening to CBC radio. While local news has certainly kept both topics and politics relatively neutral -- likely because it's beat reporting over analysis -- the national content has definitely leaned into the space that NPR is being criticized for.
Editorialization and opinion are nothing new and were practiced along the political spectrum even when journalism outlets had ad dollars to spend, but where a (1/2) publicly funded outlet like the CBC falls short is when it fails to make a point -- any point. Like another user said when referring to NPR being for well intentioned suburban voters, the CBC's positions dance around the subtext of an issue, and like many mealymouthed politicians, play the game of public relations rather than information.
They're terrified of being bold. They're terrified of how Joe Lunchbox from Alberta will interpret their left of centre convictions and equally terrified of being burned by lefty for empathizing with the Ottawa convoy protestor.
I still love the CBC and completely empathize with the position that journalism finds itself in today, and frankly, don't see a way out of this quagmire that keeps both the institution's funding steady and integrity intact.
As another contrast, local to Ontario, our publicly funded TVO news coverage has not shied away from being very critical of whomever is in control of government.
Berliner's article really resonates with me. I'm not a Republican but I am a libertarian and I see the ideological lines being drawn in the sand via the media as totally destructive to our...
Berliner's article really resonates with me. I'm not a Republican but I am a libertarian and I see the ideological lines being drawn in the sand via the media as totally destructive to our nation's cohesion.
The 3 stories brought up really do a great job of highlighting how an organization that receives public funds to report the news has become an advocacy wing of a certain political perspective.
I grew up listening to NPR in the 90's and I have listened to it off and on until around the time of the pandemic. I usually found that reporting to be accurate and interesting. I started working nights in 2015. I quit that job in 21 in part due to it's effects on my health. It was like waking up from a dream and finding myself in an alternate reality. What a strange and hostile place my country has become for people who think differently than the zeitgeist.
I'm anti war and anti US imperialism. I'm pro 2nd amendment and recognize the natural right to self defense. I believe in small government and controlling the budget. Running deficits simply...
Exemplary
I'm anti war and anti US imperialism.
I'm pro 2nd amendment and recognize the natural right to self defense.
I believe in small government and controlling the budget. Running deficits simply borrows from future generations and it's morally wrong.
I could go on but I think those are pretty controversial topics that belong in the Zeitgeist. I'm not an offensive person or a racist. I've been a professional and I returned to school in '21 to try and better myself. In the fall I will start my first semester of graduate school in computer science. In other words, I'm a perfectly normal person who doesn't wish harm on anyone and who understands what it means to live amongst people who disagree with me 24/7.
My world view is shaped by my beliefs about the morality of the use of force. They are logical outgrowths of my guiding principle in a similar way to the way in which people at NPR talk about their North Star.
In my book that doesn't make me a bad person. It doesn't make me stupid or ignorant or any of the other pejoratives that are knee jerk thrown at me by individuals expecting a Republican to smear.
To the tildes communities great credit I have seen almost none of that here. I debated not even responding to this because I don't really want to fight about it. I just wanted to express my feelings on the issue. Hopefully, you can respect that.
[…] Concerned by the lack of viewpoint diversity, I looked at voter registration for our newsroom. In D.C., where NPR is headquartered and many of us live, I found 87 registered Democrats working in editorial positions and zero Republicans. None.
So on May 3, 2021, I presented the findings at an all-hands editorial staff meeting. When I suggested we had a diversity problem with a score of 87 Democrats and zero Republicans, the response wasn’t hostile. It was worse. It was met with profound indifference. I got a few messages from surprised, curious colleagues. But the messages were of the “oh wow, that’s weird” variety, as if the lopsided tally was a random anomaly rather than a critical failure of our diversity North Star.
In a follow-up email exchange, a top NPR news executive told me that she had been “skewered” for bringing up diversity of thought when she arrived at NPR. So, she said, “I want to be careful how we discuss this publicly.”
For years, I have been persistent. When I believe our coverage has gone off the rails, I have written regular emails to top news leaders, sometimes even having one-on-one sessions with them. On March 10, 2022, I wrote to a top news executive about the numerous times we described the controversial education bill in Florida as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill when it didn’t even use the word gay. I pushed to set the record straight, and wrote another time to ask why we keep using that word that many Hispanics hate—Latinx. On March 31, 2022, I was invited to a managers’ meeting to present my observations.
Throughout these exchanges, no one has ever trashed me. That’s not the NPR way. People are polite. But nothing changes. So I’ve become a visible wrong-thinker at a place I love. It’s uncomfortable, sometimes heartbreaking.
…
In February, our audience insights team sent an email proudly announcing that we had a higher trustworthy score than CNN or The New York Times. But the research from Harris Poll is hardly reassuring. It found that “3-in-10 audience members familiar with NPR said they associate NPR with the characteristic ‘trustworthy.’ ” Only in a world where media credibility has completely imploded would a 3-in-10 trustworthy score be something to boast about.
With declining ratings, sorry levels of trust, and an audience that has become less diverse over time, the trajectory for NPR is not promising. Two paths seem clear. We can keep doing what we’re doing, hoping it will all work out. Or we could start over, with the basic building blocks of journalism. We could face up to where we’ve gone wrong. News organizations don’t go in for that kind of reckoning. But there’s a good reason for NPR to be the first: we’re the ones with the word public in our name.
Actually, no, you don't have "public" in the name anymore, that was intentionally removed from their marketing. It's been years since anyone at the network has called it "National Public Radio"....
But there’s a good reason for NPR to be the first: we’re the ones with the word public in our name.
Actually, no, you don't have "public" in the name anymore, that was intentionally removed from their marketing. It's been years since anyone at the network has called it "National Public Radio". It's just "NPR" now.
And while I see the author's points (without fully agreeing with them) my main issue with NPR lately is that there are so many stories about sports, teams, and leagues. A lifelong "commute-listener" I've been turning it off far more frequently lately due to an extreme disinterest in Sportsball.
Maybe for marketing, but it's still named National Public Radio.
Actually, no, you don't have "public" in the name anymore, that was intentionally removed from their marketing. It's been years since anyone at the network has called it "National Public Radio". It's just "NPR" now.
Maybe for marketing, but it's still named National Public Radio.
Oh! That’s wonderful! Ha! I’ll have to show that to my partner when I get home from work. No one in my locale really knows what my company does, so it’s a joke that I’m secretly a robot. They’ll...
Oh! That’s wonderful! Ha! I’ll have to show that to my partner when I get home from work. No one in my locale really knows what my company does, so it’s a joke that I’m secretly a robot. They’ll get a kick out of this comment.
Going back and looking at my comment, I can absolutely see where you’re coming from on that. I wonder if that means I’ve spent too much time on StackExchange.
Maybe in their tax filings or business documents, but what the public sees on the website and hears on the radio will never be "National Public Radio" anymore. That name is effectively gone.
Maybe in their tax filings or business documents, but what the public sees on the website and hears on the radio will never be "National Public Radio" anymore. That name is effectively gone.
As someone about to get a commute again, but who has listened to NPR for a long time, my only real complaint along those lines is how repetitive it gets over a long trip, even crossing the...
As someone about to get a commute again, but who has listened to NPR for a long time, my only real complaint along those lines is how repetitive it gets over a long trip, even crossing the country. I get why, but I'm spoiled by having a good local station with local reporting and news shows on a variety of topics aired daily. Not a lot of sports unless that's the topic of an interview or something.
I do listen to a lot of NPR or other public radio podcasts though too.
I want them to ask tougher questions of elected officials but even so I think I hear them ask those questions more often than other news. And I don't have or watch cable so they're my primary "live" news source.
I wouldn't say NPR has lost my trust. I kind of think of NPR has suburban middle class nice type energy. Like, an old lady who doesn't want to be racist, and does so by just kind of going along with what she thinks the kids are talking about.
For example, I rarely if ever hear people say "Latinx" except on NPR. There was a short period several years back where I think this was sorta in vogue, but people quickly abandoned it because it's very clunky and English-centric to try and fix a foreign language by injecting the American pronunciation of X into the word. But NPR seemed to have jumped on board and just stuck with it.
That doesn't really make me not trust NPR to give me information, it just is kinda cringe. I sometimes think NPR is trying too hard to seem woke as a result. But it's really a case by case basis, sometimes the segments are much more neutral and just summarizes the facts of stuff that's been going on recently. Sometimes they do investigative reports on stuff that doesn't immediately fall into obvious left/right wing dynamics. In those cases the reporting usually seems informative and well produced.
Just highlighting that Latinx (and increasingly Latine) is still used among queer people. I'm not surprised it doesn't land with the broader community but X was being used intentionally the same way womxn is used.
I don't know NPRs editorial policy on which language they use when so I won't claim it doesn't need updated on that, but I train on queer language and the backlash to queer terms is pretty consistent (why do we need so many labels, why do I have to change what I say, etc.)
To be clear, the term doesn't make sense if you're an English speaker (you can just say Latin, Latin American, Hispanic) or if you're a Spanish speaker (consonants can't be pronounced that way); the term is only useful if you're an English speaker that is Latin enough to want to use a Spanish word as part of your identity, but don't know enough Spanish to need to use basic articles like los and las, or common words like esos y estas. That community is a tiny fraction of the wider Latin community, and usually skews middle class, young and white.
It's not enough to switch my vote or anything because holy shit Trump is standing behind me with a knife, but I know it pisses my family off whenever they hear the term. Particularly Puerto Ricans have a bone when you anglicise our words, and now our identity is being anglisised, it feels like? Fuck, we almost went to war trying to get the US to stop referring to us officially as Porto Rico, because that wasn't our name. Our governor at to directly appeal to Congress in person to cut that shit out.
It's not meant that way by the LBGT+ community, but perhaps NPR should've talked to 10 random Latin Americans before changing the word for an identity of people. Yes, there's always backlash against new identity terms. But usually whole ethnic labels aren't being changed, is my understanding.
Most English speakers say Latino or Latina in my experience, I don't see Latin used very often and Hispanic gets used in slightly different contexts in my experience (universities track Hispanic in a particular way for example.)
There's no clear origin of the term, but it was definitely used in Puerto Rico and like Xicano (and Xicanx) the X is an intentional replacement, though because of a lack of clear origin whether it's a Nahuatl reference or a queer theory/feminism reference ala womxn isn't clear.
I agree that most of the use has been in the US, though online spaces are harder to localize, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the users aren't fluent/native Spanish speakers. The Feministas Unidas was one of the frequent 'origin' possibilities for the term, and LULAC just stopped using it in the past few years. I think it's fair to say it's not popular outside queer communities and that the shift to using it as a population label was premature, but it wasn't just NPR making that attempt*.
It's something I bring up when I see it because too often people erase the actual Latinx youth that use the term. I do see a slow pivot to using Latine - here's one example - and I'm all on board with whatever labels want to use.
In short, it makes full sense why the shift away from Latinx is happening and why the term frustrates some folks. I just try to speak up for my queer college kids when I can since that label is valid for them.
*It's not clear what NPR was doing when, I can only see their current style guide and things like AltLatino have been around more than a decade. In the past year they've used Latinx mostly for music when non-binary/queer artists have been involved (this is all depending on google so YMMV).
It was used by Puerto Ricans, but I struggle to think that it was used in Puerto Rico, because again, the word isn't pronounceable. I can see it though, in an University campus, probably Rio Piedras (my alma mater). But mate, people using English as a primary conversation language in Puerto Rico is a fraction of a fraction. And I should know, I was one of them. I'd talk about DBZ and Pokemon in English because English was cool. The word Latinx (with the x being pronounced as ecks) didn't exist, because Latin people don't pronounce x as ecks, they pronounce is as eh-khees. And also you don't pronounce consonants like that in the middle of words. The term could not have been thought up by Spanish speakers. The logic of the word only exists if you're already fluent in English, which most of Puerto Rico isn't.
The x has nothing to do with Nahuatl, and if it does, then I can categorically rule out Puerto Rico. We had our own indigenous people, the taínos. They had words like cacique, bohío, huracán, hamaca. I can't think of any taíno word that we latinise with an x. Mexicans have chicano/xicano, which makes sense because of their Mesoamerican origins and influence. We don't. We're boricuas (another taíno word).
I'm not trying to undermine your experiences, or the experiences of those in your care. Like I said, the term wasn't meant in bad faith. But it is a term that is broadly unrepresentative, and most Latin people hate it.
One thing that confuses me is the point that Latin isn't usually used in that context. Firstly, I mean it is sometimes. Latin food, Latin music, Latin America, etc. Second, I agree. But then why is the solution to use a term that's used even less?
Like I said the origins are murky. Xicano used the X for Nahuatl but since no one knows who started Latinx, no one knows what the original intent was because maybe it was similar to Xicano but adopted by others or maybe it has feminist roots. Wiki's rundown is about as thorough as any I can find online.
But yes, I get that the Nahuatl doesn't track if it was originating in PR!
I don't think you're trying to undermine my experience or my students' or anyone's, just sharing yours. I am absolutely the well meaning white person here who's not really trying to defend NPR's well meaning whiteness, but I am trying to speak for the queer language aspect that gets ignored sometimes when discussing the broader Latino community's dislike for the phrase.
I don't see Latin used to describe people in English at least in the US, Latin American yes but not just Latin. Not sure if that's because of Rome or because Latino/a is more prevalent or what. See when it isn't queer language I don't know much! 😅
Oh, I'd fully believe it was invented by Puerto Ricans. But it would've been either Puerto Ricans living in the US, or in one of the major University campuses, probably the former. It's a word that can only be thought up by people who are codeswitching. Both possibilities (Nahuatl or English speaking feminist circles) should involve not being in the island. Nothing wrong with this, I just wanted to make my point that it's not as native as, say, pan sobao or vegigantes. I consider it an American word, not a Puerto Rican one. Which is fine, it's being used to describe Americans. But the status of Puerto Rico can confuse the origins of things.
I don't think I'd mind the term at all if someone picked it as their identity. People can take on whatever identities they want, I don't have to agree or understand it. I mind the term being applied on me. Latino, Hispanic and Latin are already compromises. for non-US Latin folk, no one's primary identity is any of these words. My primary identity is Puerto Rican, a Peruvian's primary identity is Peruvian. Now I'm being asked to compromise again, by foreigners, and this time the word's not even pronounceable? Blegh.
It's just what we're used to. Latino is just the Spanish word for Latin (when referring to the people, not the language). So if you read about the Social War in Spanish, you'll see that the latinos are fighting the romanos for further rights. And if you study the Fourth Crusade, you'll see the latinos again sacking Constantinopla. In English, both of these groups are referred to as the Latins. A proper English translation of "los latinos/las latinas" is "the Latins", just like "los romanos/las romanas" is "the Romans".
And you definitely have the adjective. When I talk about Latin music, do you think of Despactito or church choir? I don't see Latin American music or Latino music. The word is there, it's just not the one nbs went for.
Oh I know that Latin vs Latino is just translation, I just think most Americans (US) have adopted the Latino/a terminology and I'm it sure there's a reason other than increased exposure to Spanish and advocacy from folks self-identifying. I like how much more common it is to get bits of Spanish in my day to day (and unrelatedly Haitian Creole lately) even if I don't speak it.
I did grow up Catholic so Latin music can depend a bit on the context, (although I end up listening to World Cup playlists more than general Latin pop) but yes as an adjective vs noun it's clear the context 99% of the time ;-)
Yeah, you can see the progression for sure. Latin American becomes Latino, which seems closer to their endonym. Gender neutrality in English starts taking off, Latin English speakers are part of this culture and want to export it into their identity, but the language is hard coded into being gendered. Bam, latinx.
I grew up Catholic too, and I honestly don't remember much Latin growing up, even for choir! It was all in Spanish. I wonder if English speaking Catholics stuck to it longer. Given that Spanish comes from Latin, maybe we didn't see the point.
Vatican II killed a lot of the Latin for most parishes but you'd get more of it during Easter or Christmas. And more often for particular parts of the Mass. Some kept a full Latin Mass but not mine. I also didn't grow up taking Latin like some folks I met in college though so my knowledge of the language is 50% religion, 25% dinosaur names, 25% medical terminology.
My knowledge of Latin of confined entirely to Spanish words that didn't change very much. Like, imperium romanum to imperio romano, or sena to cena. But it can be hard to tell since Spanish has so much Arabic in it, plus increasing anglisisation in the Puerto Rican variant.
I wish I liked dinosaurs more growing up!
Rex means king! I'll never forget.
I took French in school (and via Duolingo) so while there are absolutely cognates the vowel shifts are so much starker that I don't correlate them to Latin (or Romance languages more broadly) much at all. It's easier to catch the French to English cognates for me since England and France did a lot of swapping later on.
Could you throw out some England to France examples? I could think of dozens of France to England, like chimney, but I’ve got nothing (that isn’t really modern) going the other way?
I was imprecise in my language and meant Old English absorbing French words! (Well Old French I guess). My apologies.
Un sandwich notwithstanding 😅
That may be what the article claims but that's not factually correct:
Per their style guide it says it "may be used in all contexts without explanation" which is more about "you can use it without having to add an explanatory comma" and from a search they don't seem to use it often at all
NPR has Alt.Latino, LatinoUSA
They publish articles about Latinos all the time:
"Latino Democrats"....
..."courting Latino voters"...
Latina
Latina
I obviously cannot listen to every minute of coverage across the country, but it seems to be that Latinx gets used when queer and non-binary Latinx people are in the mix of the conversation. Maybe not entirely. Maybe their standards need updating. But the claim is not correct.
So I cannot find a link to this, as it was awhile ago, but i'd swear I read that NPR was dialing back the Latinx use requirements a year or more ago? The style guide was last updated on Nov. 2, 2023, so it could've been then, or it could've been earlier. I'm not sure I have time to dig through archive or other things to investigate, but I do have memories of reading about it, and had conversations with the NPR listeners I know who said it had felt overly forced and was probably the right move.
That's entirely possible! I did not go back further but I also don't want to assume that any change was that change without evidence either.
I doubt most people even know how to pronounce it properly. I certainly don't, as there is clearly a vowel missing somewhere.
It's kind of a weird problem to solve. In English, adjectives like that are rarely if ever gendered. If we want to invent a new gender-neutral version of Latino/Latina to use in English, maybe it should be a bit more anglicized to make adoption easier?
It’s funny. I lost trust in NPR but not for the reasons mentioned. What I’ve noticed over the years has been a tilt toward corporate friendly coverage. There was an “interview” with Charles Koch by Kai Rissdal which felt like a gush fest with softball after softball. Granted this was during the “marketplace” show, but you could have been forgiven for thinking this was CNBC and not NPR. Along these times, Bernie Sanders was picking up steam in his presidential bid, and I noticed frequent attempts to dampen, distort or just ignore his successes. Something that may have been expected on right leaning outlets, but not supposedly granola eating tree hugging “NPR”. Over time, the socially conscientious coverage weakened and was replaced by cookie cutter stories covering “both sides” (especially maddening with Trump, climate change deniers, vaccine skeptics and other fringe groups). There were also too many “feel good / human interest” pieces that further diluted and cheapened the experience .
Edit: formatting
IIRC Charles Koch was a major doner to both NPR and PBS, so it kind of makes sense that they would give him softballs and make him look good. Not that it really excuses them for it.
I stopped listening to their news programs for largely the same reasons, but I think it's worth mentioning that NPR probably is still the least "corporate" news outlet outside of brokers like AP and Reuters. The change can be viewed as them getting with the times. Which, once again, does not make it a good thing.
These days the closest thing to news that I consume is commentary about news coverage - which ironically keeps me fairly well informed because it covers topics after the dust has had time to settle, the facts are well established, and there's considerably less opportunity to be blinded rage. I do occasionally read a news article as part of a social exchange, but I treat those with extreme skepticism.
I felt very similarly. I stopped listening to NPR regularly in 2016 when I thought it was weird how dismissively they talked about Bernie Sanders when I thought elements of his platform (universal healthcare) were interesting and were the kind of thing I expected to get more discussion on NPR. I remember also thinking they were a bit too both-sidesy on other issues that didn't warrant it.
And now this article is mostly just "Our mistakes were we focused too much on Mueller investigations and not enough on Hunter Biden's laptop, we were too mindful of gay and trans people, and said 'latinx' too often".
Okay, the article might be pointing toward something real in that NPR re-imagined itself firstly as a political organization and then was awkward and uncompelling at that. I'm just very skeptical of the article's implied solutions of hiring more republicans and making sure to give air time to whatever nonsense republican media is going on about. It's possible that NPR would benefit from re-evaluating how exactly it chooses to portray and endorse political positions (including being against discrimination, which I think is great to endorse), without trying to shift right or otherwise away from its politics.
I still listen to NPR, but I cancelled my contributions to them when I heard them give a rundown of the primary candidates and the candidate leading in the polls (at the time) wasn't even mentioned.
Whomever made decisions regarding their campaign coverage had an obvious preference for some candidates over others and that really bothered me.
Yeah, that's bad journalism. All candidates should be mentioned in the rundown, no matter what the media outlet's political leaning is.
These are my thoughts, as well. Lately I've been extremely disappointed by their willingness to toe the party line on the genocide happening in Gaza. They don't seem interested in challenging folks with actual power.
Here is NPR’s coverage of this essay:
NPR defends its journalism after senior editor says it has lost the public's trust
…
…
It sounds like it boils down to "we've lost the public's trust because a huge portion of the public believes in conspiracy theories and right-wing nonsense and we aren't catering to them." It doesn't seem like an NPR problem, it seems like a broader media landscape problem.
Yeah, I really don’t think that reflecting the worldview of a mob of insane fascists is something to aspire to. And Berliner is factually wrong about the specific areas where he says NPR has fallen short. Hunter Biden’s laptop, of all things!
Possibly, but, “it’s not us, it’s them” seems rather self-serving and close-minded, so I think we should be a little wary of it. I think he’s pointed out some stories where they should have done better?
There are cases in which catering to conspiracy nutters is arguably what they should have done.
On Covid virus origins, for example, I recently posted about an extensive debate on that. I think it wasn’t a lab leak, but the evidence isn’t conclusive and there was much less evidence available in the early days of the pandemic. The origins of the pandemic should have been covered as an open question that there’s legitimate scientific debate about.
That’s a topic where there really are conspiracy nutters out there, but their existence doesn’t settle the debate. It’s not a shortcut to understanding what happened.
Instead, it’s a sign that there is (or was) widespread public interest about the controversy.
The widespread “fact checking” articles are also catering to a conspiracy-minded public, in their way.
The main reason the mainstream news sources rejected the lab leak theory was because it was clearly just a jingoistic attempt at racist yellow journalism. Ultimately, what difference did it make? Whether a bat bit someone naturally or a scientists collected some bat blood and later the vial broke, what real difference does it matter?
Yes, it is possible that the virus accidentally found its way out of a lab. But that isn't really what the conspiracy theorists were getting at. They were trying to argue or insinuate that the virus was a bioweapon deliberately released onto the world by some nefarious Chinese plot. It was no different than a thousand other racist conspiracy theories that have accompanied disease outbreaks over the centuries. Consider all the pogroms that Jews found themselves victims of, accused of spreading disease or poisoning wells. Virulent racism and disease outbreaks have always gone together.
This is the context the lab leak theory needs to be considered in. The mainstream media rightfully brushed it aside, because they were rightfully on guard for the kind of racist conspiracy theories that always accompany disease outbreaks. And ultimately, it would make zero difference. Whether the disease leaked from some blood of a bat someone ate or from a vial of bat blood kept in a lab, the difference is irrelevant. On one, a scientist screwed up. In another, a butcher screwed up. The conspiracy theory is only of any relevance if you insist on taking it all the way to the insane bioweapon direction. The media rightfully shut it down because we didn't need to be arguing racist conspiracy theories when we were trying to contain a global outbreak.
Discussing the relevance of it would have validated the coverage of it, even if it has no relevance in the event it was a lab leak. Otherwise it just looks like you're covering it up by not discussing it. It might fall on deaf ears if someone sees a thorough and detailed write-up that concludes the difference is minimal between it being a lab leak or some more natural spread, but at least you did your due diligence in attempting to inform and educate, rather than looking down on the public and deciding that instead of attempting to inform them because they might take it the wrong way, you selectively ignore it and ultimately they're going to take that the wrong way anyhow, yet in this case you leave more grey area for people to make assumptions about your motivations.
Also there is arguably a difference between a lab leak and a more natural spread, which is not isolated to China or any country but rather puts processes under more scrutiny when doing things that might introduce more risk to humanity. Granted the good that comes from research should outweigh the risk in the event that there is an accident. It also highlights that on a global scale there's no border insulation from diseases or illnesses like this, meaning there's got to be a global responsibility to policy surrounding human-caused accidents. China should have as much interest in the US or other countries managing their disease research properly as the US or other countries should of China because in this case, we're all in it together. If someone fucks up, we all pay the price.
Assuming everyone who has any wonderment or consideration of the origins of a global pandemic is racist or that their questioning of it is based in racism is mind-boggling to me. I think it's natural for people to question it, and if the only people willing to have a conversation about it are the conspiracy nuts because all the mainstream media shirked their duties and "rightfully brushed it aside", then what you have left is a vacuum of information filled by people who are less reputable and aren't going to go the extra mile to explain the relevance or difference of a lab leak and a more natural cause. That fuels conspiracies far more than responsible journalism would.
I agree that it was a debate of little practical use to most people. For most purposes, it didn't matter where the virus came from, since we had to deal with it anyway. (I've made that argument myself when it came up here.) And if anyone wants to tune out for any given story, I think that's fine. I didn't follow the lab leak debate all that closely either.
However, reporting on investigations into how the pandemic started is not "yellow journalism." Whenever there's a major accident, there's legitimate public interest in knowing how it happened, so that we can have a better idea of what to do to keep it from happening again. Most of us play no direct role in that, just like we play no direct role in improving airline safety after a crash. But that's true of many specialized topics that are still legitimate news. And there's no doubt that this was a newsworthy topic - the pandemic was one of the biggest stories of the decade.
Being incurious or afraid to report on things because you think they might have unwelcome political implications is the sort of thing that journalism critics say has gone wrong in many newsrooms. The attitude you're taking, that journalists shouldn't report on something because the public is curious for bad reasons, is also part of the problem.
It's fine to be skeptical of some people's motives. I am too, as there was plenty of evidence of that. There are racists out there! But that's the sort of context that journalists should ignore. Opposing discrimination against minorities is a fine motive for a lot of political action, but not for suppressing reporting on legitimate news stories. It's like saying that we shouldn't investigate 737 crashes because it's bad for Boeing and will upset people unnecessarily.
There are both good and bad reasons why people would want to follow the debate, and the bad reasons should play no role in the decision about whether something is newsworthy. Journalists are supposed to be curious about what's going on! You do need to trust the public a little. Trust that, even though your reporting will inevitably be misused, reporting the truth will do more good than harm.
Of course it was also very difficult to investigate, because Chinese governments weren't cooperating and were actively suppressing evidence. That's part of the story too. Government suppression comes from the same bad instinct, that there are things the public shouldn't know, since it was embarrassing and would create unrest.
Reporting the truth in this case was not going to be making a call on covid virus origins. That's for scientists to debate. The job of journalists was to report on the scientific debate, for the benefit of curious members of the public who wanted to know how the investigations were going.
Edit: I made a pretty standard defense of traditional journalistic values, but I'll admit that it's putting things in rather binary terms. It's not like the covid origin debate wasn't covered at all! There are more subtle issues about how a story gets covered, what sort of headlines are used, and so on, and I haven't investigated how well NPR did on that.
In this specific case, NPR does indeed have reporting in regard to the debate over COVID-19’s origins. Nowhere does the author point to this in his essay. Indeed, he points to the contrary, saying:
Note, the date he cites is the date of the article that I’ve linked. Given that example, I find it hard to believe that he is arguing in good faith.
Especially in the throws of 2020, the internet was awash with COVID misinformation. Much of it was politically-driven, aimed at discrediting health officials in the US. Research and study now may be handled and reported differently than it was then, and it should be.
Yeah, that story seems pretty good. I'm not going to get into whether NPR's coverage was good enough or not before that. (I just added an edit to my post.)
I find it hard to believe that he's not arguing in good faith. He sounds sincerely frustrated.
He does, but for example he talks about viewpoint diversity. During the time he's been there NPR has become much more diverse, which inherently brings along viewpoint diversity. It's just not the type he's looking for. And I think he's ignoring that to some extent in favor of his particular point. And he's done a thing that, in this economy, most minoritized people wouldn't feel safe doing: writing a scathing public takedown of his employer. I don't think he's in bad faith per se, but I think his viewpoint is quite narrow and that may be causing him to err in his statements to prove said point.
As I understand it, "viewpoint diversity" means something different than traditional diversity measures (race, gender, and so on). He specifically wrote about NPR having no Republicans, and what happened when he brought it up:
So I think he has a more expansive view of diversity, rather than a narrower one? He's not saying that the other kinds of diversity are bad.
It's true, not that many people speak out, but I think it does happen rather a lot in newsrooms.
If his only perspective of "viewpoint diversity" is one of two politic categories he's factually misunderstanding or misusing the term. The whole point of viewpoint diversity is that people have different POV due to the broad categories of diversity, not your registered political party.
Bringing in more diverse reporters and anchors and editors is in fact bringing in more viewpoint diversity. Even if they both vote for Biden in the fall.
I don't see it as saying that it's only thing he cares about? It seems like you're deliberately misunderstanding the argument: when people all have similar political beliefs, there's a dimension where they're not as diverse as they look, even if they are different in a lot of other ways.
It's similar to if you had people of many races, genders, and sexual orientations, but they're all rich. Could you see why that might be a problem?
I don't believe I am deliberately misunderstanding. I'm disagreeing with his interpretation and with his conclusions.
In the past 20 years, I believe that viewpoint diversity has grown at NPR from the huge increase in the voices of POC. He feels a particular angle is lacking, and I'm not saying that isn't his genuine belief. I suspect the Trump takeover of the Republican party and his demonization of anything left of OAN has more to do with whether Republicans are interested in working at NPR and that the lack of trust from the public is partially from that, but maybe I'm wrong. I suspect that left wing folks are frustrated with NPR's both sidesing of some issues too leading to that 3 out of 10 but still being higher than CNN.
He doesn't like the DEI efforts of his organization, which is a valid opinion, and in the process ignores that all of those efforts are about trying to establish viewpoint diversity on a dozen axes. He only speaks about one axis. And frames every other axis as buying into the idea that systemic oppression exists but not contributing to the diversity NPR deeply lacked decades ago.
I think he's genuine and I think he's wrong. Both on many of his facts, as portrayed in discussions here and elsewhere and in his conclusions. I don't think I misunderstand him in either of those areas.
If you think that everyone being the same political party is completely fine, no cause for concern that there might be a problem, then it seems like a blind spot to me, but I guess we'll just have to disagree.
That is a misrepresentation of my multiple comments.
I think Fae is differentiating between viewpoint diversity and political diversity, and I suspect many folks who talk about the former really are interested in the latter instead.
It seems like political diversity is a subset of viewpoint diversity. It's an easy thing to ask about, but other questions you might ask to get at it are if there's anyone has served in the military or if there is anyone who never went to college.
As I understand it, reporting used to be a pretty low-paid job where they used to hire people right off the street and train them on the job, and now it's a pretty low-paid job where most people have college degrees, so in that sense viewpoint diversity went down. (Or at least, I remember reading an article about that once; I'm not actually all that knowledgable about newsrooms.)
But being interested in political diversity isn't wrong, and it doesn't mean you don't have other concerns too.
Yeah he clearly means diversity political affiliation between the two parties, not even actual political diversity which is more than a binary setting. But what he says, as the senior editor for a news org, is "viewpoint diversity" and either he doesn't understand the definition of that phrase or is willfully ignoring the breadth of the term to focus on one singular axis that he's falsely coding in the binary and ignoring external factors.
I'm willing to bet that everyone at NPR's political beliefs aren't the same even if no one (in the room he was in at the time) admitted to being a registered Republican. Add in that historically many journalists wouldn't register a political affiliation or publicly go on record as such (depending on the public records of their state) and the most generous read is that he has a genuine concern and some major blindspots along with some real faulty memory on a few of the topics mentioned.
Less generously, he doesn't seem to buy into systemic oppression until he perceives Republicans and their viewpoints as being repressed. And this is a setup where if nothing happens in response he keeps his high level administration job, and if he gets disciplined or fired he's a martyr who gets job offers immediately and becomes the guy pointed to to defund NPR. I work for the government and am thus essentially legally immune from retaliation for speech and I wouldn't have published something so public and scathing about my job. Oof the privilege.
But yeah, that's what I am trying to say.
I think he says it in his piece - 3 out of 10 is only good if the public has lost faith in the media. Correct sir. 3 out of 10 is excellent.
It seems like this actually is all about internal politics. In recent years, it seems that the internal politics of many organizations has heated up quite a lot, news organizations definitely included. Going public is an escalation, apparently due to frustration.
It’s good that they covered it, though.
For some context, George Floyd's death created a schism in American journalism that led to multiple high-profile resignations. Top editors at the LA Times, New York Times, Philadelphia Enquirer, and even Bon Appetit faced staff mutinies over their coverage.
At the LA Times, for instance, one Black journalist was quoted as saying the paper's focus on looting pandered to their primarily White audience and alienated the audience they were trying to attract. Her boss eventually lost his job.
As we talk about what should and should not be reported on, I think the questions that Berliner raises are important ones. Do we ignore possibly inconvenient facts that don't fit our staff's or our ideal audience's preferred narrative? If so, how far can we stretch that before we're writing propaganda? Or are all facts equally important, and if so, how do we decide which facts to emphasize? Something has to lead, after all.
In any case, I personally think it's a good thing when media takes time to reflect and become critical of itself.
The notion of all facts being equally important is absurd on its face. One of the critical parts of good journalism is deciding how important what is and how to cover a thing. That's basically what the entire profession is.
If that were true, we'd only ever need one journalist covering a topic.
Surely you don't suggest that the size of shirt a murderer wears is as important as their motive, or that the color of a boat that crashes into a bridge is as important as what it was containing.
The fact that it's difficult but important to decide what's important and how it's presented is why it's so important to have a lot of eyes on things. Different perspectives are critical.
Why not treat all facts as equally important and use the sortition of the RNG to choose the day's top stories? The significant stories will cause knock-on stories for days and days on end. Eventually, one of their numbers will surface at the top. A flash-in-the-pan, non-news story, even if it gets lucky with the PowerBall, will disappear as quickly as it arose due to a lack of follow-up. It happened, the end.
Alright, this thread has had like 5 different antagonistic arguments going on, and they don't seem to be stopping. I'm tired of needing to check back in on it constantly.
I have my issues with the article, especially Berliner’s characterization of the Trump-Russia scandal. However, I do think that NPR has swung to the left a bit in recent years. What he (annoyingly) doesn’t talk about is the reliance on donations/sponsorships for revenue (versus government funding) and how that leads to a feedback loop in terms of content (similar to the New York Times with subscriptions versus advertising).
I also find that their radio news isn’t as broad as I’d want. I learn more about what’s happening today in the five minute snippets at the top of the hour versus the remaining 55 minutes of the program.
I feel like there's a parallel Canadian perspective to offer here about the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation - something that I hope sticks to its own sub thread if people want to talk about it.
I'm close to 40 and in the last five years, have spent a good deal of time reading CBC journalism and listening to CBC radio. While local news has certainly kept both topics and politics relatively neutral -- likely because it's beat reporting over analysis -- the national content has definitely leaned into the space that NPR is being criticized for.
Editorialization and opinion are nothing new and were practiced along the political spectrum even when journalism outlets had ad dollars to spend, but where a (1/2) publicly funded outlet like the CBC falls short is when it fails to make a point -- any point. Like another user said when referring to NPR being for well intentioned suburban voters, the CBC's positions dance around the subtext of an issue, and like many mealymouthed politicians, play the game of public relations rather than information.
They're terrified of being bold. They're terrified of how Joe Lunchbox from Alberta will interpret their left of centre convictions and equally terrified of being burned by lefty for empathizing with the Ottawa convoy protestor.
I still love the CBC and completely empathize with the position that journalism finds itself in today, and frankly, don't see a way out of this quagmire that keeps both the institution's funding steady and integrity intact.
As another contrast, local to Ontario, our publicly funded TVO news coverage has not shied away from being very critical of whomever is in control of government.
Berliner's article really resonates with me. I'm not a Republican but I am a libertarian and I see the ideological lines being drawn in the sand via the media as totally destructive to our nation's cohesion.
The 3 stories brought up really do a great job of highlighting how an organization that receives public funds to report the news has become an advocacy wing of a certain political perspective.
I grew up listening to NPR in the 90's and I have listened to it off and on until around the time of the pandemic. I usually found that reporting to be accurate and interesting. I started working nights in 2015. I quit that job in 21 in part due to it's effects on my health. It was like waking up from a dream and finding myself in an alternate reality. What a strange and hostile place my country has become for people who think differently than the zeitgeist.
Genuine question: what are some things you disagree with the zeitgeist with and how has the country become hostile to you for thinking them?
I could go on but I think those are pretty controversial topics that belong in the Zeitgeist. I'm not an offensive person or a racist. I've been a professional and I returned to school in '21 to try and better myself. In the fall I will start my first semester of graduate school in computer science. In other words, I'm a perfectly normal person who doesn't wish harm on anyone and who understands what it means to live amongst people who disagree with me 24/7.
My world view is shaped by my beliefs about the morality of the use of force. They are logical outgrowths of my guiding principle in a similar way to the way in which people at NPR talk about their North Star.
In my book that doesn't make me a bad person. It doesn't make me stupid or ignorant or any of the other pejoratives that are knee jerk thrown at me by individuals expecting a Republican to smear.
To the tildes communities great credit I have seen almost none of that here. I debated not even responding to this because I don't really want to fight about it. I just wanted to express my feelings on the issue. Hopefully, you can respect that.
From the essay:
…
At the moment, a Republican is someone who's a part of a fascist group trying to get rid of democracy. Is not having them in a news room a bad thing?
Actually, no, you don't have "public" in the name anymore, that was intentionally removed from their marketing. It's been years since anyone at the network has called it "National Public Radio". It's just "NPR" now.
And while I see the author's points (without fully agreeing with them) my main issue with NPR lately is that there are so many stories about sports, teams, and leagues. A lifelong "commute-listener" I've been turning it off far more frequently lately due to an extreme disinterest in Sportsball.
Maybe for marketing, but it's still named National Public Radio.
You’re right! Here’s an article about the rebranding, which notes that the legal name is still National Public Radio.
https://web.archive.org/web/20200827033605/https://www.npr.org/sections/inside/2010/07/12/128475395/npr-what-s-in-a-name
I doubt that it was, as the article is from 2010. I can see what you’re saying though, from the tone of the article itself.
Oh! That’s wonderful! Ha! I’ll have to show that to my partner when I get home from work. No one in my locale really knows what my company does, so it’s a joke that I’m secretly a robot. They’ll get a kick out of this comment.
Going back and looking at my comment, I can absolutely see where you’re coming from on that. I wonder if that means I’ve spent too much time on StackExchange.
Turing test complete
Grade: Passed
Maybe in their tax filings or business documents, but what the public sees on the website and hears on the radio will never be "National Public Radio" anymore. That name is effectively gone.
As someone about to get a commute again, but who has listened to NPR for a long time, my only real complaint along those lines is how repetitive it gets over a long trip, even crossing the country. I get why, but I'm spoiled by having a good local station with local reporting and news shows on a variety of topics aired daily. Not a lot of sports unless that's the topic of an interview or something.
I do listen to a lot of NPR or other public radio podcasts though too.
I want them to ask tougher questions of elected officials but even so I think I hear them ask those questions more often than other news. And I don't have or watch cable so they're my primary "live" news source.
https://archive.is/kX4dH if you prefer to not feed the clickbait machine.