I agree with NPR's suspension. Ignoring the quality of his criticism, allowing NPR staff to publish articles at other publications would encourage journalists to build a personal brand instead of...
I agree with NPR's suspension. Ignoring the quality of his criticism, allowing NPR staff to publish articles at other publications would encourage journalists to build a personal brand instead of writing articles in line with the publication's values.
It's also just pretty unprofessional to jump to the top of the ladder instead of discussing issues with the relevant parties. NPR has plenty of issues already and his article hasn't done anything to find a solution. He gave ammunition to those who oppose NPR and left out the voices of everyone else at NPR when publishing his criticism.
I didn't find the article that interesting so not much has stuck, but I seem to recall him explaining that he'd attempted exactly this and been waved off. First getting a meeting that "needed to...
It's also just pretty unprofessional to jump to the top of the ladder instead of discussing issues with the relevant parties.
I didn't find the article that interesting so not much has stuck, but I seem to recall him explaining that he'd attempted exactly this and been waved off. First getting a meeting that "needed to be rescheduled" and was not, and then not hearing back after or something.
Edit- Relevant section. He actually claims to have said quite a lot to the relevant parties, so I think that's a pretty unfair criticism
Relevant section from his article
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.
Even so, out of frustration, on November 6, 2022, I wrote to the captain of ship North Star—CEO John Lansing—about the lack of viewpoint diversity and asked if we could have a conversation about it. I got no response, so I followed up four days later. He said he would appreciate hearing my perspective and copied his assistant to set up a meeting. On December 15, the morning of the meeting, Lansing’s assistant wrote back to cancel our conversation because he was under the weather. She said he was looking forward to chatting and a new meeting invitation would be sent. But it never came.
I won’t speculate about why our meeting never happened. Being CEO of NPR is a demanding job with lots of constituents and headaches to deal with. But what’s indisputable is that no one in a C-suite or upper management position has chosen to deal with the lack of viewpoint diversity at NPR and how that affects our journalism.
Is that really his criticism? I mean, putting aside the very real implications of the bill chilling educator's ability to discuss sexuality in the classroom regardless of if the bills says "gay",...
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.
Is that really his criticism? I mean, putting aside the very real implications of the bill chilling educator's ability to discuss sexuality in the classroom regardless of if the bills says "gay", that's also just a common way the public refers to that bill. It's like calling the Affordable Care Act "Obamacare", definitely originally inspired by a political agenda but at this point common parlance. That doesn't seem like a particularly damning piece of evidence for political bias. (I do agree with him about the use of "Latinx" though.)(Edit: see below)
I admit I'm as biased as anyone towards my own beliefs, but I actually think NPR does a commendable job maintaining journalistic neutrality. They don't shy away from claiming Trump "lied" about the election, and they also don't sugarcoat any of Biden's gaffes. For example, I recall when the Robert Hur report first came out, they covered Biden's defending himself but specifically pointed out how in the same press briefing Biden mixed up the names of the presidents of Egypt and Mexico undermining Biden's claims about his own mental acuity. They could've brushed over that gaffe if they wanted to, but I think it says a lot about their impartiality that they brought it up anyway.
I am a prominent member of the newsroom in Washington. If Uri told the truth, then I could only be a registered Democrat. I held up a screenshot of my voter registration showing I am registered with “no party.” Some in the crowd gasped. Uri had misled them. [...] When I asked Uri, he said he “couldn’t care less” that I am not a Democrat. He said the important thing was the “aggregate”—exactly what his 87-0 misrepresented by leaving out people like me.
He writes of a dismaying experience with his managers: “I asked why we keep using that word that many Hispanics hate—Latinx.” Why indeed? It’s true that many Latinos don’t like this ungendered term, including some who work at NPR. That may be why NPR does not generally use the term. I did a search at npr.org for the previous 90 days. I found: 197 uses of Latino. 201 uses of Latina. And just nine uses of “Latinx,” usually by a guest on NPR who certainly has the right to say it. Like Uri, I often have opinions about NPR’s coverage. Sometimes I am right; and sometimes I check the easily searchable archives and discover I am wrong. I wish he’d done the same.
This doesn't sound that bad to me? It reminds me of Wes Mantooth in Anchorman saying, "You know those rating systems are flawed! They don't take into account houses that have more than two...
When I asked Uri, he said he “couldn’t care less” that I am not a Democrat. He said the important thing was the “aggregate”—exactly what his 87-0 misrepresented by leaving out people like me.
This doesn't sound that bad to me? It reminds me of Wes Mantooth in Anchorman saying, "You know those rating systems are flawed! They don't take into account houses that have more than two television sets and other things of that nature."
It's not materially significant if the count was 87-0 or 87-0-1 or 87-0-10.
That said, unbiased doesn't mean that you bring in voices that are trying to drag the country one way or the other, and the Republican party, to a much, much greater degree than the Democrats, has been trying to move the Overton Window to normalize literal fascist ideas. So after 2016, and especially after 2020, it seems unlikely that many Republicans would be able to handle it without significant bias because that bias is critical to the preservation of the worldview. Even the "good ones" who have fallen on their swords by refusing to support Trump were doing that stuff in every way other than pushing his specific lies.
The Democrats' lies, on the other hand, have seemed to be designed more around hiding their hypocrisy--things like "this Georgia voter suppression law is terrible" while ignoring that New York has an identical law, or "the Republicans want to destroy our future for the profit of the oil companies" while pretending that they aren't opening up more drilling.
Both parties have a lot to hate about them and even more to justly criticize, but one of them is a group of fascists actively trying to install a dictator. So, you know, not exactly the group I'd...
Both parties have a lot to hate about them and even more to justly criticize, but one of them is a group of fascists actively trying to install a dictator. So, you know, not exactly the group I'd want contributing to a newsroom.
Holding that view, I'd be extremely worried if people of that party weren't represented in a newsroom. I'd view that as extremely, extremely dangerous. How else would I have any shot reaching all...
one of them is a group of fascists actively trying to install a dictator
Holding that view, I'd be extremely worried if people of that party weren't represented in a newsroom. I'd view that as extremely, extremely dangerous.
How else would I have any shot reaching all those people with messed up political views, who're the ones that need to be reached by real journalism and news, than without people who share those views to speak up about the issues and the ways we should be writing to reach those people who hold debunked, junk political views and are willing to put force behind misplaced convictions?
Who can write stuff in a way that those of junk political views might actually listen to, to change minds, to hold their attention so it isn't spent on more dangerous reading/listening, or just propaganda rather than news?
Where are those people with bad views going to be edited and not get their material out without a layer of editing and control so the unfiltered garbage doesn't just get out?
How are you going to have the important conversations where opinions differ and are weighted against each other inside the newsroom without people with different views and experiences represented in that newsrooom?
Writing people off and just not wanting to deal with them is not a solution. It's irresponsibly feeding the problem so it festers, grows and these people become even more entrenched.
We need people who're preparing the time when these junk views are passé. We can't just murder these people, or shun them or lock them out of society for the rest of society to move on. The people of silly views now need to be rehabilitated. For society's sake.
I'm not sure how having fascists, who are by definition not interested in accuracy or truth, making the news helps to rehabilitate anyone or improve any situation except the fascist's.
I'm not sure how having fascists, who are by definition not interested in accuracy or truth, making the news helps to rehabilitate anyone or improve any situation except the fascist's.
I'm totally disconnected from this whole argument, but I can see how it could work given a healthy amount of editorializing. People who are polarized to either side in US politics get news from...
I'm totally disconnected from this whole argument, but I can see how it could work given a healthy amount of editorializing. People who are polarized to either side in US politics get news from sources that confirm their world view. It's as if people who live in the same neighborhood are in completely different realities because the news stories they see have little overlap.
We shouldn't give free reign to completely false news stories. We could take a popular story from the opposite side of the political spectrum, evaluate what pieces of it are actually based in reality, and report on it in a way that exposes the true facts and takeaways. This can increase the credibility of news organizations and perhaps bring back some people who are living in an alternate news reality. This would require heavy scrutiny to make sure that complete fabrications are not reported on, but it is true that there are real stories that can be completely missed depending on what your political leaning is.
I am a Democrat and until Uri Berliner's post, I did not know that Hunter Biden's laptop was actually real. Even I have been sucked into a reality where Hunter Biden's laptop doesn't exist and I am a daily NY Times reader and NPR listener. We are playing with two separate sets of facts and there must be a way to bridge the gap in a way that doesn't let harmful falsehoods hit the front page.
IIRC, NYT has published several articles that claim that Hunter Biden's laptop was real. To my memory the official story as of a year or two ago is that government agencies have managed to verify...
IIRC, NYT has published several articles that claim that Hunter Biden's laptop was real. To my memory the official story as of a year or two ago is that government agencies have managed to verify that it used to belong to him, but the path it took to get to them made it an extremely unreliable piece of evidence.
What you're describing is the paradox of tolerance. The messages and those propagating them are anti-democratic. Aimed at reducing the freedoms of others, including their ability to be represented...
What you're describing is the paradox of tolerance. The messages and those propagating them are anti-democratic. Aimed at reducing the freedoms of others, including their ability to be represented at all.
The only tolerable fascist is a heavily marginalized one.
No. This is not about the paradox of tolerance or allowing those with junk views to have those views reach through in product to readers. News organizations are not and should not be microphone...
No. This is not about the paradox of tolerance or allowing those with junk views to have those views reach through in product to readers. News organizations are not and should not be microphone stands for others, or to magnify the views of their journalists.
This is about involving people of certain views in ways in the news room so the editorial decision-makers manage to reach a huge portion of their audience effectively with real, substantive reporting that takes facts into account.
It's about having devil's advocates, about picking up trends that need to be debunked, ways in which the good arguments need to be framed to effectively reach those who need to hear those things the most.
Debunking an argument is still giving a platform to the argument. We don't need a weekly deconstruction of the latest QAnon conspiracies to prove they're meritless, just like we didn't need...
Debunking an argument is still giving a platform to the argument. We don't need a weekly deconstruction of the latest QAnon conspiracies to prove they're meritless, just like we didn't need coverage on pizzagate. These aren't substantive issues important to our democracy, they don't affect policy, they aren't even real.
The high-road of debating all ideas is great in theory. In practice it adds fuel to fires that debate can't put out.
Non real issues affecting policy is politics 101 through history. Perception is reality in politics. I don’t see how you can claim these issues don’t affect policy and then also claim the people...
These aren't substantive issues important to our democracy, they don't affect policy, they aren't even real.
Non real issues affecting policy is politics 101 through history. Perception is reality in politics.
I don’t see how you can claim these issues don’t affect policy and then also claim the people who believe these clearly false issues are trying to install someone, because of these false issues, who will pass policy.
“Ignore it and it will go away” does not work if everyone isn’t on the same page (and arguably not even great then).
I think it's almost the interpretation of how to approach the paradox of tolerance taken to its extreme. It became the standard to be intolerant of the intolerant, The divide only grows and grows,...
Exemplary
I think it's almost the interpretation of how to approach the paradox of tolerance taken to its extreme. It became the standard to be intolerant of the intolerant, The divide only grows and grows, where even people left of center become the enemy of the far left because there's so much distance between the left and the right that you can't even see the other side anymore, so your most common disagreements come with people you were once previously considered fairly aligned with.
You can see this intolerance of the intolerant all over this thread. I think to an extent it makes sense and it works, but that's the extreme, there's no middle ground anymore because as the perception of what is intolerant changes based on who you've already eliminated from the equation, there's nowhere for people to go except the extremes. It highlights the problem that there's now this political division of where news happens, because there's no room for anyone to be exposed to other ideas.
That's likely behind a paywall for most people, but the title of it is "Democracy Dies Behind Paywalls" and my reading of it is that the person writing it is saying paywalls put the most valid sources of information out of reach for a lot of people who can't or don't want to pay for news, and effectively makes those people more susceptible to misinformation and disinformation because they have less access to better sourced information. It was also argued that allowing some access through paywalls in some cases increases uptake in subscriptions because people got exposure to a service they wouldn't have otherwise.
This same argument to me can be taken for viewpoints too. I'm not really trying to call anyone out here and just using it as a topical example, but there's some comments in this post that talk about not paying for NYT because of disagreements in their coverage. That's of course within someone's right to do, to not pay a company for any reason they want, no one is obligated or responsible for supporting any given company. However when done on a wide-scale and operating on the same idea of no room for the intolerant or disagreeable views, you end up with a bubble where the only people interested in reading that site are the ones who already agree with everything they say, and the people who don't will find somewhere else and they will do the same thing but something that aligns with their existing viewpoints. So all these news organizations just end up being bubbles of what each in-group they can accommodate will accept, and now there's no exposure to other ideas because no one is willing to tolerate disagreements. So the intolerant become more intolerant because they have no exposure to other ideas because they moved off to their own bubble where the same thing happens in their bubble. Not to mention their intolerance becomes further justified because now they're the ones not being tolerated. I'm sure the hope was that the lesson they would come away with is that if they wanted to be tolerated they'd improve their intolerant views, and maybe some people did make that change, but for those that remained, now the divide is there and there's no bridge left to bring them back across. To me, I find this notion that just shunning people because they have intolerant views will make them a better person similar to blaming a poor person for being poor and it's somehow going to make them more successful if you punish them for something they likely don't have the resources or ability to correct on their own. We know pulling yourselves up by the bootstraps is bullshit when it comes to economics, so why should we expect that someone who has poor thinking or understanding of the world (from our perspective) is going to be able to pull themselves up by the bootstraps and become a better person, especially if we withdraw any support or resources to them? Relegating their existence to a bubble of more extreme intolerance is akin to putting a poor person in jail for being poor and thinking that somehow will motivate them and help them be better. You can replace poor with people addicted to drugs or various other maladies of society and humanity that we deal with and it's still the same message, those problems are a symptom of the society we created and can't necessarily be resolved by the individual themselves, and so are these polarizing viewpoints.
I think being intolerant of intolerant outcomes is still a great thing, but somewhere along the way, the intolerance of outcomes became intolerance of viewpoints, which became intolerance of people who are perceived to have those viewpoints. I think that explains how it's dangerous like you said, because intolerance is meant to limit or eliminate the undesirable element. Intolerant of intolerant outcomes is great, you want to eliminate intolerant outcomes. Intolerance of intolerant viewpoints, maybe still great to eliminate intolerant viewpoints but maybe questionable depending on how it's accomplished or various other problems, but now we've arrived at intolerance of people, so are we ready to eliminate these people?
The rhetoric of calling all Republicans fascists and nazis, while I understand where it comes from, to me, that rhetoric needs to be understood to be rhetoric of war. Rhetoric of violence and war. If you don't think there's any way to improve our current situation other than through violent war, then that rhetoric fits the situation. If you have any hope or desire to improve the situation peacefully, then that rhetoric won't accomplish the goal. That isn't to say there aren't some extremes within this party or on this side of the political spectrum that do truly closely fit with this rhetoric, but to me the idea that 40%+ of the US population are fascist nazis illustrates the extremism, either the rhetoric is extreme or our circumstances are that dire that you actually expect and are preparing for a civil war soon.
As the person who decided to unsub from the NYT due to their coverage of trans issues, I think it's very different than dehumanizing or "shunning" Republicans. I usually only know if someone is a...
Exemplary
As the person who decided to unsub from the NYT due to their coverage of trans issues, I think it's very different than dehumanizing or "shunning" Republicans. I usually only know if someone is a Republican because they go out of their way to tell me directly (bumper stickers, direct comments about my appearance/queerness, sharing their opinions about Joe Biden).
Part of my job - I work with college students, primarily in a social work-esque role - is to be an educator. I don't "shun" students with conservative views. I will have conversations with any student whose views cross over into hateful speech (but if it's free speech, all I can do is educate). I have parents (of unknown political affiliation) who make racist remarks about their students' roommates and I address it, but I still help them and I'm still going to set boundaries with someone that curses me out on the phone. I've helped a friend understand that his rural Michigan 'heritage' does not include the Confederate flag. That's all educating and bridging those gaps.
I don't like equating the two things, because as much as you say it's fine, you also pivot and imply it isn't on a societal level. I do want the NYT to change its coverage, but that isn't the same as 'not wanting to hear different viewpoints.' Nor is it the downfall of democracy if trans/non-binary people don't pay for a service they don't want. If we don't want paywalls, we should be shoring up public radio and other public media, not tearing it apart. And it still isn't clear that NPR isn't hiring Republicans/people who register as a Republican (possibly in states that don't require it even for primaries) or if those folks who strongly identify as Republican are choosing not to work at NPR, an outlet vilified by the functional head of the party.
There are viewpoints that shouldn't be tolerated, IMO. But those aren't the same as saying those people who have those viewpoints aren't human. But when people say I'm not human, that I don't deserve basic human rights, I get to choose to draw a boundary. When I'm educating that boundary is different than in my personal life, when I'm online that boundary is different than when I'm in person and when I'm tired that boundary is different than when I'm fresh.
In short, I object to the conflation of unsubbing due to coverage I find biased, inaccurate and distasteful with dehumanizing or shunning.
I don't know if there's an established way to express this that I'm not aware of that would be more effective at expressing it than I'm capable of doing on my own, but in my mind there is a...
I don't like equating the two things, because as much as you say it's fine, you also pivot and imply it isn't on a societal level.
In short, I object to the conflation of unsubbing due to coverage I find biased, inaccurate and distasteful with dehumanizing or shunning.
I don't know if there's an established way to express this that I'm not aware of that would be more effective at expressing it than I'm capable of doing on my own, but in my mind there is a distinction between what an individual does, and what groups of individuals do that occurs more on the societal level, and the responsibilities or accountabilities of those differ.
So when I say it's fine for the individual to do it, but that it's not good on a societal level, there's no conflict to that for me because there are distinctions to how those happen. Maybe that comes across as hypocritical, I don't know. I view it as, society, the apparatus and institutions we build or allow to exist etc. have a greater responsibility to what happens on a societal level, and the individual has the responsibility for what happens on an individual level, in terms of accountability anyhow. Meaning the individual isn't accountable for NYT losing subscribers because the individual doesn't agree with something the NYT does, but the apparatus we created that has a hand in it potentially encourages large scale outcomes that are bad for society. That could be as simple as lax regulation that allows for social media companies to broadcast harmful ideas or something more complex. I'm simplifying that a bit as I do think individuals have some accountability in crowd behavior type situations that the individual has some accountability but that's not what is being discussed here.
I also don't know that I'm expressing or equating even many people unsubbing from the service as a collective action at the societal level as dehumanizing others, perhaps shunning others but I don't know that it's even that straightforward, and again that's going with the higher standard at the societal level, the individual would not have that responsibility necessarily. It's not my intent to say that the action itself is inherently dehumanizing anyone, so if that's what my prior comment had expressions of it wasn't what I intended for it to express. I think the outcome has possibilities of dehumanizing people, but the connectedness of the action and the outcome isn't so direct as to necessarily be able to equate the two, even on a societal level and even less so on an individual level. Because of the complexities of our society, actions and outcomes aren't always direct and that means there are other factors at play. So I don't assume because an action results in an outcome, that it inherently means those who did the action are responsible for the outcome. It just depends on the circumstances. That however doesn't mean that IF there is a negative outcome, that there shouldn't be an attempt to correct it.
But when people say I'm not human, that I don't deserve basic human rights, I get to choose to draw a boundary. When I'm educating that boundary is different than in my personal life, when I'm online that boundary is different than when I'm in person and when I'm tired that boundary is different than when I'm fresh.
I have no disagreement with this and hopefully wasn't expressing anything to the contrary. Again, I also find that this differs on an individual level. Much like it's commonly accepted that you shouldn't have to open up your home to give someone who is homeless a place to stay but rather there's still an expectation on a societal level that as a collective we should be able to offer a place to stay for people in those situations, but it's not on any one individual to personally take on the burdens of that. The only thing I really have to add to this is that on a societal level, it doesn't benefit us to treat those people in-kind. I'm not saying you advocated for that, so my mentioning of it isn't to contrast with anything you expressed, I mention it because it's inherently part of what I was previously expressing and your comment here helps me provide a little more specificity. If someone says you aren't human and doesn't deserve basic human rights, on a societal level, it does not benefit us to treat them in kind and not treat them as human even if they don't necessarily deserve the basic respect and dignity that they themselves won't provide to others, because they don't necessarily see the reasoning why they get treated that way in-kind. They may only see the action and that it further justifies the behavior of not respecting others because others are doing it to them. In the end, if everyone is flinging shit at each other, at some point it doesn't matter who was initially justified in doing so and who wasn't, because the end result isn't that flinging shit made everything better, it just meant the situation devolved into everyone flinging shit.
We agree, I think, that all humans have basic human rights. Whether they're fascists, whether they're literal murderers or drug dealers, racists or homophobes. I do firmly believe that. I don't...
We agree, I think, that all humans have basic human rights. Whether they're fascists, whether they're literal murderers or drug dealers, racists or homophobes. I do firmly believe that.
I don't think that believing that any of those people have basic human rights means I have to support them in the harm they may cause. I don't have to hire them, give them my money, permit their hatred to be directed at me or allow them to harm me. At least when this is in my control.
That's why I don't agree that setting a boundary is some through line to "shunning those we disagree with" or what seemed to be a double paradox of intolerance. First, organizations/corporations aren't the same thing as people. And secondly improving public news sources is something that helps address that. I get that you're identifying it perhaps as a symptom or even just a thing that feels similar, but consider that humans are far too complex to simplify individual actions like that.
I'd also really like to see more consideration that the burden is being put on, often, the minoritized populations to put up with harassment and indignity to try "educate" those who are doing the harassing. It is frustrating, even as an educator, to be consistently told it's my obligation to help a homophobic person not be homophobic. Or someone teetering on the precipice of fascism to not be fascist. I get you're not insisting on an individual obligation, but I feel societal obligation as much as anyone else who cares about the collective. And yet, I'm also tired. And I'm talking about myself here but I think my experience, if it can be used to universalize this fear of social silos can be used to discuss where many minority educators are.
Personally, I need less of being told how much we shouldn't put the dehumanizing people in the street, I was never gonna do that. I need more of the people telling me that to be speaking up to the homophobic, racist, fascist, etc. comments. A "dude not cool" goes a long way. A close friend of someone going down a right wing rabbit hole will have far better efficacy at change than me. If the teens that come to college don't get fed homophobia at home, I'd have less work. And that isn't shunning. That is drawing boundaries with friends and educating them in smaller less formal ways. Because educators and minorities are tired.
I'm gonna spend more of my energy on the two students in a relationship whose families have both kicked them out for being gay and we gotta figure out where they're gonna live after the end of the semester.
I'm not saying you disagree with this, some of this is my broader frustration at being told to be nicer to people who express hateful opinions of me. It does come out at time. I really try to be kind in general. It's sort of inbuilt into the value set. Anyway, I do think we agree on fundamental humanity.
I don't think it is your obligation to do so. Again I'll take it back to the idea of, it's not your individual obligation to house a homeless person, but perhaps it is our collective obligation....
I'd also really like to see more consideration that the burden is being put on, often, the minoritized populations to put up with harassment and indignity to try "educate" those who are doing the harassing. It is frustrating, even as an educator, to be consistently told it's my obligation to help a homophobic person not be homophobic.
I don't think it is your obligation to do so. Again I'll take it back to the idea of, it's not your individual obligation to house a homeless person, but perhaps it is our collective obligation. It's not your obligation more because you're the one impacted directly, but you may feel the obligation because you're impacted more directly, for any given problem that one is impacted by anyhow. This is true for any problem. There are numerous problems that I have or other people have that you don't have, and you aren't going to feel the same overriding urgency to resolve those problems as those who have to deal with them, that's just seemingly the nature of our consciousness to some extent. Someone who has a tent city outside their front door isn't more obligated to take in someone in their home, but they are more impacted by the unresolved problem and may feel that obligation more so because of that.
Personally, I need less of being told how much we shouldn't put the dehumanizing people in the street, I was never gonna do that. I need more of the people telling me that to be speaking up to the homophobic, racist, fascist, etc. comments. A "dude not cool" goes a long way.
If I saw those remarks here, then I'd be more inclined to be in that position to say something, yet I don't think I've come across much along the lines of what you're speaking of. So instead of seeing me have that response, you see me have this response instead. You can't see me addressing a problem that doesn't exist in a place where you have visibility of what I'm doing.
Granted by saying that I'm not pretending I'm Mother Teresa or MLK Jr outside of Tildes, but in the few instances where I've had exposure to people with something in the realm of hateful or negative ideas, I think I've taken the opportunity to address that with them in ways that I thought might constructively change their mind. I think my parents might have had a similar trajectory to how some other people on here might describe their parents in terms of getting sucked into the conservative news hole but I had a few conversations especially with my father about aspects of those perspectives that aren't what they seem and he responded positively to that. Prior to those conversations I got the impression there was a possibility they might have gotten pulled into the Trump sphere the first go around, but over the years whenever I go to their house they don't have Fox News on, if they have a news channel on at all it's more likely to be CNN or local news or something more generic, and they're in the demographic that Trump has done well with, no college degree suburban with rural upbringings.
I'm not saying you disagree with this, some of this is my broader frustration at being told to be nicer to people who express hateful opinions of me. It does come out at time.
I'm not really even asking anyone to be overly nice or accommodating. All I was trying to convey is that I think some of the terms being used contribute to a negative cycle that will seemingly lead to violence if the cycle isn't stopped. I don't think that requires anyone to start befriending every conservative they come across or asking them how their day is going, but simply to tone down the negative rhetoric in an attempt to stop the cycle.
You said it wasn't about my individual responsibility, but as I noted Also, some of us feel social responsibility and that's why we do the work, paid or otherwise that we do. We have an obligation...
You said it wasn't about my individual responsibility, but as I noted
And I'm talking about myself here but I think my experience, if it can be used to universalize this fear of social silos can be used to discuss where many minority educators are.
Also, some of us feel social responsibility and that's why we do the work, paid or otherwise that we do. We have an obligation to each other.
I'm not asking to "see you" doing something else, I don't actually care what you do as a person, it doesn't really impact my choices. But my comment that you referenced, wasn't about any of this, so I dont know what you felt the need to respond to.
But fine, collectively: We are tired. We are trying. And in the past week, five teens assaulted two college students for their perceived sexual orientations at Michigan State in Monday. "Love Lies Bleeding" can't be screened without homophobic disruptions at a film festival in Brussels. And a school district just cancelled an anti-bullying/empathy presenter because he's "proud of his 'lifestyle'" (you can guess).
We are tired of being told not to be too mean and exclusionary to the people that don't want to hear us speak about empathy, who don't want to see us kiss in movies and who will assault anyone who acts too much like us. It's exhausting to be lectured on our communal social responsibility. When all I wanted to do was not read a newspaper.
Forgive me if I'm not particularly sympathetic to the idea that my calling someone a fascist is "rhetoric of violence" when those people are vocally calling for people like me to be eliminated and...
The rhetoric of calling all Republicans fascists and nazis, while I understand where it comes from, to me, that rhetoric needs to be understood to be rhetoric of war. Rhetoric of violence and war.
Forgive me if I'm not particularly sympathetic to the idea that my calling someone a fascist is "rhetoric of violence" when those people are vocally calling for people like me to be eliminated and are also passing legislation aimed at accomplishing that.
I don't think I was intending to elicit any sympathetic response, I think I was trying to be blunt and get across what I perceive to be the end result of that rhetoric when describing such a large...
Exemplary
I don't think I was intending to elicit any sympathetic response, I think I was trying to be blunt and get across what I perceive to be the end result of that rhetoric when describing such a large portion of the population you coexist with. I wasn't saying it to shame someone for using rhetoric of violence, which you may not even agree that the rhetoric is one of violence, but merely stating that if everyone is holding a weapon and pointing it at each other, that's not an indicator of a peace. To call someone a fascist nazi is basically to write off their existence, that person you have no intention of having any amicable interaction with and have no interest in compromising with, because if they are truly a fascist nazi, you may not be able to justify doing that as you might see it as enabling or supporting them.
That's why I say it's rhetoric of violence, because if that is how you (the royal you) perceive someone, there's no hope of peace or civility with that person. There's no bridge that they can ever cross to meet you halfway or even come to your side. Yet you coexist with them in the same space in terms of our country/government, there's no ignoring the other person's existence and just hoping you don't have to deal with them. And there's been some comments here and in general the whole topic here is about the label of Republican, so we're not just talking about calling 5% of the population or such fascist nazis, Republicans in general are being labeled as that, and that's 40%+ of the potential voters. I'm stating 40% just because seemingly polls indicate the race is close at the least if not Republican favored, and obviously Trump won once before even though he didn't have the majority of the popular vote, so 40% is enough to express the significance of how many people are being labeled as this while not overstating the percentage.
My problem is that you appear to view calling someone a fascist as ending any hope of peace or civility but don't seem to consider openly calling for people like me to be exterminated as doing the...
My problem is that you appear to view calling someone a fascist as ending any hope of peace or civility but don't seem to consider openly calling for people like me to be exterminated as doing the same. For the record, I don't think every Republican is a fascist -- I'm still on good terms with immediate family members who voted for Trump in 2020 and I don't think they're fascists. But considering what's at best criticism of authoritarian regressive politics and at worst name-calling with "rhetoric of violence" but ignoring the violent rhetoric in the GOP's publicly stated policy positions is absurd. Why is it rhetoric of violence for me to call DeSantis a nazi and not violent rhetoric for him to call me a groomer?
There's no one here on this site that has that view for me to express it to. If you look at my comments in here, I think it's fair to say that I'm not being brief exactly and there's a balance to...
My problem is that you appear to view calling someone a fascist as ending any hope of peace or civility but don't seem to consider openly calling for people like me to be exterminated as doing the same.
There's no one here on this site that has that view for me to express it to. If you look at my comments in here, I think it's fair to say that I'm not being brief exactly and there's a balance to strike between what I can include and what I can't, and it seems pretty fair to me to not extend my comments further by including information that could easily be seen as a given or implied if given some benefit of doubt if there is any. So if I'm 6+ paragraphs in, it doesn't seem particularly efficient or effective to convey that the equivalent behavior from others ends hope of peace or civility especially when those people don't exist here to express it to, and it might seem this one disclaimer is worth including but there's probably 20 other disclaimers I could have also included and had to not include for similar reasons.
If I'm appealing to a person who I view as having a more developed perspective of things and is more receptive to other ideas and is more aligned with my viewpoints, I'm probably doing so because I expect that to have a better outcome. I don't expect to be able to go into a conservative or republican bubble as an outsider and try to express these ideas and expect to have any actual reception to them whatsoever. You can view that in a couple ways, my own bias towards those viewpoints has such low expectations that I'm not any better because I also don't think highly of them, or that they really are so far off the rails that they can't be reasoned with, or that as an outsider who doesn't have anywhere near their perspective and no reputation in their circles they have no reason to respect anything I say considering that is effectively the current environment as constructed regardless of who started it, you can't be an outsider in someone else's bubble and have any input in that bubble.
It's not necessarily different than a teacher who might push a student harder, not because they hate the student or because they want them to suffer or such, but possibly because they expect more from that student or they believe that student is more capable and that pushing them isn't a waste of time and it might actually result in something beneficial. And no I'm not saying I'm the teacher and everyone else here is the student or that I'm somehow in a position of superiority, I'm not equating the roles exactly, I'm only attempting to utilize the similarities in terms of why someone would bother to put in the effort to do something for someone else or with someone else, because they think it might have some possible beneficial outcome.
But considering what's at best criticism of authoritarian regressive politics and at worst name-calling with "rhetoric of violence" but ignoring the violent rhetoric in the GOP's publicly stated policy positions is absurd. Why is it rhetoric of violence for me to call DeSantis a nazi and not violent rhetoric for him to call me a groomer?
It is rhetoric of violence for DeSantis to say that or Trump to say any of the things he has said. I didn't say it because I assumed it's sort of a given. All I'm saying is that if you take an oppositional and equal stance, there's no place for people who might be borderline or willing to change to go, because there's no bridge left between you and them. Again, the royal you. If the peaceful outcome is to change hearts and minds, then arguably calling people fascist nazis doesn't help, because it instead pushes borderline people into the extremes and creates bubbles that makes those extremes more extreme. Just like their rhetoric of violence has no way of positively influencing you to their viewpoints, your rhetoric of violence would have no way of positively influencing them to your viewpoints.
This is not to say that you must approve of others, you can express disapproval for others who are doing wrong while still treating them basic respect and dignity even if they don't do the same. No, this doesn't mean you have to be their doormat or they get to walk all over you because they have no rules and you're adhering to some ethics. I don't know what your personal perspective is on criminal justice but overall on this site I generally perceive it to be more of a leftist set of perspectives on criminal justice, which generally encompasses giving people who have committed crimes opportunities to better themselves or correct their course rather than condemning them for life or writing them off as a lost cause. I think there's an element that has become impersonal about that subject where people can take that perspective, though sometimes when it becomes personal it reverts back to wanting to see the person punished more harshly or such. Broad strokes however, the concept is that you don't write people off even if they've done wrong, but you also don't let them off the hook or abuse you or others. It's not directly equivalent to how we should view others with drastically different viewpoints than ours or possibly harmful viewpoints, but I still look at it as a matter of looking at the human underneath it all and trying to determine how as a society we should treat these people to best create better outcomes for society. To me that means giving people with those drastically different and possibly even harmful viewpoints the decency of not simply just labeling them fascist nazis and be willing to consider them as people who you can dialogue with if they're willing to meet a certain standard of respect. Maybe on some level people think they're willing to do this, but I don't think it ends up working out this way because the standard becomes higher and higher as you insulate yourself more and more in a bubble. It becomes increasingly unlikely to ever have this middle ground to meet on.
Of course no one has to agree with me. If you don't view it as violent rhetoric, then that's fine. I probably won't be alive long enough to suffer the outcome no matter what the outcome is. And maybe there's no turning back. To me, I just view calling 40%+ of the population fascist nazis (not saying you said this, but there are other comments that have this implication or even statement behind it) as one that has only one outcome, violence, because I don't see any way for people in that 40% to change if that's how we treat them. And that many people, with that massive gulf between them and that much animosity between them, you can't simply hope to just keep beating them in elections and they will go away. It might be in part why it's so effective that you have a candidate that literally lies and says the election was fraudulent, because that large group of people might be making the mental transition to being unwilling to simply accept being totally and completely outcasted and subsequently unwilling to accept just losing an election and the outcomes that come with that.
I'm sorry, but it simply doesn't logically follow that if you call a fascist a fascist, or if you call a racist a racist, you must therefore be willing to kill them. That's just absurd. Obviously...
I'm sorry, but it simply doesn't logically follow that if you call a fascist a fascist, or if you call a racist a racist, you must therefore be willing to kill them. That's just absurd.
Obviously someone could say that fascists should be called fascists, racists should be called racists, and homophobes should be called homophobes, so they can be beaten at the ballot box and pushed to the fringes of society where they don't get to trample the rights of others by gaining power.
Pretending that fascists are not fascists only helps fascists, though.
If you're calling 40%+ of the population fascists, how are you going to push them to the fringes of society? If your perspective is that 40%+ of the population are fascist nazis, then what do you...
I'm sorry, but it simply doesn't logically follow that if you call a fascist a fascist, or if you call a racist a racist, you must therefore be willing to kill them. That's just absurd.
If you're calling 40%+ of the population fascists, how are you going to push them to the fringes of society? If your perspective is that 40%+ of the population are fascist nazis, then what do you realistically expect the outcome to be?
What I am saying is that if you perceive that many people to be fascist nazis, and if your perceptions are not extreme and are in fact accurately depicting the reality, then what outcome can you realistically expect other than violence? If every republican is a fascist nazi, that's not some 5% fringe population. Even if you beat them in the next election, they're not simply just going to go away. Arguably that's been the battle for decades, and now we've arrived at the current GOP with Trump as the figurehead which is seemingly quite worse than the past several decades, this solution clearly doesn't seem to be working if the goal is to just continue to call them fascist nazis and hope you can keep beating them in the next election.
If your perception is extreme and not accurately depicting reality, that not every republican is a fascist nazi, then calling them that and treating them as such is either a self-fulfilling prophecy or simply further distances you from those people to the point where there's no compromises or middle ground, because you perceive them to be a fascist nazi you can't possibly compromise with them, and this is in the hypothetical scenario where somehow you could objectively measure that they aren't and your perception of them is just extreme. If you aren't willing to compromise with them, then you're the extreme one to them.
If you have an alternative outcome to this scenario then feel free to let it be known.
In Nazi Germany not everyone supported the Nazi party. There will always be people who don’t toe the line. The solution to the Nazi party was not to bomb Germany off the face of the earth, it was...
In Nazi Germany not everyone supported the Nazi party. There will always be people who don’t toe the line. The solution to the Nazi party was not to bomb Germany off the face of the earth, it was to remove the people responsible for the atrocities and then deprogram the populace who supported them.
I think the sad truth of the matter is that there’s no solution to the problem of social fascism that does not involve suffering. You either allow fascists to propagate or you forcefully deprogram them. But one of those options makes a lot more sense than the other. If we let them go then the best case scenario is that the people that they outgroup get their quality of life cut dramatically as they lose rights and become greater targets for outright murder, and the worst case scenario is that they overthrow democracy. And the thing that sucks is that by not making a decision either way it defaults to letting them propagate. Right now I’m seeing Aesop’s fable of the scorpion and the frog.
Deprogramming was really an option because the Nazis escalated to violence not only on their own population but then invaded other populations, it gave other countries and people of those...
Deprogramming was really an option because the Nazis escalated to violence not only on their own population but then invaded other populations, it gave other countries and people of those countries the standing to forcefully remove the Nazi leadership and implement the deprogramming you're speaking of. Violence in the terms of taking down leadership in another party or country is easily justified when done as a defense to that violence, because it requires violence to achieve that. You have to fight back, and in turn you have to take out the threat.
I think it also highlights the difference in calling your average Republican a Nazi and what the Nazi party did. Maybe we're close to that, until it happens we don't know if we're at a precipice of the beginning or not, but you cannot simply forcefully deprogram 40%+ of your population on a systematic scale until there is an escalation of violence, because that forceful deprogramming will be seen as part of the escalation of violence. While January 6th did have some violence, some of those people have gone through the justice system and received consequences for their actions. I don't know that you can extrapolate that to the point of saying you now have standing to forcefully deprogram 40%+ of your population.
People seem to be thinking I'm making a value judgement when I say it's a rhetoric of violence. I'm not. I'm not condemning someone for using what I perceive as violent rhetoric. Maybe I should be. Instead what I perceive is that a lot of people don't see it as violent rhetoric, and I'm trying to illustrate how there's no turning back if that's how we see things. If there's no turning back, violence is the inevitable result. If the people promoting this rhetoric understand that is the end result and that is what they are preparing for, then so be it, but there should at least be some reconciliation of the truth within that. If you see a different version of how this can go that isn't violent, then I have to wonder how someone reconciles that vision while using that rhetoric.
In no case am I arguing that fascists should propagate or just give them free reign to do as they please, all I'm saying is that my perspective is, if you desire a potential peaceful outcome, I don't think that approach to becoming intolerant of the person behind either the disdained or hateful message is going to achieve that outcome. If you've given up hope that any peaceful outcome for the future can happen, then by all means keep calling all republicans fascist nazis. We can be intolerant of what they wish to achieve without being intolerant of the person, and to an extent that is what we expect of them at the bare minimum. What do you expect of a person who disagrees with you? To respect you, to not harm you, to not try to take away your rights etc. and while many Republicans may not be adhering to it, I think it becomes a negative cycle that has no way to change peacefully if others also participate in that behavior.
I respect your position. I think it's noble. But I also think that it's perhaps a bit naive. Or maybe instead a bit shortsighted. If calling people fascists is a form of violence, then I think...
I respect your position. I think it's noble. But I also think that it's perhaps a bit naive. Or maybe instead a bit shortsighted.
If calling people fascists is a form of violence, then I think it's important to realize that it's coming as a response to violence. If anything, It's a very understated response. The people who are calling out "fascist" the loudest are the people who are most at danger by these people being in power. You don't even have to wait because there are already people who are suffering because of their leadership policies. Literally everyone who has seen any positive change in the past 100 years are looking to see that reverse. Personally, that terrifies me. I'm gay, and the stonewall riots were only 55 years ago. I don't want to go back to a world where I have to worry about being queer bashed for an innate quality of my existence. For the record, the last recorded lynching in the United States was 1981.
For sure, the things you are saying make a lot of sense on an individual level. People can be reasoned with. But when talking about a collective level, things get very scary very fast. You can't reason with a mob. Letting fascism grow is undoubtedly going to result in more people dying. This is something that no reasonable person should allow to happen. I would say that calling out fascists - especially when they are public figures like Donald Trump or his congressional fan club - is quite literally the least that we can do.
To put things in a more poetic manner, if calling out fascists is a form of violence, then it is only fair to say that we are already at war.
And Matthew Shepherd was beaten, tortured and left to die in 1998 for being gay. And if we leave the specific term to the suffering of Black Americans, Ahmaud Arbery was essentially lynched in...
For the record, the last recorded lynching in the United States was 1981.
And Matthew Shepherd was beaten, tortured and left to die in 1998 for being gay.
And if we leave the specific term to the suffering of Black Americans, Ahmaud Arbery was essentially lynched in 2020 (it was 4 years ago?!).
That's along the lines of what I'm trying to convey, and what prompted it was the comment I responded to saying that it's dangerous to see the circumstances that way without realizing the inherent...
To put things in a more poetic manner, if calling out fascists is a form of violence, then it is only fair to say that we are already at war.
That's along the lines of what I'm trying to convey, and what prompted it was the comment I responded to saying that it's dangerous to see the circumstances that way without realizing the inherent danger of it. If calling out fascists is a form of violence, and that means we're at war, then we should stop pretending like we're not. I realize that you aren't agreeing that calling people fascist nazis is rhetoric of violence, but that phrase is basically what I was trying to express.
Literally everyone who has seen any positive change in the past 100 years are looking to see that reverse
Right, and this is what part of what I'm trying to convey. After all that progress, now we're looking at going backwards, not forwards, and somehow people keep responding to me like I'm the problem because I'm trying to highlight that we're participating in a negative cycle that is possibly contributing to that reversal of progress. Why is it that 10-15 years after the rise of smartphones and more immediate and common access to the internet and social media by the general populace we're talking about the reversal of improvements that happened? Is it not more than just a coincidence that we're all just words on a screen now, if even that, that everyone is treated with less humanity to them than before because we interact through a medium that carries so little of that humanity in it? Is it not more than a coincidence that some of the people who have responded to me say that they don't see every republican as a fascist nazi and they can have relatively peaceful interactions with republicans they know in person, yet seemingly not so much online? Is it not a coincidence that the news and information people gather is a bubble of similar ideas, more groupthink and less dialoguing from different viewpoints? Why the rise of all of these things and the sudden and stark trend of reversing progress that you speak of?
Why is it that we can see how Israel attacking Iran military leadership in Syria and then Iran responding, and then Israel responding, and then Iran responding, as a negative cycle that is an escalation of violence regardless of who you see at fault for starting it or who is right or wrong for continuing to respond, but somehow if I try to say that moderating a response to violent rhetoric with less violent rhetoric is a possible means to avoiding violent outcomes, that I'm somehow the opposition? And no, I'm not interested in having a conversation about Israel and Iran or debating who is responsible or who isn't or who is in the right or who isn't, that isn't the point at all. The point is that we can look at that situation no matter what perspective you have of it and see the cycle and the outcome if that cycle is continued.
I find it quite compelling that simply arguing that using rhetoric that dehumanizes people is violent is somehow so controversial to garner the amount of responses I have. Yes, I get that it's a response to other people using similar or worse rhetoric to dehumanize, but how is it making anything better? This response doesn't seem to be dwindling their numbers but only growing them.
I think I might be a bit confused about what you are trying to say; I don't understand if you are trying to say that we shouldn't be calling people fascists or if you're just trying to point out...
I think I might be a bit confused about what you are trying to say; I don't understand if you are trying to say that we shouldn't be calling people fascists or if you're just trying to point out that the fact that people are doing so is accelerating the pace of our journey towards a civil war.
More so the latter, but presumably anyone who thinks that puts them on the pace for civil war would also be saying that you shouldn't do something that potentially leads to that. That seems...
More so the latter, but presumably anyone who thinks that puts them on the pace for civil war would also be saying that you shouldn't do something that potentially leads to that. That seems consistent to me. Though I hedge that a bit by not necessarily placing a value judgement on it in the sense that everyone has a limit for what they are willing to tolerate before they are willing to fight. So I don't cast judgement on someone who has been oppressed by Republican leadership or Trump or will potentially be oppressed by them should they gain even more power if they instead have an outlook that fighting is the way forward, but instead I get the impression that people don't want violence however they use rhetoric that I think contributes to the cycle that will lead to violence and I'm simply trying to say that if they don't want violence they should replace that rhetoric with something that doesn't contribute to the cycle of escalating rhetoric of violence. If they view violence as inevitable, then I don't blame them for fighting back.
Half your responses are because you conflated cancelling a subscription (which multiple people did over this coverage) with the outcome of intolerant people being justified and ultimately shunned....
Half your responses are because you conflated cancelling a subscription (which multiple people did over this coverage) with the outcome of intolerant people being justified and ultimately shunned.
So the intolerant become more intolerant because they have no exposure to other ideas because they moved off to their own bubble where the same thing happens in their bubble. Not to mention their intolerance becomes further justified because now they're the ones not being tolerated
I've commented about how dehumanization is absolutely unacceptable and a line I won't cross before and not had any pushback at all.
I’m confused by this statement. We essentially did bomb them into submission? Are you saying they should have been removed before that?
In Nazi Germany not everyone supported the Nazi party. There will always be people who don’t toe the line. The solution to the Nazi party was not to bomb Germany off the face of the earth, it was to remove the people responsible for the atrocities and then deprogram the populace who supported them.
I’m confused by this statement. We essentially did bomb them into submission?
Are you saying they should have been removed before that?
A history aside: Bret Devereaux has argued that strategic airpower doesn’t win wars on its own, and of course the Allies had huge forces on the ground. They did try: On the other hand:
A history aside: Bret Devereaux has argued that strategic airpower doesn’t win wars on its own, and of course the Allies had huge forces on the ground. They did try:
First, the accuracy to enable pin-point targeting of industrial facilities simply wasn’t there. By way of example (drawn from the chapter on strategic bombing in Lee, Waging War (2016)), in 1944 the allies attempted from May to November in a series of raids to destroy an oil plant in Leuna, Germany. The plant was 1.2 square miles in total size and yet 84% of all bombs missed. In the USAAF, the problem of accuracy led to a shift in tactics, from aiming for factories to area bombing intended to ‘de-house workers,’ which is an incredibly bloodless euphemism for daylight bombing raids against dense urban housing. Consequently, industrial damage was far less than was hoped. Instead of falling, German production continued to rise – indeed, it tripled – until territorial losses to the advancing Soviet and Allied armies finally curtailed production. Overy argues, persuasively, I think, that bombing did serve to stunt German production growth, but the strategic effect of disabling German industry to the point that the war couldn’t be continued was wildly, overwhelmingly out of reach. The opponent could, after all, react, dispersing and protecting industry, limiting the impact of bombing campaigns. Industrial bombing thus achieved something, but it is unclear if it achieved anything to be worth the tremendous investment in vast fleets of bombers necessary to do it.
On the other hand:
Arguably the most successful example of strategic airpower use anywhere, ever is the Berlin Airlift, which was a pure airpower operation that comprehensively defeated a major Soviet strategic aim, and yet the U.S. Air Force is far more built around strategic bombing than it is around strategic humanitarian airlift (it does the latter, but the Army and the Navy, rather than the Air Force, tend to take the lead in long-distance humanitarian operations).
Oh I agree completely that you can’t win a war with just air power. More just pointing out that violence was used heavily until they surrendered. Mostly because they had completely lost the...
Oh I agree completely that you can’t win a war with just air power. More just pointing out that violence was used heavily until they surrendered. Mostly because they had completely lost the capacity to fight.
I mean I literally italicized the counterexample to your logically false argument. I offered a clear, realistic, and non-violent alternative that has worked before, both in terms of fascists...
I mean I literally italicized the counterexample to your logically false argument. I offered a clear, realistic, and non-violent alternative that has worked before, both in terms of fascists previously losing elections and in terms of fascists previously existing on the fringe of even right-wing politics. The suggestion that violence is a necessity is quite simply against the facts.
You seem to just really want to depict people opposed to fascists as being violent. On top of that you seem also imply with the "self fulfilling prophecy" idea that if you "incorrectly" say someone is a fascist, they're then justified to use violence against you, which is similarly absurd.
For the record, I don't even think 40% of the population are fascist, just that 40% might vote for fascists, in part because of absurd arguments, such as the above, which distract and discourage people from addressing the fascist problem in the country. And again, I'm talking about voting, not violence.
If you intend to do anything but provide cover for fascists like Trump, I leave that for your own self-evaluation.
What you italicized as the 'counterexample' I responded to by saying that every subsequent loss to the 'fascist' Republican party over the past couple decades has only given rise to Trump who has...
I mean I literally italicized the counterexample to your logically false argument. I offered a clear, realistic, and non-violent alternative that has worked before, both in terms of fascists previously losing elections and in terms of fascists previously existing on the fringe of even right-wing politics. The suggestion that violence is a necessity is quite simply against the facts.
What you italicized as the 'counterexample' I responded to by saying that every subsequent loss to the 'fascist' Republican party over the past couple decades has only given rise to Trump who has garnered some success in terms of his following after claiming an election was fraudulent. He was beaten at the ballot box, and then he claimed that it was fraudulent, and now he's back and potentially has more support than he did in the prior election, if polls are anything to go by. So what you are saying has simply led to an escalation of violent rhetoric from Trump and various supporters within that faction. So instead of acknowledging that I made a response to this, you simply pretended as though I said nothing at all and chose to make a snarky remark about how you italicized the solution.
I'm not going to respond to you any further because you're arguing in bad faith in terms of saying that I'm providing cover for fascists. That is a sign to me that you are not responding in good faith and are simply intending to align me with fascists in an attempt to nullify anything I say.
Except that it demonstrates how Uri used vague generality and "vibes" to try and make an objective point about how NPR was, in his view, not sufficiently covering all viewpoints. Details matter...
This doesn't sound that bad to me? It reminds me of Wes Mantooth in Anchorman saying, "You know those rating systems are flawed! They don't take into account houses that have more than two television sets and other things of that nature."
Except that it demonstrates how Uri used vague generality and "vibes" to try and make an objective point about how NPR was, in his view, not sufficiently covering all viewpoints. Details matter here. Writing, "they're all registered democrats" to prove there is a liberal bias is completely undermined when there are registered non-party voters, particularly in the upper echelons of the Org like Inskeep is. It means, at best, that the premise is totally wrong. Really it shows that Uri started the entire piece with a preconceived notion then selected anecdotes, which turned out to be false, to make his point. An irony considering the criticism.
It's sad, really, and he should not be taken seriously. After the OP article came out he resigned and I fully expect a persecution tour despite him having done it to himself.
Thanks for posting the substack response! It was a great counterpoint to the original. I'm left with much the same perception that I started with regarding Uri. He might have a point, but his...
Thanks for posting the substack response! It was a great counterpoint to the original.
I'm left with much the same perception that I started with regarding Uri. He might have a point, but his articulation has plenty of his own biases that obscure that point. I do believe that NPR has changed their coverage in ways that cause them to lose centrist readers, but there is a baby out with the bathwater element to Uri's claims.
I'm not sure I have much to say on the rest, but this has come up twice now. I listen to NPR rarely. I know many people who listen every day. I recall, vividly, some discussions with various...
That may be why NPR does not generally use the term. I did a search at npr.org for the previous 90 days.
I'm not sure I have much to say on the rest, but this has come up twice now. I listen to NPR rarely. I know many people who listen every day. I recall, vividly, some discussions with various friends about some article talking about how NPR was going to stop using Latinx as much as they had been. This would've been last year, and well outside "the last 90 days".
Likewise, while I do not agree with many of the positions of the author of the original article, I do not think it's apples to apples to pull last 90 days, when his complaints have been, supposedly, occurring for much longer than that.
That was my recollection as well. The New York Times and NPR are my two main news sources, in that order. However, I recognize each of their biases, and in fact try to catch their biases as I go...
That was my recollection as well.
The New York Times and NPR are my two main news sources, in that order. However, I recognize each of their biases, and in fact try to catch their biases as I go through my daily reading. When I feel I need to, I get a third source to round out my coverage.
It should be fairly clear to any regular reader that NPR skews liberal, and skews to an urban, affluent -leaning audience. I spent years living in rural America, and there is little in the way of NPR (or really, NYT) coverage that reflects the day to day concerns of rural America. But between the two, I definitely feel like the NYT's does a better job of covering partisan issues in a less biased fashion, even though it also skews left.
NPR is free to do what it wants, but I do wish it would improve their coverage of partisan events if it wants to be taken seriously on such issues.
I remember a long NYT's piece that gave a blow by blow re-cap of the Hunter-Biden issue for those out of the loop, basically saying it's not as big a deal as Republicans make it to be, but it is a bigger deal than Democrats cop to, and it does deserve some scrutiny. NYT's hasn't shied away from reporting on events just because they don't fit the left leaning narrative or Democrats political plans. I can't envision that sort of editorial board and intentionally and carefully balanced coverage or story coming out of NPR.
Things like the lab leak issue do actually matter, especially when we see a huge knee-jerk reaction to research funding agencies halting long running programs out of new fears that we could create the next pandemic. It would be nice to know if that really was a factor or not, as we look to have a public conversation about what research controls best balance the public interest.
So they can punish the guy for outside work activity, but his essay did strike me as having elements of truth to it, along with some of his own bias.
Meanwhile I cancelled my NYT subscription for their persistent biased reporting of trans youth healthcare. (Somehow treatment with incredibly high satisfaction rates, recommended by the major...
Meanwhile I cancelled my NYT subscription for their persistent biased reporting of trans youth healthcare. (Somehow treatment with incredibly high satisfaction rates, recommended by the major psychological and medical associations in the US, is now radical, dangerous, and being pushed on children. Oh here's a de-transitioned trans person and an anti-trans parent of a trans kid to speak for trans people. And we'll just keep publishing it with no thoughts, but I digress.)
NPR isn't perfect, but I tend to get thoughtful discussions on their more in depth shows and my station pays for shows I find particularly interesting. And genuinely thought provoking. I listened to a lawyer speak about the Crumbley parental cases and he really made me reconsider whether or not the verdicts were ultimately good law. Because he was right that affluent white parents will be the rare target, and it's much more likely that it will be used against poor, mostly Black and brown, parents and mostly in plea deals. And I really appreciated being given a good reason to rethink those verdicts.
It also helps that many of the shows are produced by local stations with local editorial standards. I may be listening to my local station but the show is from WBUR or WBEZ, etc. (and local station(s) have shows too). It keeps things mixed up and is such an improvement from my childhood of classical music all day.
Yeah, I've pretty much abandoned NYT over trans healthcare coverage and honestly will gladly do the same for other orgs. It's not the first or only thing they've been awful about but it definitely...
Yeah, I've pretty much abandoned NYT over trans healthcare coverage and honestly will gladly do the same for other orgs. It's not the first or only thing they've been awful about but it definitely was a big one.
It's not a topic I'm looking for faux-balanced coverage of either, because, as with it, so as with many issues, there are not two sides to the issue I consider remotely equal.
On the other hand, I value the NYT because it covers both sides of an issue, in long form, but without running story after story to drive or sustain a narrative. If there is a debate that is...
On the other hand, I value the NYT because it covers both sides of an issue, in long form, but without running story after story to drive or sustain a narrative. If there is a debate that is occurring, I want the NYT to present it to me, and that means learning about positions and views I disagree with. So long as NYT maintains the appropriate tone and structure of presenting what others have said, vs presenting their own opinion (other than opinion pieces), then I want to read about positions contrary to my own.
Additionally, I work in a space where these charged topics can come to the fore unexpectedly. Whether that is IRB issues or regulatory changes driven by partisan politics, I need to be in the loop. Occasionally I get asked questions by policy makers and legislators. The NYT prepares me for that far better than any other paper or publication I've tried.
I do enjoy many of NPRs and Propublica stories, but they don't match the breadth of domestic and international coverage provided by the NYT.
That's my point though, on this topic, which is one I'm passably familiar with by being non-binary and working with trans youth as part of my job, they're presenting this deep skepticism of trans...
On the other hand, I value the NYT because it covers both sides of an issue, in long form, but without running story after story to drive or sustain a narrative. If there is a debate that is occurring, I want the NYT to present it to me, and that means learning about positions and views I disagree with. So long as NYT maintains the appropriate tone and structure of presenting what others have said, vs presenting their own opinion (other than opinion pieces), then I want to read about positions contrary to my own.
That's my point though, on this topic, which is one I'm passably familiar with by being non-binary and working with trans youth as part of my job, they're presenting this deep skepticism of trans youth healthcare as the only point of view, by using a tone of concern but then using only the trans-skeptic sources. And despite all of the feedback from journalists, the trans community, doctors, and the data itself, the stories keep coming from that perspective.
They have lost my trust in their reporting if they are willing to continue to publish what is incredibly biased material that is actively harming trans children. If the data showed incredibly high percentages of regret among trans adults who were treated as children, or children with seriously adverse outcomes, I would be 100% in favor of reevaluating trans medical care. That's what led to the reevaluation of conversion therapy. This is not a desire not to get different views. But if I can't trust them to report accurately on this topic that I have some passing familiarity on, how can I trust the editors in the New York Times that their reporting is accurate on other topics? And cancelling is the only way I can effectively communicate that.
Additionally, I work in a space where these charged topics can come to the fore unexpectedly. Whether that is IRB issues or regulatory changes driven by partisan politics, I need to be in the loop. Occasionally I get asked questions by policy makers and legislators. The NYT prepares me for that far better than any other paper or publication I've tried.
I do enjoy many of NPRs and Propublica stories, but they don't match the breadth of domestic and international coverage provided by the NYT.
I do think it's important to be informed, and I read a variety of news sources when I can. But I can't justify supporting the NYT through my subscription fees. NYT doesnt cover what I need for my work questions from policy makers either so it's not a work tool..
Where I consider NPR useful is that I'm not locked into one editorial newsroom - I may get information from 1A (NPR), The Twenty First (Illinois Public Media), Here and Now (NPR and WBUR), BBC World Service, and my local news show, and others from individual stations and APM.
It's not the end all be all but it's better than 24 hour news, local TV news and Sinclair radio (which may be a low bar but I think it's significantly better than those sources). I do seek other newspapers, and long form journalism but they serve different purposes to me than radio news does anyway.
I think it's important for people to support the journalism they want to see, and the NYT doesn't need people on the Internet to come to its defense. That said, are you sure all of the articles...
I think it's important for people to support the journalism they want to see, and the NYT doesn't need people on the Internet to come to its defense. That said, are you sure all of the articles you are thinking of are actual investigative stories, or were they opinion pieces? I remember reading a handful of investigative pieces that I could see people close to the issue struggling with, but very few and balanced with investigative coverage of the harms to trans issues, such as the Idaho ban.
The opinion pieces are another story, which have been more in number and more, well, opinionated. While it is fair criticism to say that the NYT is giving those pieces a platform, the times gives lots of opinions a platform ranging from why we shouldn't fund Ukraine, to why the times coverage of a topic was problematic. They let a wide array of perspectives in as opinion pieces, and they disclaim that the views are only those of the authors.
I'm also passably familiar with trans, and more generally, LGBTQ+ issues having family and friends who are gay and trans. And I don't recall a sustained negative series of investigative pieces about trans care or issues. I do recall one or two that could be interpreted negatively, though I didn't see them that way. However, the vast majority of what I can find are opinion pieces.
Edit: for example, here is their gender Identity section. Everyone has a different perspective, bit I don't see that list, even with the guest essays, as a hit list against trans rights.
The issues I have started in February of last year (not saying there have never been things before) with the coverage of Jamie Reed as a "whistleblower." I really don't know anything about...
The issues I have started in February of last year (not saying there have never been things before) with the coverage of Jamie Reed as a "whistleblower."
I really don't know anything about Fair.org besides a quick look at their About Me indicating they're a "progressive media watchdog org," but this is a relatively accurate summary of my feelings on everything around that issue. (And indicates this is a pattern as well.) Bari Weiss may have left the NYT but afaik they've stood by their reporting.
Since I don't currently have a sub, I can't read most of the articles, but I'll clarify that the short news pieces are generally fine. But the in-depth reporting, which is the thing I can't get elsewhere, is where I have consistently had issues. I would love for them not to platform some of their guest essayists, but that's not really what I'm considering.
If there's a particular article on the Idaho ban for example, I'd be interested in reading a gift link - the other news articles I saw on the SCOTUS ruling were pretty thorough but I haven't dug into the Idaho ban specifically (bad LGBTQ news can be a bit overwhelming). (Did find Erin Reed's coverage of the original ruling after writing this though.)
I've read through the page you shared previously, and from what I can tell they are really focused on a single NYT article. They mention one or two other articles, but the vast majority of their...
I've read through the page you shared previously, and from what I can tell they are really focused on a single NYT article. They mention one or two other articles, but the vast majority of their criticism is focused on the following article. (It is a little hard to follow given how they cite the times articles they talk about.)
The FAIR page broadly criticizes the "both sides" nature of the times coverage, as well as the times not being sufficiently critical of the whistleblower. However, for a story about the politicization of a small clinic being overwhelmed in the delivery of a nascent specialty, I think it does ok. The times isn't trying to lobby for change, they are trying to present events that happened and the context they happened in. And I get why an activist organization would take issue with that. In the news world, if you don't make everyone at least a little angry, you probably missed something.
Here are some of the opening paragraphs of the times piece that frames the discussion:
But as the number of these patients soared, the clinic became overwhelmed — and soon found itself at the center of a political storm. In February, Jamie Reed, a former case manager, went public with explosive allegations, claiming in a whistle-blower complaint that doctors at the clinic had hastily prescribed hormones with lasting effects to adolescents with pressing psychiatric problems.
Ms. Reed’s claims thrust the clinic between warring factions. Missouri’s attorney general, a Republican, opened an investigation, and lawmakers in Missouri and other states trumpeted her allegations when they passed a slew of bans on gender treatments for minors. L.G.B.T.Q. advocates have pointed to parents who disputed her account in local news reports and to a Washington University investigation that determined her claims were “unsubstantiated.”
The reality was more complex than what was portrayed by either side of the political battle, according to interviews with dozens of patients, parents, former employees and local health providers, as well as more than 300 pages of documents shared by Ms. Reed.
Which feels like a fair framing of what happened. There was controversy, elements of the claims were unsubstantiated, and the reality was complex.
They go on to further frame the credibility of the whistle blower, and the core question raised by the investigation:
Some of Ms. Reed’s claims could not be confirmed, and at least one included factual inaccuracies. But others were corroborated, offering a rare glimpse into one of the 100 or so clinics in the United States that have been at the center of an intensifying fight over transgender rights.
The turmoil in St. Louis underscores one of the most challenging questions in gender care for young people today: How much psychological screening should adolescents receive before they begin gender treatments?
Different folks will read these paragraphs differently, but it seems a fair statement to make. The whistleblower had a mixture of corroborated and debunked claims, and a part of the public policy debate on minor care for gender transitions has been about the amount screening and care given.
It's a long article, but one last bit that I think is important to the FAIR criticism is where they thoroughly report on a case where the whistleblower was wrong:
Ms. Reed’s affidavit describes a patient whose liver was damaged after taking bicalutamide, a drug that blocks testosterone. It makes a specific claim about what a parent had written to the child’s doctors: “The parent said they were not the type to sue, but ‘this could be a huge P.R. problem for you.’”
The parent, Heidi, a data scientist in the St. Louis area who requested anonymity because of privacy concerns, said she was stunned to read this “twisted” description of her teenage daughter’s case.
Heidi’s daughter indeed had liver damage, a rare side effect of bicalutamide. But she had been taking the drug for a year, records show, and had a complicated medical history. She was immunocompromised, and experienced liver problems only after getting Covid and taking another drug with possible liver side effects.
In a message to doctors that was shared with The Times, Heidi actually wrote, “In our world, it’s like a P.R. nightmare” — referring to tensions in her family about the gender treatments. The message did not mention anything about suing the clinic. To the contrary, it said: “We don’t regret any decision.”
Ms. Reed said that she learned about the case from Ms. Hamon, who helped compile examples for the affidavit, and that she regretted citing the case when she had not seen the medical record herself.
“My daughter’s situation was exploited,” Heidi said, noting that the hospital told her that her records would be shared with the state.
That is pretty clear and through coverage of the potential political agenda of the whistleblower twisting the facts. The article spends a fair amount of column inches both confirming and disconfirming the claims.
I do understand why people close to trans or progressive issues wouldn't like the coverage. It strikes at the heart of their work in a very personal way, and it's being used to advance a political agenda.
However, to me, as someone who works with public health research and policy, I see a call for better resourcing care, so these clinics aren't overwhelmed, and we learn how to develop more specialists, etc. These sorts of articles, that cover all the facets of a situation, are important at bringing deficiencies in our systems to light, even when they give coverage to poor faith counter points, because that is the obstacle that we will face in trying to make things better. As they say, forewarned is forearmed. I would rather hear the political talking points in a times article, than in a policy session allocating funds for medical research.
That said, I'm not trying to argue that the times is the pinnacle of coverage on these issues. Just that I didn't find their investigative coverage to have an ongoing narrative that skewes too much any one way. In this story in particular, I don't think the FAIR criticism really holds up, because the times isn't an activist organization, and the times isn't running these topics week after week. And as far as a primary stop for a broad array of coverage, I haven't found a better source yet.
It's difficult no longer having the sub to cite things anymore. I was having a lot more of these discussions last year when they came out. I feel the focus of the coverage is often on the...
It's difficult no longer having the sub to cite things anymore. I was having a lot more of these discussions last year when they came out. I feel the focus of the coverage is often on the exceptions without really noting how rare they are. And like I said the Fair.org link was the best quick summary of that case article and the follow ups (as well as noting recent past coverage concerns from the prior year) that I could find at a quick glance.
In general I have found the "concerned" tone of the coverage to sort of "cover" for the overarching implication that youth trans healthcare is mismanaged and is harmful. I agree that you can take the message of needing more resources but I don't think that's what most folks got. And trans voices are almost never highlighted on these articles, they're often the brief "other side" given little in the way of inches.
I won't pretend to be unbiased and I won't say the NYT isn't the best single source for what you're looking for. I definitely end up cobbling together my news from multiple sources.
But in NPR's case we have one Sr Editor with concerns, and in the Times' case we have 200 contributors raising concerns over the coverage. (This article does explain some of the history as well.)
Ultimately I'd just rather not support them right now, I thought it worth mentioning because it's always interesting to see what types of bias lead to folks being turned off of particular outlets and my experience happened to be the reverse of yours (I think, unless I've lost track of this thread)
No worries, and thanks for the good discussion. We definitely meandered around. I definitely agree with the lack of actual trans interviews/voices in media. Take care, and have a great day!
No worries, and thanks for the good discussion. We definitely meandered around. I definitely agree with the lack of actual trans interviews/voices in media.
I think most of this comment is well-grounded and well-written, but framing this as "trans activists" not liking the NYT coverage is doing something many places do as part of biased anti-trans...
I do understand why trans activists wouldn't like the coverage. It strikes at the heart of their work in a very personal way, and it's being used to advance a political agenda.
I think most of this comment is well-grounded and well-written, but framing this as "trans activists" not liking the NYT coverage is doing something many places do as part of biased anti-trans coverage -- framing all trans people and their opinions as "activism". Often "news" pieces will do this while simultaneously referring to their anti-trans sources as "concerned parents" or "feminists". I don't think you're intentionally doing that here, but as someone who has had to endure a lot of bad coverage of trans issues by virtue of being trans and needing to keep up with where and what I'm allowed to be/do, it strikes a nerve to have issues with biased coverage of trans issues framed as being criticized by trans activists rather than trans people.
Thank you for pointing this out, that is something I haven't heard before. In this sort of situation, what would be a better wording? I worry that replacing "trans activists" with "trans person"...
Thank you for pointing this out, that is something I haven't heard before.
In this sort of situation, what would be a better wording? I worry that replacing "trans activists" with "trans person" wouldn't be quite right. Someone might be an activist, but not trans, and someone could be trans, and not find fault with the article on the way I suggest.
Would something like "I understand why people close to trans issues" be a better wording?
The NYT has sometimes done good longform journalism on trans interests like the story How Ben got his Penis, but I broadly agree they strike a "just asking questions" skeptic tone that often feels...
The NYT has sometimes done good longform journalism on trans interests like the story How Ben got his Penis, but I broadly agree they strike a "just asking questions" skeptic tone that often feels disrespectful and dismissive. Unfortunately, even that really good in-depth story about one of the best SRS clinics in the world (NYU Langone) made the mistake of including a link to TransBucket which encouraged brigading to a previously niche website... That caused the author to end up getting harassment and death threats from both transphobes and trans people :/
The general pattern with the NYT is that on any topic you’re only passingly familiar with their coverage does tend to do a good job of giving you a cursory enough overview on the subject to be...
The general pattern with the NYT is that on any topic you’re only passingly familiar with their coverage does tend to do a good job of giving you a cursory enough overview on the subject to be able to evaluate what’s going on in the world.
But on any subject that you have any level of depth of expertise in it’s always going to seem pretty dumb, seem like it’s surfacing a lot of “conventional wisdom” that’s based on misinterpretations of facts and sources, and making major oversights. But this is really just a challenge for journalism as a discipline. Journalists have a skill set that revolves around finding a story and talking to the acknowledge subject matter experts on it. They’re not subject matter experts themselves. So almost everything they do is going to come from the position/perspective of a general person on the street who is missing a lot of the underlying foundational knowledge and experience of the subject to really be able to make sense of it.
But that’s still a valuable perspective to have because that tells you what the general consensus in society is on the topic, including among the people who make the important decisions in industry, corporate board rooms, and political chambers.
I have a decent amount of expertise on topics in international relations, tech policy, as well as history and religion and spirituality as they pertain to India. Let me tell you, all Times coverage on these topics are pretty damn bad and bring with them a ton of biased narratives and fundamentally incorrect frameworks for understanding key elements of the story. But I don’t really know how anyone is supposed to actually be able to teach those topics under the constraints of writing a newspaper article, most of it would require a graduate school seminar to make people unlearn stuff they’ve learned. But for a newspaper you’re constrained to about 1 broadsheet page, at most, and have to write at an 8th grade level. That’s a tall order.
Yeah and I do get that, it's more that to me this specific coverage, because of the author, because of the editing, because of whatever, has fallen into the trap of pretty much only talking to the...
Yeah and I do get that, it's more that to me this specific coverage, because of the author, because of the editing, because of whatever, has fallen into the trap of pretty much only talking to the skeptics and ignoring the experts without making it obvious how much of an outlier, say, de-transitioned trans people who begrudge their original transition are (vs people who de-transitioned due to stigma or cost or whose identities have fluctuated over time)
I don't have a broader answer either other than being able to identify and rely on experts. That's definitely harder when other countries are involved.
You give a great articulation to the value I find in the times articles. Namely, they tell me what the layperson thinks or knows, and gives me a starting point to go deeper on topics that seem...
You give a great articulation to the value I find in the times articles. Namely, they tell me what the layperson thinks or knows, and gives me a starting point to go deeper on topics that seem important to me, society, etc. Knowing what people outside of my bubble think is hugely important to me.
This is why I’m somewhat sympathetic to “both sides” reporting. It’s superficial, but i at least it gets some facts out there. In-depth investigations would be better, but time, resources, and...
This is why I’m somewhat sympathetic to “both sides” reporting. It’s superficial, but i at least it gets some facts out there. In-depth investigations would be better, but time, resources, and expertise are limited.
Yeah I definitely didn’t think his article was all nonissues, but my issue was with the manner of voicing his concerns. An open letter isn’t a bad idea when people are blowing you off, but why not...
Yeah I definitely didn’t think his article was all nonissues, but my issue was with the manner of voicing his concerns. An open letter isn’t a bad idea when people are blowing you off, but why not have an open letter distributed within NPR? It sounds like either superiors blew him off, or discussed the issues and decided they didn’t want to make his requested changes.
The way he went about it made his opinion the authority on what is wrong with NPR. Nobody else was allowed to determine whether they had other issues or discuss whether there were good reasons behind the decisions he disagrees with.
It sounds like he has discussed things internally, without success. Whether that means his points are falling on deaf ears, or his points are flawed, I can't say. But NPR has a pretty big bullhorn...
It sounds like he has discussed things internally, without success. Whether that means his points are falling on deaf ears, or his points are flawed, I can't say. But NPR has a pretty big bullhorn to communicate their own narrative if they choose. Given the employer-employee relationship at play this feels more like a truth to power situation, with his union job being the only thread keeping him in place, and tenuously given the final notice letter.
"his essay did strike me as having elements of truth to it". Heh. I think that was the problem with even the editor who wrote that article's take. How things "strike you" is meaningless. There are...
"his essay did strike me as having elements of truth to it". Heh. I think that was the problem with even the editor who wrote that article's take. How things "strike you" is meaningless.
There are lots of services out there that use data based methods to investigate media bias though. Use something like that and not your gut.
The problem with this approach is that bias is at least partly subjective and emotional, maybe even spiritual. It’s also dynamic and contextual. As such it’s hard to do any kind of meaningful and...
The problem with this approach is that bias is at least partly subjective and emotional, maybe even spiritual. It’s also dynamic and contextual.
As such it’s hard to do any kind of meaningful and generalized statistical analysis that applies to more than the analysts own biases (at best).
He definitely seems to have tried, in good faith, to bring up the issues internally. I think that justifies his actions to some extent. But we don't know what the conversations actually were. I...
He definitely seems to have tried, in good faith, to bring up the issues internally. I think that justifies his actions to some extent.
But we don't know what the conversations actually were. I imagine it's a hard topic at NPR where the consensus is likely that the majority of the republican party has lost its mind. To the degree that giving them representation is more problematic than the lack thereof.
It's not surprising that there aren't any (open) republicans at NPR. Ten years ago, before the republican party became the party of Trump, it might have been different, but these days it's really hard for anyone who's paying attention to be a republican. And of course everyone at NPR is paying attention.
I mean what is the answer to "there aren't enough republicans and NPR?" Hiring based on political affiliation?
I can imagine a meeting where everyone considered that rabbit hole a waste of time.
While you're right, we don't know how the conversations went, I still don't think it's fair to say he "jumped to the top of the ladder" based on the evidence we have. Maybe he was a complete...
While you're right, we don't know how the conversations went, I still don't think it's fair to say he "jumped to the top of the ladder" based on the evidence we have. Maybe he was a complete asshole or it's all lies, but the only information we have on the subject is his, and it says he most certainly did not do that.
I do agree that it's not surprising there are no republicans at NPR, but I think that's not exactly what he's trying to say. The issue is that republican has become a word that basically identifies two near totally different groups pre and post trump. Lots of people use the term as if it only means one, but the simple truth is the one the republicans (or some of them) have been afraid to face, which is that there's been a bifurcation of the party.
The "we must win at any cost" nonsense has really just dragged out and empowered trump. The republicans could be halfway through a fucked schism by now (in which yes, they will not win major elections), and figuring out where the party really lies.
Instead we've got this pile of "not fully conservative, but not nearly as liberal as the dems claim they are" group of people, and it's a large pile. I don't think those voices are represented much at all anymore within NPR, and that is a loss.
To clarify, I'm not the "jumped to the top of the ladder" poster. I don't think there's anything terribly wrong with what he did, ethically speaking. Maybe a dick move, but that's for the people...
To clarify, I'm not the "jumped to the top of the ladder" poster. I don't think there's anything terribly wrong with what he did, ethically speaking. Maybe a dick move, but that's for the people at NPR to judge.
I completely agree that we'd all benefit from expanding the umbrella to make space for near right conservative views. There's not really a place for them in the current republican party, and the left doesn't seem to want them either.
It’s at least possible that that’s because their perspectives are outmoded and need to pass in history. The thing about progress is that it requires folks to be progressive. The folks in the...
There's not really a place for them in the current republican party, and the left doesn't seem to want them either
It’s at least possible that that’s because their perspectives are outmoded and need to pass in history.
The thing about progress is that it requires folks to be progressive.
The folks in the middle meed to get more progressive, and the folks at the far right margin need to be seen and heard, soothed, and then shown why progress is better.
To relate it to tfa, this editor should be heard, and a realignment perhaps at nor to help those dragging to be heard, but their views don’t deserve equal weight becaus their approaches are leading us to a second dark ages filled with environmental calamity and economic and political disparity.
I didn't get the impression that he was pushing for more Republicans to be hired, but rather, that the leadership strives for a sort of institutional disconfirmation of individual biases. A clear...
I didn't get the impression that he was pushing for more Republicans to be hired, but rather, that the leadership strives for a sort of institutional disconfirmation of individual biases. A clear example is not running a newsworthy story because of its political impact. Other left leaning publications have managed this balance better than NPR, at least in my opinion.
I can't be the first one to speculate that Uri Berliner was recruited for this. He's a radio guy and he's now primed to start his own podcast. At least so far, he's following the right-wing...
Exemplary
I can't be the first one to speculate that Uri Berliner was recruited for this. He's a radio guy and he's now primed to start his own podcast. At least so far, he's following the right-wing podcast origin story template of Jordan Peterson, Bret Weinstein, and Bari Weiss (who published the NPR piece) where you manufacture some kind of "cancellation" stunt, and then get rich by joining the ranks of "anti-woke" podcasts, substacks, and the like.
He'll also no doubt make the rounds as a guest on Joe Rogan and various other podcasts in the same sphere of grifters that repeat ad nauseam right-wing talking points like Hunter Biden's laptop, the COVID lab leak, DEI / "wokeness" concerns.
Aside from the above speculation, the substance of his claims about NPR were stretched pretty thin to tailor it to a pretty specific audience. The facts were secondary to confirming the biases of the readers. This includes bias about bias in journalism itself, and the weakness of the evidence seems to get lost among various assumptions about what bias is present in journalism, what "diversity" of views is supposed to be included, etc.
If you do a google search with "site:npr.org", you can confirm that NPR did in fact have coverage of the Hunter Biden laptop and the COVID lab leak. Every place they discussed the "Don't Say Gay" bill, they used "so-called" or attributed the slogan to people opposed, in line with pretty typical journalistic standards. Even if you follow the links included in the story, it's hand-waving in the direction of "this is generally 'woke' so it must be bad", not examples of journalistic malfeasance.
In general, sweeping generalizations about "the (mainstream) media" or even the coverage of specific organizations should be treated with skepticism regardless of where it's coming from, because it's often someone looking to capture your attention for their own benefit.
It does follow the template of some previous stories, which is why I found it surprising and newsworthy that a guy who worked at NPR for 25 years would write that essay. I didn’t know anything...
It does follow the template of some previous stories, which is why I found it surprising and newsworthy that a guy who worked at NPR for 25 years would write that essay. I didn’t know anything about him before seeing a story about it (on the NPR website) and it would be interesting to know more. Maybe he will write about it more now that he resigned?
But I’m also surprised at the lengths that people will go to discredit him, sometimes even making stuff up, rather than admit that he might be a respectable, non-nutty journalist (a Democrat!) with a contrary opinion.
To me, that’s interesting, even if the essay he wrote is more about his subjective impression of how things went than hard facts. I would prefer more facts, but people do write subjective opinion pieces sometimes.
Why is there so much conflict in American news organizations about this? I would like a better explanation than “everyone who writes negatively about diversity initiatives is some kind of nut.”
I feel like this is an issue that needs to be addressed at several major news outlets too. There is 'diversity' only in the outward characteristics of the reporters but not in their viewpoint. We...
At NPR, some of Berliner's colleagues have weighed in online against his claim that the network has focused on diversifying its workforce without a concomitant commitment to diversity of viewpoint.
I feel like this is an issue that needs to be addressed at several major news outlets too. There is 'diversity' only in the outward characteristics of the reporters but not in their viewpoint. We just get used to certain outlets only presenting from one viewpoint or the other, but balanced reporting used to be the gold star for good journalism - where you never read a story from a single viewpoint and every article/story at least gave a chance for an opposing view out of respect for both sides. Now we have talking heads telling us the story from their perspective, followed by other commentators telling us why they are right. Where's the critical thinking and balance?
There is a diversity in viewpoint from the reporters’ unique experiences; but just not a political/partisan diversity. Partly, I think it’s due to the GOP going off the rails in recent years and...
There is a diversity in viewpoint from the reporters’ unique experiences; but just not a political/partisan diversity. Partly, I think it’s due to the GOP going off the rails in recent years and partly to self-selecting listenership (your average GOP voter is listening to conservative talk radio, not NPR; plus the bulk of NPR’s funding comes from grants and donations from more liberal-leaning folks and orgs). I do think that NPR could do better at getting perspectives from Trump-supporters (they do okay with guest-speakers like David French and Jonah Goldberg, but those are more pre-2010 GOP folks), but ultimately they will be subjected to criticism if they start spouting bullshit.
Honestly my biggest issue is that I don’t get a lot of breadth in content. I learn more about what’s going on in the world in the five minute snippets at the top of the hour than in the rest of the program.
Oh I feel this in my bones. "The fighting Gaza has intensified as Israel ramps up their ground operations.... The world of traditional Japanese ceramics has been roiled the past few months by...
Honestly my biggest issue is that I don’t get a lot of breadth in content. I learn more about what’s going on in the world in the five minute snippets at the top of the hour than in the rest of the program.
Oh I feel this in my bones.
"The fighting Gaza has intensified as Israel ramps up their ground operations....
The world of traditional Japanese ceramics has been roiled the past few months by allegations of counterfeits being sold at the most prestigious vendors. We'll spend the next hour diving into the history, scandal and the fallout with our guest..."
That's hilarious. I love how NPR will go deep on things. I know more about the economics of Christmas trees than I ever expected. But there is a reason my primary for scope is NYT, and then...
That's hilarious. I love how NPR will go deep on things. I know more about the economics of Christmas trees than I ever expected. But there is a reason my primary for scope is NYT, and then selectively NPR to get a rounder picture of a topic.
Giving fair coverage to Trump folks is tough because, well, they’re inveterate liars. So if your role as a journalistic enterprise is to give people the facts and contexts to make sense of the...
Giving fair coverage to Trump folks is tough because, well, they’re inveterate liars. So if your role as a journalistic enterprise is to give people the facts and contexts to make sense of the world you’re in, just letting Trumpists talk works against that goal. But they’re also influential figures in the world so people do need to know what they’re thinking, so how much do you need to editorially signpost that this guy is a liar who has sworn fealty to a liar?
On some level all political coverage has this problem, because all politicians lie to some extent. And I think political coverage in the US in general has fallen into a trap of presenting partisan spin as “political analysis” and expecting to just put spin from “both sides” up and let people figure it out. But all this has ended up doing is creating a pervasive climate of bullshit that has eroded trust in journalism and the political system as a whole. I don’t know a real way around it when a prominent political movement actually goes off the rails into kookoo town.
Chapins comments at the end about diversity of viewpoint are I think central to the disagreement between Berliner and I guess the upper management or editorial staff of NPR. What it means to...
"Among the questions we'll ask of ourselves each month: Did we capture the diversity of this country — racial, ethnic, religious, economic, political geographic, etc — in all of its complexity and in a way that helped listeners and readers recognize themselves and their communities?" Chapin wrote in the memo. "Did we offer coverage that helped them understand — even if just a bit better — those neighbors with whom they share little in common?"
Chapins comments at the end about diversity of viewpoint are I think central to the disagreement between Berliner and I guess the upper management or editorial staff of NPR. What it means to support a healthy diversity of viewpoints.
I will admit I have kinda stopped listening to NPR lately, but I think it has less to do with me being put off by the woke agenda and more to do with me just not wanting to listen to the news as much anymore.
If I ever do listen to NPR these days it's Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, which is a lighthearted gameshow. Apocalypse fatigue has across the board reduced my normal news consumption habits, including NPR.
I had to go on a complete podcast diet for the sake of my mental health. There are a few I really miss, like American Prestige, because they were informative more informative and less doom and...
If I ever do listen to NPR these days it's Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, which is a lighthearted gameshow. Apocalypse fatigue has across the board reduced my normal news consumption habits, including NPR.
I had to go on a complete podcast diet for the sake of my mental health. There are a few I really miss, like American Prestige, because they were informative more informative and less doom and gloom, but I'm waiting to find a job before I re-up my subscription.
Feels to me like NPR just proved his point. It doesn’t matter if you’re a tenured, award winning journalist. If you publish journalism that’s counter-narrative to their mandate, you’re in trouble.
Feels to me like NPR just proved his point. It doesn’t matter if you’re a tenured, award winning journalist. If you publish journalism that’s counter-narrative to their mandate, you’re in trouble.
I read his article, when it first came out (I think it was a top post here on tildes?). I disagreed with him strongly. I thought he was wrong. He basically is saying "NPR is not Republican enough"...
I read his article, when it first came out (I think it was a top post here on tildes?). I disagreed with him strongly. I thought he was wrong. He basically is saying "NPR is not Republican enough" except in code words.
Anyways no comments on whether being wrong deserves a suspension or not. That is up to NPR to decide.
It seems like he said it pretty plainly: I find it odd how people dance around this issue. As a software engineer, I've worked on teams that were all guys, and although I don't think this was what...
It seems like he said it pretty plainly:
In recent years I’ve struggled to answer that question. 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.
I find it odd how people dance around this issue.
As a software engineer, I've worked on teams that were all guys, and although I don't think this was what anyone was aiming for, if you asked us "is there anything wrong with this," it's an easy and straightforward question to answer: yes, it's not ideal, and when hiring more people, we should try to do better.
The team I'm thinking of had five people. (One is gay, so we had some diversity in that respect.) If it were 87 people, well, something seems really wrong there? Software engineering has a skewed gender ratio, but women aren't that rare.
I would like to see people answer the question: do you think it's okay that NPR has 87 Democrats and no Republicans? Or, if this is a bad question to ask, explain what's wrong with it.
When the Republican party stops supporting hateful, regressive, and genuinely evil policies and leaders like Trump, maybe they will naturally get more representation in liberal news organizations....
Do you think it's okay that Vossische Zeitung has 87 SPD members and no Nazi party members? Or, if this is a bad question to ask, explain what's wrong with it.
When the Republican party stops supporting hateful, regressive, and genuinely evil policies and leaders like Trump, maybe they will naturally get more representation in liberal news organizations. The Republicans are the party of family separation at the border, election results denial, stochastic terror, insurrection, LGBT+ and women's rights erosion, obstruction, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. So is it really a surprise that so few journalists with actual integrity are registered Republicans?
This "fair and balanced", bothsides bullshit needs to fucking stop!
The idea that a reporter who is registered as a Republican is the equivalent of a Nazi is extreme and I simply don’t buy it. I don’t think Republicans necessarily support the terrible things you...
The idea that a reporter who is registered as a Republican is the equivalent of a Nazi is extreme and I simply don’t buy it. I don’t think Republicans necessarily support the terrible things you mentioned. (Example: Arnold Schwarzenegger. Pro-choice Republicans exist, though I don’t think they get elected anymore?)
This is the crux of the argument being repeated here. Most of the republicans I knew literally left the party when trump was picked. Some did not but have refused to vote trump. There is still a...
This is the crux of the argument being repeated here.
Most of the republicans I knew literally left the party when trump was picked. Some did not but have refused to vote trump.
There is still a very large gradient from the left to the right and people act like it’s not there.
I had not read this, so thanks for sharing it. Yes, it’s rather unclear what he actually did to determine those numbers and it’s unclear what’s really true. However, I’ll note that, reading...
I had not read this, so thanks for sharing it. Yes, it’s rather unclear what he actually did to determine those numbers and it’s unclear what’s really true.
However, I’ll note that, reading carefully, he doesn’t claim it to be a complete poll or a random sample? He found 87 Democrats. He didn’t find any Republicans. We don’t know who he asked, or how.
I made a bad assumption about what these numbers meant. I think the reporter writing that “debunking” might have made the same assumption?
It would be good to know what Beliner’s methodology was.
That's kind of the point, though. His job was as a senior editor at a major news organization. That sort of unfounded statement isn't something he'd let fly in an article he was editing and yet it...
However, I’ll note that, reading carefully, he doesn’t claim it to be a complete poll or a random sample? He found 87 Democrats. He didn’t find any Republicans. We don’t know who he asked, or how.
That's kind of the point, though. His job was as a senior editor at a major news organization. That sort of unfounded statement isn't something he'd let fly in an article he was editing and yet it appears here as an easily disprovable gotcha. Take all of the opinion and viewpoint out of it and it's just shoddy journalism for a publication that is not his employer that he did not seek comment for nor inform his employer per their "outside work" policies. A 5 day suspension is a slap on the wrist, and his own resignation is his choice.
If I had made a fool of myself by showing I wasn't actually capable of doing my job well while complaining all my coworkers sucked I'd probably resign, too.
Simply put: yes, even if that biases their coverage, which it obviously will/does, and that's even as someone left of these Democrats that has issues with some of their coverage. The only qualm I...
Do you think it's okay that NPR has 87 Democrats and no Republicans?
Simply put: yes, even if that biases their coverage, which it obviously will/does, and that's even as someone left of these Democrats that has issues with some of their coverage. The only qualm I have with it at all, is I wish they'd admit this instead of claiming balance. I don't care about balanced coverage, but I'm tired of orgs claiming it. I'd rather them own their bias instead of pretending its not there.
Separately, equating diversity of inherent traits (race, orientation, etc) to diversity of worldviews/ideas/opinions/viewpoints (choices) I think is pretty flawed.
The former are not chosen. The latter do not need to be given the same default weight or respect or pursuit of "diversity"
Honestly I find this really weird because I think it's the other way around. When ignoring the possible benefits for the individuals (giving a job to someone who might otherwise be discriminated...
Separately, equating diversity of inherent traits (race, orientation, etc) to diversity of worldviews/ideas/opinions/viewpoints (choices) I think is pretty flawed.
The former are not chosen. The latter do not need to be given the same default weight or respect or pursuit of "diversity"
Honestly I find this really weird because I think it's the other way around. When ignoring the possible benefits for the individuals (giving a job to someone who might otherwise be discriminated against), what is the benefit of any kind of diversity if not diversity of opinions? Is that not the goal?
They are tied together in some ways sure, in that by focusing on real diversity of race, orientation, gender, etc you will get varied perspectives. However not all ideas/views should be given...
They are tied together in some ways sure, in that by focusing on real diversity of race, orientation, gender, etc you will get varied perspectives.
However not all ideas/views should be given equal treatment nor should they be assumed to be of any inherent quality simply because a particular type of person holds them. Ideas should be considered on their own merit alone and some ideas have none.
For example, if someone is anti-LGBTQ, I have zero need to include their perspectives in the name of diversity.
I agree with this, though from my side of the ocean it seems that american right wing media are too tolerant of hateful right-wing opinions whereas left wing media are too uncritical of dumb ideas...
However not all ideas/views should be given equal treatment nor should they be assumed to be of any inherent quality simply because a particular type of person holds them. Ideas should be considered on their own merit alone and some ideas have none.
For example, if someone is anti-LGBTQ, I have zero need to include their perspectives in the name of diversity.
I agree with this, though from my side of the ocean it seems that american right wing media are too tolerant of hateful right-wing opinions whereas left wing media are too uncritical of dumb ideas expressed by members of marginalized groups, which is also wrong. Nevertheless, I am not saying that all ideas are equal.
They are tied together in some ways sure, in that by focusing on real diversity of race, orientation, gender, etc you will get varied perspectives.
There are two issues with this. Firstly if you limit diversity only to selected individual traits, you limit the diversity of opinions quite a bit. A black gay woman from California and a white heterosexual man from California have significantly more similar life experiences to each other than either has to a white heterosexual man from rural Appalachia. Some sociologists would also argue that for a majority of people their political affiliation is about as unchangeable as their sexual orientation, though I never bothered to check how legitimate some of that research is.
Secondly, excluding truly unacceptable opinions is the logical thing to do, but what seems to usually happen is that people throw out the baby with the bathwater and decide that nearly half of the US population is evil or stupid. Not only is it not true, it's making the political division in society worse. The way I understand the original article of the NPR editor, this is a big part of his problem.
I agree. The idea of inherent traits is really fuzzy too. If I'm building a website and want to make sure I'm properly supporting a variety of locales, it'd be good to have someone fluent in...
I agree. The idea of inherent traits is really fuzzy too. If I'm building a website and want to make sure I'm properly supporting a variety of locales, it'd be good to have someone fluent in Arabic to help test right to left text. Unless Arabic is their mother tongue, I don't think it's an inherent trait. Engaging with other speakers and Arabic media surely colors their view of the world though.
A closeted queer person with a non-supportive family is presumably going to be very different from a flamboyant queer that grew up in a loving and supportive family. Their "inherent traits" are the same, but the two people's lived experiences are night and day.
I’m pretty okay with this in many cases, too. I don’t think news organizations need to be politically neutral and will read and share articles from The Guardian or the Economist. The main things...
I’m pretty okay with this in many cases, too. I don’t think news organizations need to be politically neutral and will read and share articles from The Guardian or the Economist.
The main things I’m looking for is that they will report on what happened even if they disagree with it, and without immediately telling you what opinion you’re supposed to have. I think there’s a difference between reporting and the full-fledged advocacy that you see when a lawyer zealously defends their client, where making the case for the other side is the job of opposing counsel.
I think there’s a good argument though, for diversity of experience. For example, in software engineering, when an application is available in multiple countries and multiple languages, it’s useful to have someone who speaks a language and knows a culture on the team. Sure, you can contract out to have the UI translated, but that’s second-best. Similarly for accessibility.
And I think the same thing is true of news organizations.
Political party affiliation is not the same as gender. Gender isn't something you choose, and it doesn't prevent you from being qualified to be a software engineer. It doesn't say anything at all...
Political party affiliation is not the same as gender. Gender isn't something you choose, and it doesn't prevent you from being qualified to be a software engineer. It doesn't say anything at all about your values or your choices. The values and choices that someone has to hold in order to choose to be a Republican in 2024 do preclude you from being qualified to be a journalist. I think it's not just okay that they had 87 Democrats and 0 Republicans, I think it's the most sensible possible scenario.
That’s not why I chose gender as an example. To pick another example, when reporting on some stories, I think a news room would benefit from having someone with military experience? It doesn’t...
That’s not why I chose gender as an example. To pick another example, when reporting on some stories, I think a news room would benefit from having someone with military experience? It doesn’t matter whether serving in the military is something you chose.
The framework I’m using isn’t being anti-discrimination as a legal or labor issue, it’s what benefits the organization for doing its mission.
Being a Republican isn't just any choice, either. The current republican party platform rejects science and fact in a number of ways. Rejecting reality like that is not beneficial to a news...
Being a Republican isn't just any choice, either. The current republican party platform rejects science and fact in a number of ways. Rejecting reality like that is not beneficial to a news organization.
You make an extremely important point: When you have a huge group of employees/ selected people who all share the same characteristic, whatever that may be, you'd almost certainly want your next...
You make an extremely important point:
When you have a huge group of employees/ selected people who all share the same characteristic, whatever that may be, you'd almost certainly want your next person to add to that group to have a characteristic they don't.
Examples:
A board contains 18 women and 0 men. You'd almost certainly want a man for your 19th person.
No-one in your political reporting unit leans politically far left. You'd want someone with far-left views. You'd want them in every single discussion about politics in your political reporting unit for their political perspective.
You don't have anyone who dropped out of college or never went to college in your cohort at work, even though you don't strictly need a university education to do the job we all do in the team. You'd almost certainly want to recruit someone without a college education next.
You only have people who've grown up rurally in your farming business. You'd almost certainly want someone who's grown up in a city next on your team.
We're all products of a bunch of characteristics, beliefs and experiences. Many chosen, many not. We all bring a complete package. In recruitment and diversity, we want packages to cover all sorts of qualities we should have.
In a newsroom, you want varied folks, especially in just conveying whatever you like to all the people who don't share your points of reference, say a huge majority having certain political views. We cannot lay our biases at the door. Being aware of them is not enough.
Diversity is extremely diverse. It seems obvious NPR (and so many other organizations) are failing at diversity and that their products suffer in turn.
Yes, that's largely what I'm arguing, except that I don't think he made an open-and-shut case. It was a pretty long article with a lot of opinion and subjective observations, and a bit of...
Yes, that's largely what I'm arguing, except that I don't think he made an open-and-shut case. It was a pretty long article with a lot of opinion and subjective observations, and a bit of suggestive evidence. It could have been better.
But I also don't think it shows incompetence or anything like that. It's surprising how harshly people will judge a writer when they're on the other side.
Not sure how I'd summarize what's going on at NPR other than "it's complicated." It seems even people who worked there many years are still surprised by some stuff that happened?
I agree with your overall sentiment but can't help but nitpick the nuances. The only time this wouldn't be true is if the board is for a sorority or women's shelter It may be more prudent to put...
I agree with your overall sentiment but can't help but nitpick the nuances.
The only time this wouldn't be true is if the board is for a sorority or women's shelter
It may be more prudent to put them in the room as the lefty representative for the stories you (as editor of the unit) expect to be important or popular.
Letting them report on other things means they aren't pigeonholed as the token lefty voice. This may be more effective at representing their viewpoint than bringing them on as the mandated Fairness Doctrine SME.
The far left is famous for infighting: you may have brought on someone who is a radicalized gender abolitionist & vegan who nonetheless shares the economic outlook of the lib dems or hired a tankie who is also big into traditional family values. Neither is a holistic spokesperson for the far left because such a person does not exist. You see this more often when two white folks who you trust to have spoken to multiple black people give mutually incompatible reports on the consensus views of the Black community. The follow-up pill is realizing that doing your own research by talking to the black folks you know may be just as skewed as the two reports you read.
I would have pushed back on this more in the past. While there may have been some theoretical business dynamism and creativity advantages for including diverse educational backgrounds, the university degree was (emphasis on was) a useful filter. If not necessarily for intelligence, it at least used to imply you and your co-workers could swap college stories. However, the degrees have mostly been watered down to the point that filtering by degree no longer increases similarity enough to improve camaraderie.
I'm not sure about this one. Perhaps for sales & marketing? What city background would be missing from a farming business run by farmers?
Overall, I'd say the place where diversity in background matters are in positions that make meaningful decisions. As your journalistic example shows, that does not imply leadership. In fact, C-suite diversification projects necessarily select for superficial & immutable diversity so long as the person is a capitalist. That's an example of leadership with limited decision-making power: they're already so bought into the system that saying "they could choose a radically different direction" is a moralistic copium.
To add to what others have brought up assuming these reporters live in DC and not Maryland or Virginia then it makes sense to me that they’d be registered Democrat. It seems that DC has a closed...
To add to what others have brought up assuming these reporters live in DC and not Maryland or Virginia then it makes sense to me that they’d be registered Democrat.
It seems that DC has a closed primary and is basically all democrats on the council. The two independents typically being democrats that switch party affiliation since the whole council can’t be from one party. So if you want any real say in your local government then you would probably register democrat. To a lesser degree this is true of the surrounding MD counties and possibly VA as well.
He wasn't suspended for the content he published, he was suspended for not getting approval to publish with another organization. In fact, they specifically did allow him to discuss the same...
He wasn't suspended for the content he published, he was suspended for not getting approval to publish with another organization.
In presenting Berliner's suspension Thursday afternoon, the organization told the editor he had failed to secure its approval for outside work for other news outlets, as is required of NPR journalists.
In fact, they specifically did allow him to discuss the same content in other places when he sought approval for those appearances.
In its formal rebuke, NPR did not cite Berliner's appearance on Chris Cuomo's NewsNation program last Tuesday night, for which NPR gave him the green light. (NPR's chief communications officer told Berliner to focus on his own experience and not share proprietary information.)
Obviously NPR could be being less-than-truthful about its reasoning, but Berliner broke an office rule that long pre-dated this controversy. It would be strange if NPR didn't reprimand him in some way.
Here's a long article that brings up a whole lot of other things that NPR has gotten wrong over the years. There's plenty that's quotable, but here's a summary: ...
Here's a long article that brings up a whole lot of other things that NPR has gotten wrong over the years. There's plenty that's quotable, but here's a summary:
And that’s what the core editorial problem at NPR is and, frankly, has long been: an abundance of caution that often crossed the border to cowardice. NPR culture encouraged an editorial fixation on finding the exact middle point of the elite political and social thought, planting a flag there, and calling it objectivity. That would more than explain the lack of follow-up on Hunter Biden’s laptop and the lab-leak theory, going full white guilt after George Floyd’s murder, and shifting to indignant white impatience with racial justice now.
Layers of complex relationships made genuine editorial criticism hazardous at NPR. Even in an industry in which office romances happen a lot, NPR has been exceptional, boasting dozens of “met and married” couples. And that doesn’t cover all the quiet couples, besties, and other personal entanglements. All this means that if you criticized someone’s editorial decisions in a meeting, their best friend, sweetheart, or ex might be glowering at you from across the table. Even a mild critique could be met with: You know John’s been having a hard time because his dad just died/wife just left him/kid is having problems. Give him a break. Lots of people who were in relationships with colleagues kept it out of their work, but enough did not that it contributed to a culture where whisper networks replaced open discussion.
Given all that, I have to acknowledge that I understand how Uri could’ve been honestly mistaken in reaching some of his conclusions. Another chronic organizational struggle at NPR is stove-piping. Your experience could be completely different from that of someone working right across the hall from you, depending on the team you worked with and the meetings you went to. I was lucky, and (mostly) played my cards right during my years there. I landed with great groups of journalists who nurtured my talents and helped me address my flaws. I loved the place and for years defended it from charges of bias, even when my friends were victims of it. I completely bought the “bad apples” version of NPR’s long-standing issues with racism and sexism.
...
But maybe the stove-piping meant that Uri didn’t see the pattern in those efforts that started wearing my spirit down. Some big news in the world or an internal failure would spark a wave of carefully stage-managed soul-searching from leadership, and ad hoc committees of well-intentioned volunteers would be assembled to write lists of recommendations. Then those recommendations would be politely received, filed away, and forgotten. And two or three years later, some new crisis would start the cycle all over again. In my experience, those multihyphenate identity groups or task forces were disproportionately full of junior staffers. Because many veterans—except for true-believing tryhards like me—understood that they were a waste of time.
He just announced his resignation from NPR: https://x.com/uberliner/status/1780610524411048183
He just announced his resignation from NPR:
I am resigning from NPR, a great American institution where I have worked for 25 years. I don’t support calls to defund NPR. I respect the integrity of my colleagues and wish for NPR to thrive and do important journalism. But I cannot work in a newsroom where I am disparaged by a new CEO whose divisive views confirm the very problems at NPR I cite in my Free Press essay.
I agree with NPR's suspension. Ignoring the quality of his criticism, allowing NPR staff to publish articles at other publications would encourage journalists to build a personal brand instead of writing articles in line with the publication's values.
It's also just pretty unprofessional to jump to the top of the ladder instead of discussing issues with the relevant parties. NPR has plenty of issues already and his article hasn't done anything to find a solution. He gave ammunition to those who oppose NPR and left out the voices of everyone else at NPR when publishing his criticism.
I didn't find the article that interesting so not much has stuck, but I seem to recall him explaining that he'd attempted exactly this and been waved off. First getting a meeting that "needed to be rescheduled" and was not, and then not hearing back after or something.
Edit- Relevant section. He actually claims to have said quite a lot to the relevant parties, so I think that's a pretty unfair criticism
Relevant section from his article
Is that really his criticism? I mean, putting aside the very real implications of the bill chilling educator's ability to discuss sexuality in the classroom regardless of if the bills says "gay", that's also just a common way the public refers to that bill. It's like calling the Affordable Care Act "Obamacare", definitely originally inspired by a political agenda but at this point common parlance. That doesn't seem like a particularly damning piece of evidence for political bias.
(I do agree with him about the use of "Latinx" though.)(Edit: see below)I admit I'm as biased as anyone towards my own beliefs, but I actually think NPR does a commendable job maintaining journalistic neutrality. They don't shy away from claiming Trump "lied" about the election, and they also don't sugarcoat any of Biden's gaffes. For example, I recall when the Robert Hur report first came out, they covered Biden's defending himself but specifically pointed out how in the same press briefing Biden mixed up the names of the presidents of Egypt and Mexico undermining Biden's claims about his own mental acuity. They could've brushed over that gaffe if they wanted to, but I think it says a lot about their impartiality that they brought it up anyway.
ETA: NPR Morning Edition host Steve Innskeep wrote a response to Berlinger on substack, which does a good job of highlighting the bias in Berlinger's own critique.
This doesn't sound that bad to me? It reminds me of Wes Mantooth in Anchorman saying, "You know those rating systems are flawed! They don't take into account houses that have more than two television sets and other things of that nature."
It's not materially significant if the count was 87-0 or 87-0-1 or 87-0-10.
That said, unbiased doesn't mean that you bring in voices that are trying to drag the country one way or the other, and the Republican party, to a much, much greater degree than the Democrats, has been trying to move the Overton Window to normalize literal fascist ideas. So after 2016, and especially after 2020, it seems unlikely that many Republicans would be able to handle it without significant bias because that bias is critical to the preservation of the worldview. Even the "good ones" who have fallen on their swords by refusing to support Trump were doing that stuff in every way other than pushing his specific lies.
The Democrats' lies, on the other hand, have seemed to be designed more around hiding their hypocrisy--things like "this Georgia voter suppression law is terrible" while ignoring that New York has an identical law, or "the Republicans want to destroy our future for the profit of the oil companies" while pretending that they aren't opening up more drilling.
Both parties have a lot to hate about them and even more to justly criticize, but one of them is a group of fascists actively trying to install a dictator. So, you know, not exactly the group I'd want contributing to a newsroom.
Holding that view, I'd be extremely worried if people of that party weren't represented in a newsroom. I'd view that as extremely, extremely dangerous.
How else would I have any shot reaching all those people with messed up political views, who're the ones that need to be reached by real journalism and news, than without people who share those views to speak up about the issues and the ways we should be writing to reach those people who hold debunked, junk political views and are willing to put force behind misplaced convictions?
Who can write stuff in a way that those of junk political views might actually listen to, to change minds, to hold their attention so it isn't spent on more dangerous reading/listening, or just propaganda rather than news?
Where are those people with bad views going to be edited and not get their material out without a layer of editing and control so the unfiltered garbage doesn't just get out?
How are you going to have the important conversations where opinions differ and are weighted against each other inside the newsroom without people with different views and experiences represented in that newsrooom?
Writing people off and just not wanting to deal with them is not a solution. It's irresponsibly feeding the problem so it festers, grows and these people become even more entrenched.
We need people who're preparing the time when these junk views are passé. We can't just murder these people, or shun them or lock them out of society for the rest of society to move on. The people of silly views now need to be rehabilitated. For society's sake.
I'm not sure how having fascists, who are by definition not interested in accuracy or truth, making the news helps to rehabilitate anyone or improve any situation except the fascist's.
I'm totally disconnected from this whole argument, but I can see how it could work given a healthy amount of editorializing. People who are polarized to either side in US politics get news from sources that confirm their world view. It's as if people who live in the same neighborhood are in completely different realities because the news stories they see have little overlap.
We shouldn't give free reign to completely false news stories. We could take a popular story from the opposite side of the political spectrum, evaluate what pieces of it are actually based in reality, and report on it in a way that exposes the true facts and takeaways. This can increase the credibility of news organizations and perhaps bring back some people who are living in an alternate news reality. This would require heavy scrutiny to make sure that complete fabrications are not reported on, but it is true that there are real stories that can be completely missed depending on what your political leaning is.
I am a Democrat and until Uri Berliner's post, I did not know that Hunter Biden's laptop was actually real. Even I have been sucked into a reality where Hunter Biden's laptop doesn't exist and I am a daily NY Times reader and NPR listener. We are playing with two separate sets of facts and there must be a way to bridge the gap in a way that doesn't let harmful falsehoods hit the front page.
IIRC, NYT has published several articles that claim that Hunter Biden's laptop was real. To my memory the official story as of a year or two ago is that government agencies have managed to verify that it used to belong to him, but the path it took to get to them made it an extremely unreliable piece of evidence.
What you're describing is the paradox of tolerance. The messages and those propagating them are anti-democratic. Aimed at reducing the freedoms of others, including their ability to be represented at all.
The only tolerable fascist is a heavily marginalized one.
No. This is not about the paradox of tolerance or allowing those with junk views to have those views reach through in product to readers. News organizations are not and should not be microphone stands for others, or to magnify the views of their journalists.
This is about involving people of certain views in ways in the news room so the editorial decision-makers manage to reach a huge portion of their audience effectively with real, substantive reporting that takes facts into account.
It's about having devil's advocates, about picking up trends that need to be debunked, ways in which the good arguments need to be framed to effectively reach those who need to hear those things the most.
And so on.
Debunking an argument is still giving a platform to the argument. We don't need a weekly deconstruction of the latest QAnon conspiracies to prove they're meritless, just like we didn't need coverage on pizzagate. These aren't substantive issues important to our democracy, they don't affect policy, they aren't even real.
The high-road of debating all ideas is great in theory. In practice it adds fuel to fires that debate can't put out.
Non real issues affecting policy is politics 101 through history. Perception is reality in politics.
I don’t see how you can claim these issues don’t affect policy and then also claim the people who believe these clearly false issues are trying to install someone, because of these false issues, who will pass policy.
“Ignore it and it will go away” does not work if everyone isn’t on the same page (and arguably not even great then).
I think it's almost the interpretation of how to approach the paradox of tolerance taken to its extreme. It became the standard to be intolerant of the intolerant, The divide only grows and grows, where even people left of center become the enemy of the far left because there's so much distance between the left and the right that you can't even see the other side anymore, so your most common disagreements come with people you were once previously considered fairly aligned with.
You can see this intolerance of the intolerant all over this thread. I think to an extent it makes sense and it works, but that's the extreme, there's no middle ground anymore because as the perception of what is intolerant changes based on who you've already eliminated from the equation, there's nowhere for people to go except the extremes. It highlights the problem that there's now this political division of where news happens, because there's no room for anyone to be exposed to other ideas.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/04/paywall-problems-media-trust-democracy/678032/
That's likely behind a paywall for most people, but the title of it is "Democracy Dies Behind Paywalls" and my reading of it is that the person writing it is saying paywalls put the most valid sources of information out of reach for a lot of people who can't or don't want to pay for news, and effectively makes those people more susceptible to misinformation and disinformation because they have less access to better sourced information. It was also argued that allowing some access through paywalls in some cases increases uptake in subscriptions because people got exposure to a service they wouldn't have otherwise.
This same argument to me can be taken for viewpoints too. I'm not really trying to call anyone out here and just using it as a topical example, but there's some comments in this post that talk about not paying for NYT because of disagreements in their coverage. That's of course within someone's right to do, to not pay a company for any reason they want, no one is obligated or responsible for supporting any given company. However when done on a wide-scale and operating on the same idea of no room for the intolerant or disagreeable views, you end up with a bubble where the only people interested in reading that site are the ones who already agree with everything they say, and the people who don't will find somewhere else and they will do the same thing but something that aligns with their existing viewpoints. So all these news organizations just end up being bubbles of what each in-group they can accommodate will accept, and now there's no exposure to other ideas because no one is willing to tolerate disagreements. So the intolerant become more intolerant because they have no exposure to other ideas because they moved off to their own bubble where the same thing happens in their bubble. Not to mention their intolerance becomes further justified because now they're the ones not being tolerated. I'm sure the hope was that the lesson they would come away with is that if they wanted to be tolerated they'd improve their intolerant views, and maybe some people did make that change, but for those that remained, now the divide is there and there's no bridge left to bring them back across. To me, I find this notion that just shunning people because they have intolerant views will make them a better person similar to blaming a poor person for being poor and it's somehow going to make them more successful if you punish them for something they likely don't have the resources or ability to correct on their own. We know pulling yourselves up by the bootstraps is bullshit when it comes to economics, so why should we expect that someone who has poor thinking or understanding of the world (from our perspective) is going to be able to pull themselves up by the bootstraps and become a better person, especially if we withdraw any support or resources to them? Relegating their existence to a bubble of more extreme intolerance is akin to putting a poor person in jail for being poor and thinking that somehow will motivate them and help them be better. You can replace poor with people addicted to drugs or various other maladies of society and humanity that we deal with and it's still the same message, those problems are a symptom of the society we created and can't necessarily be resolved by the individual themselves, and so are these polarizing viewpoints.
I think being intolerant of intolerant outcomes is still a great thing, but somewhere along the way, the intolerance of outcomes became intolerance of viewpoints, which became intolerance of people who are perceived to have those viewpoints. I think that explains how it's dangerous like you said, because intolerance is meant to limit or eliminate the undesirable element. Intolerant of intolerant outcomes is great, you want to eliminate intolerant outcomes. Intolerance of intolerant viewpoints, maybe still great to eliminate intolerant viewpoints but maybe questionable depending on how it's accomplished or various other problems, but now we've arrived at intolerance of people, so are we ready to eliminate these people?
The rhetoric of calling all Republicans fascists and nazis, while I understand where it comes from, to me, that rhetoric needs to be understood to be rhetoric of war. Rhetoric of violence and war. If you don't think there's any way to improve our current situation other than through violent war, then that rhetoric fits the situation. If you have any hope or desire to improve the situation peacefully, then that rhetoric won't accomplish the goal. That isn't to say there aren't some extremes within this party or on this side of the political spectrum that do truly closely fit with this rhetoric, but to me the idea that 40%+ of the US population are fascist nazis illustrates the extremism, either the rhetoric is extreme or our circumstances are that dire that you actually expect and are preparing for a civil war soon.
As the person who decided to unsub from the NYT due to their coverage of trans issues, I think it's very different than dehumanizing or "shunning" Republicans. I usually only know if someone is a Republican because they go out of their way to tell me directly (bumper stickers, direct comments about my appearance/queerness, sharing their opinions about Joe Biden).
Part of my job - I work with college students, primarily in a social work-esque role - is to be an educator. I don't "shun" students with conservative views. I will have conversations with any student whose views cross over into hateful speech (but if it's free speech, all I can do is educate). I have parents (of unknown political affiliation) who make racist remarks about their students' roommates and I address it, but I still help them and I'm still going to set boundaries with someone that curses me out on the phone. I've helped a friend understand that his rural Michigan 'heritage' does not include the Confederate flag. That's all educating and bridging those gaps.
I don't like equating the two things, because as much as you say it's fine, you also pivot and imply it isn't on a societal level. I do want the NYT to change its coverage, but that isn't the same as 'not wanting to hear different viewpoints.' Nor is it the downfall of democracy if trans/non-binary people don't pay for a service they don't want. If we don't want paywalls, we should be shoring up public radio and other public media, not tearing it apart. And it still isn't clear that NPR isn't hiring Republicans/people who register as a Republican (possibly in states that don't require it even for primaries) or if those folks who strongly identify as Republican are choosing not to work at NPR, an outlet vilified by the functional head of the party.
There are viewpoints that shouldn't be tolerated, IMO. But those aren't the same as saying those people who have those viewpoints aren't human. But when people say I'm not human, that I don't deserve basic human rights, I get to choose to draw a boundary. When I'm educating that boundary is different than in my personal life, when I'm online that boundary is different than when I'm in person and when I'm tired that boundary is different than when I'm fresh.
In short, I object to the conflation of unsubbing due to coverage I find biased, inaccurate and distasteful with dehumanizing or shunning.
I don't know if there's an established way to express this that I'm not aware of that would be more effective at expressing it than I'm capable of doing on my own, but in my mind there is a distinction between what an individual does, and what groups of individuals do that occurs more on the societal level, and the responsibilities or accountabilities of those differ.
So when I say it's fine for the individual to do it, but that it's not good on a societal level, there's no conflict to that for me because there are distinctions to how those happen. Maybe that comes across as hypocritical, I don't know. I view it as, society, the apparatus and institutions we build or allow to exist etc. have a greater responsibility to what happens on a societal level, and the individual has the responsibility for what happens on an individual level, in terms of accountability anyhow. Meaning the individual isn't accountable for NYT losing subscribers because the individual doesn't agree with something the NYT does, but the apparatus we created that has a hand in it potentially encourages large scale outcomes that are bad for society. That could be as simple as lax regulation that allows for social media companies to broadcast harmful ideas or something more complex. I'm simplifying that a bit as I do think individuals have some accountability in crowd behavior type situations that the individual has some accountability but that's not what is being discussed here.
I also don't know that I'm expressing or equating even many people unsubbing from the service as a collective action at the societal level as dehumanizing others, perhaps shunning others but I don't know that it's even that straightforward, and again that's going with the higher standard at the societal level, the individual would not have that responsibility necessarily. It's not my intent to say that the action itself is inherently dehumanizing anyone, so if that's what my prior comment had expressions of it wasn't what I intended for it to express. I think the outcome has possibilities of dehumanizing people, but the connectedness of the action and the outcome isn't so direct as to necessarily be able to equate the two, even on a societal level and even less so on an individual level. Because of the complexities of our society, actions and outcomes aren't always direct and that means there are other factors at play. So I don't assume because an action results in an outcome, that it inherently means those who did the action are responsible for the outcome. It just depends on the circumstances. That however doesn't mean that IF there is a negative outcome, that there shouldn't be an attempt to correct it.
I have no disagreement with this and hopefully wasn't expressing anything to the contrary. Again, I also find that this differs on an individual level. Much like it's commonly accepted that you shouldn't have to open up your home to give someone who is homeless a place to stay but rather there's still an expectation on a societal level that as a collective we should be able to offer a place to stay for people in those situations, but it's not on any one individual to personally take on the burdens of that. The only thing I really have to add to this is that on a societal level, it doesn't benefit us to treat those people in-kind. I'm not saying you advocated for that, so my mentioning of it isn't to contrast with anything you expressed, I mention it because it's inherently part of what I was previously expressing and your comment here helps me provide a little more specificity. If someone says you aren't human and doesn't deserve basic human rights, on a societal level, it does not benefit us to treat them in kind and not treat them as human even if they don't necessarily deserve the basic respect and dignity that they themselves won't provide to others, because they don't necessarily see the reasoning why they get treated that way in-kind. They may only see the action and that it further justifies the behavior of not respecting others because others are doing it to them. In the end, if everyone is flinging shit at each other, at some point it doesn't matter who was initially justified in doing so and who wasn't, because the end result isn't that flinging shit made everything better, it just meant the situation devolved into everyone flinging shit.
We agree, I think, that all humans have basic human rights. Whether they're fascists, whether they're literal murderers or drug dealers, racists or homophobes. I do firmly believe that.
I don't think that believing that any of those people have basic human rights means I have to support them in the harm they may cause. I don't have to hire them, give them my money, permit their hatred to be directed at me or allow them to harm me. At least when this is in my control.
That's why I don't agree that setting a boundary is some through line to "shunning those we disagree with" or what seemed to be a double paradox of intolerance. First, organizations/corporations aren't the same thing as people. And secondly improving public news sources is something that helps address that. I get that you're identifying it perhaps as a symptom or even just a thing that feels similar, but consider that humans are far too complex to simplify individual actions like that.
I'd also really like to see more consideration that the burden is being put on, often, the minoritized populations to put up with harassment and indignity to try "educate" those who are doing the harassing. It is frustrating, even as an educator, to be consistently told it's my obligation to help a homophobic person not be homophobic. Or someone teetering on the precipice of fascism to not be fascist. I get you're not insisting on an individual obligation, but I feel societal obligation as much as anyone else who cares about the collective. And yet, I'm also tired. And I'm talking about myself here but I think my experience, if it can be used to universalize this fear of social silos can be used to discuss where many minority educators are.
Personally, I need less of being told how much we shouldn't put the dehumanizing people in the street, I was never gonna do that. I need more of the people telling me that to be speaking up to the homophobic, racist, fascist, etc. comments. A "dude not cool" goes a long way. A close friend of someone going down a right wing rabbit hole will have far better efficacy at change than me. If the teens that come to college don't get fed homophobia at home, I'd have less work. And that isn't shunning. That is drawing boundaries with friends and educating them in smaller less formal ways. Because educators and minorities are tired.
I'm gonna spend more of my energy on the two students in a relationship whose families have both kicked them out for being gay and we gotta figure out where they're gonna live after the end of the semester.
I'm not saying you disagree with this, some of this is my broader frustration at being told to be nicer to people who express hateful opinions of me. It does come out at time. I really try to be kind in general. It's sort of inbuilt into the value set. Anyway, I do think we agree on fundamental humanity.
I don't think it is your obligation to do so. Again I'll take it back to the idea of, it's not your individual obligation to house a homeless person, but perhaps it is our collective obligation. It's not your obligation more because you're the one impacted directly, but you may feel the obligation because you're impacted more directly, for any given problem that one is impacted by anyhow. This is true for any problem. There are numerous problems that I have or other people have that you don't have, and you aren't going to feel the same overriding urgency to resolve those problems as those who have to deal with them, that's just seemingly the nature of our consciousness to some extent. Someone who has a tent city outside their front door isn't more obligated to take in someone in their home, but they are more impacted by the unresolved problem and may feel that obligation more so because of that.
If I saw those remarks here, then I'd be more inclined to be in that position to say something, yet I don't think I've come across much along the lines of what you're speaking of. So instead of seeing me have that response, you see me have this response instead. You can't see me addressing a problem that doesn't exist in a place where you have visibility of what I'm doing.
Granted by saying that I'm not pretending I'm Mother Teresa or MLK Jr outside of Tildes, but in the few instances where I've had exposure to people with something in the realm of hateful or negative ideas, I think I've taken the opportunity to address that with them in ways that I thought might constructively change their mind. I think my parents might have had a similar trajectory to how some other people on here might describe their parents in terms of getting sucked into the conservative news hole but I had a few conversations especially with my father about aspects of those perspectives that aren't what they seem and he responded positively to that. Prior to those conversations I got the impression there was a possibility they might have gotten pulled into the Trump sphere the first go around, but over the years whenever I go to their house they don't have Fox News on, if they have a news channel on at all it's more likely to be CNN or local news or something more generic, and they're in the demographic that Trump has done well with, no college degree suburban with rural upbringings.
I'm not really even asking anyone to be overly nice or accommodating. All I was trying to convey is that I think some of the terms being used contribute to a negative cycle that will seemingly lead to violence if the cycle isn't stopped. I don't think that requires anyone to start befriending every conservative they come across or asking them how their day is going, but simply to tone down the negative rhetoric in an attempt to stop the cycle.
You said it wasn't about my individual responsibility, but as I noted
Also, some of us feel social responsibility and that's why we do the work, paid or otherwise that we do. We have an obligation to each other.
I'm not asking to "see you" doing something else, I don't actually care what you do as a person, it doesn't really impact my choices. But my comment that you referenced, wasn't about any of this, so I dont know what you felt the need to respond to.
But fine, collectively: We are tired. We are trying. And in the past week, five teens assaulted two college students for their perceived sexual orientations at Michigan State in Monday. "Love Lies Bleeding" can't be screened without homophobic disruptions at a film festival in Brussels. And a school district just cancelled an anti-bullying/empathy presenter because he's "proud of his 'lifestyle'" (you can guess).
We are tired of being told not to be too mean and exclusionary to the people that don't want to hear us speak about empathy, who don't want to see us kiss in movies and who will assault anyone who acts too much like us. It's exhausting to be lectured on our communal social responsibility. When all I wanted to do was not read a newspaper.
Forgive me if I'm not particularly sympathetic to the idea that my calling someone a fascist is "rhetoric of violence" when those people are vocally calling for people like me to be eliminated and are also passing legislation aimed at accomplishing that.
I don't think I was intending to elicit any sympathetic response, I think I was trying to be blunt and get across what I perceive to be the end result of that rhetoric when describing such a large portion of the population you coexist with. I wasn't saying it to shame someone for using rhetoric of violence, which you may not even agree that the rhetoric is one of violence, but merely stating that if everyone is holding a weapon and pointing it at each other, that's not an indicator of a peace. To call someone a fascist nazi is basically to write off their existence, that person you have no intention of having any amicable interaction with and have no interest in compromising with, because if they are truly a fascist nazi, you may not be able to justify doing that as you might see it as enabling or supporting them.
That's why I say it's rhetoric of violence, because if that is how you (the royal you) perceive someone, there's no hope of peace or civility with that person. There's no bridge that they can ever cross to meet you halfway or even come to your side. Yet you coexist with them in the same space in terms of our country/government, there's no ignoring the other person's existence and just hoping you don't have to deal with them. And there's been some comments here and in general the whole topic here is about the label of Republican, so we're not just talking about calling 5% of the population or such fascist nazis, Republicans in general are being labeled as that, and that's 40%+ of the potential voters. I'm stating 40% just because seemingly polls indicate the race is close at the least if not Republican favored, and obviously Trump won once before even though he didn't have the majority of the popular vote, so 40% is enough to express the significance of how many people are being labeled as this while not overstating the percentage.
My problem is that you appear to view calling someone a fascist as ending any hope of peace or civility but don't seem to consider openly calling for people like me to be exterminated as doing the same. For the record, I don't think every Republican is a fascist -- I'm still on good terms with immediate family members who voted for Trump in 2020 and I don't think they're fascists. But considering what's at best criticism of authoritarian regressive politics and at worst name-calling with "rhetoric of violence" but ignoring the violent rhetoric in the GOP's publicly stated policy positions is absurd. Why is it rhetoric of violence for me to call DeSantis a nazi and not violent rhetoric for him to call me a groomer?
There's no one here on this site that has that view for me to express it to. If you look at my comments in here, I think it's fair to say that I'm not being brief exactly and there's a balance to strike between what I can include and what I can't, and it seems pretty fair to me to not extend my comments further by including information that could easily be seen as a given or implied if given some benefit of doubt if there is any. So if I'm 6+ paragraphs in, it doesn't seem particularly efficient or effective to convey that the equivalent behavior from others ends hope of peace or civility especially when those people don't exist here to express it to, and it might seem this one disclaimer is worth including but there's probably 20 other disclaimers I could have also included and had to not include for similar reasons.
If I'm appealing to a person who I view as having a more developed perspective of things and is more receptive to other ideas and is more aligned with my viewpoints, I'm probably doing so because I expect that to have a better outcome. I don't expect to be able to go into a conservative or republican bubble as an outsider and try to express these ideas and expect to have any actual reception to them whatsoever. You can view that in a couple ways, my own bias towards those viewpoints has such low expectations that I'm not any better because I also don't think highly of them, or that they really are so far off the rails that they can't be reasoned with, or that as an outsider who doesn't have anywhere near their perspective and no reputation in their circles they have no reason to respect anything I say considering that is effectively the current environment as constructed regardless of who started it, you can't be an outsider in someone else's bubble and have any input in that bubble.
It's not necessarily different than a teacher who might push a student harder, not because they hate the student or because they want them to suffer or such, but possibly because they expect more from that student or they believe that student is more capable and that pushing them isn't a waste of time and it might actually result in something beneficial. And no I'm not saying I'm the teacher and everyone else here is the student or that I'm somehow in a position of superiority, I'm not equating the roles exactly, I'm only attempting to utilize the similarities in terms of why someone would bother to put in the effort to do something for someone else or with someone else, because they think it might have some possible beneficial outcome.
It is rhetoric of violence for DeSantis to say that or Trump to say any of the things he has said. I didn't say it because I assumed it's sort of a given. All I'm saying is that if you take an oppositional and equal stance, there's no place for people who might be borderline or willing to change to go, because there's no bridge left between you and them. Again, the royal you. If the peaceful outcome is to change hearts and minds, then arguably calling people fascist nazis doesn't help, because it instead pushes borderline people into the extremes and creates bubbles that makes those extremes more extreme. Just like their rhetoric of violence has no way of positively influencing you to their viewpoints, your rhetoric of violence would have no way of positively influencing them to your viewpoints.
This is not to say that you must approve of others, you can express disapproval for others who are doing wrong while still treating them basic respect and dignity even if they don't do the same. No, this doesn't mean you have to be their doormat or they get to walk all over you because they have no rules and you're adhering to some ethics. I don't know what your personal perspective is on criminal justice but overall on this site I generally perceive it to be more of a leftist set of perspectives on criminal justice, which generally encompasses giving people who have committed crimes opportunities to better themselves or correct their course rather than condemning them for life or writing them off as a lost cause. I think there's an element that has become impersonal about that subject where people can take that perspective, though sometimes when it becomes personal it reverts back to wanting to see the person punished more harshly or such. Broad strokes however, the concept is that you don't write people off even if they've done wrong, but you also don't let them off the hook or abuse you or others. It's not directly equivalent to how we should view others with drastically different viewpoints than ours or possibly harmful viewpoints, but I still look at it as a matter of looking at the human underneath it all and trying to determine how as a society we should treat these people to best create better outcomes for society. To me that means giving people with those drastically different and possibly even harmful viewpoints the decency of not simply just labeling them fascist nazis and be willing to consider them as people who you can dialogue with if they're willing to meet a certain standard of respect. Maybe on some level people think they're willing to do this, but I don't think it ends up working out this way because the standard becomes higher and higher as you insulate yourself more and more in a bubble. It becomes increasingly unlikely to ever have this middle ground to meet on.
Of course no one has to agree with me. If you don't view it as violent rhetoric, then that's fine. I probably won't be alive long enough to suffer the outcome no matter what the outcome is. And maybe there's no turning back. To me, I just view calling 40%+ of the population fascist nazis (not saying you said this, but there are other comments that have this implication or even statement behind it) as one that has only one outcome, violence, because I don't see any way for people in that 40% to change if that's how we treat them. And that many people, with that massive gulf between them and that much animosity between them, you can't simply hope to just keep beating them in elections and they will go away. It might be in part why it's so effective that you have a candidate that literally lies and says the election was fraudulent, because that large group of people might be making the mental transition to being unwilling to simply accept being totally and completely outcasted and subsequently unwilling to accept just losing an election and the outcomes that come with that.
I'm sorry, but it simply doesn't logically follow that if you call a fascist a fascist, or if you call a racist a racist, you must therefore be willing to kill them. That's just absurd.
Obviously someone could say that fascists should be called fascists, racists should be called racists, and homophobes should be called homophobes, so they can be beaten at the ballot box and pushed to the fringes of society where they don't get to trample the rights of others by gaining power.
Pretending that fascists are not fascists only helps fascists, though.
If you're calling 40%+ of the population fascists, how are you going to push them to the fringes of society? If your perspective is that 40%+ of the population are fascist nazis, then what do you realistically expect the outcome to be?
What I am saying is that if you perceive that many people to be fascist nazis, and if your perceptions are not extreme and are in fact accurately depicting the reality, then what outcome can you realistically expect other than violence? If every republican is a fascist nazi, that's not some 5% fringe population. Even if you beat them in the next election, they're not simply just going to go away. Arguably that's been the battle for decades, and now we've arrived at the current GOP with Trump as the figurehead which is seemingly quite worse than the past several decades, this solution clearly doesn't seem to be working if the goal is to just continue to call them fascist nazis and hope you can keep beating them in the next election.
If your perception is extreme and not accurately depicting reality, that not every republican is a fascist nazi, then calling them that and treating them as such is either a self-fulfilling prophecy or simply further distances you from those people to the point where there's no compromises or middle ground, because you perceive them to be a fascist nazi you can't possibly compromise with them, and this is in the hypothetical scenario where somehow you could objectively measure that they aren't and your perception of them is just extreme. If you aren't willing to compromise with them, then you're the extreme one to them.
If you have an alternative outcome to this scenario then feel free to let it be known.
In Nazi Germany not everyone supported the Nazi party. There will always be people who don’t toe the line. The solution to the Nazi party was not to bomb Germany off the face of the earth, it was to remove the people responsible for the atrocities and then deprogram the populace who supported them.
I think the sad truth of the matter is that there’s no solution to the problem of social fascism that does not involve suffering. You either allow fascists to propagate or you forcefully deprogram them. But one of those options makes a lot more sense than the other. If we let them go then the best case scenario is that the people that they outgroup get their quality of life cut dramatically as they lose rights and become greater targets for outright murder, and the worst case scenario is that they overthrow democracy. And the thing that sucks is that by not making a decision either way it defaults to letting them propagate. Right now I’m seeing Aesop’s fable of the scorpion and the frog.
Deprogramming was really an option because the Nazis escalated to violence not only on their own population but then invaded other populations, it gave other countries and people of those countries the standing to forcefully remove the Nazi leadership and implement the deprogramming you're speaking of. Violence in the terms of taking down leadership in another party or country is easily justified when done as a defense to that violence, because it requires violence to achieve that. You have to fight back, and in turn you have to take out the threat.
I think it also highlights the difference in calling your average Republican a Nazi and what the Nazi party did. Maybe we're close to that, until it happens we don't know if we're at a precipice of the beginning or not, but you cannot simply forcefully deprogram 40%+ of your population on a systematic scale until there is an escalation of violence, because that forceful deprogramming will be seen as part of the escalation of violence. While January 6th did have some violence, some of those people have gone through the justice system and received consequences for their actions. I don't know that you can extrapolate that to the point of saying you now have standing to forcefully deprogram 40%+ of your population.
People seem to be thinking I'm making a value judgement when I say it's a rhetoric of violence. I'm not. I'm not condemning someone for using what I perceive as violent rhetoric. Maybe I should be. Instead what I perceive is that a lot of people don't see it as violent rhetoric, and I'm trying to illustrate how there's no turning back if that's how we see things. If there's no turning back, violence is the inevitable result. If the people promoting this rhetoric understand that is the end result and that is what they are preparing for, then so be it, but there should at least be some reconciliation of the truth within that. If you see a different version of how this can go that isn't violent, then I have to wonder how someone reconciles that vision while using that rhetoric.
In no case am I arguing that fascists should propagate or just give them free reign to do as they please, all I'm saying is that my perspective is, if you desire a potential peaceful outcome, I don't think that approach to becoming intolerant of the person behind either the disdained or hateful message is going to achieve that outcome. If you've given up hope that any peaceful outcome for the future can happen, then by all means keep calling all republicans fascist nazis. We can be intolerant of what they wish to achieve without being intolerant of the person, and to an extent that is what we expect of them at the bare minimum. What do you expect of a person who disagrees with you? To respect you, to not harm you, to not try to take away your rights etc. and while many Republicans may not be adhering to it, I think it becomes a negative cycle that has no way to change peacefully if others also participate in that behavior.
I respect your position. I think it's noble. But I also think that it's perhaps a bit naive. Or maybe instead a bit shortsighted.
If calling people fascists is a form of violence, then I think it's important to realize that it's coming as a response to violence. If anything, It's a very understated response. The people who are calling out "fascist" the loudest are the people who are most at danger by these people being in power. You don't even have to wait because there are already people who are suffering because of their leadership policies. Literally everyone who has seen any positive change in the past 100 years are looking to see that reverse. Personally, that terrifies me. I'm gay, and the stonewall riots were only 55 years ago. I don't want to go back to a world where I have to worry about being queer bashed for an innate quality of my existence. For the record, the last recorded lynching in the United States was 1981.
For sure, the things you are saying make a lot of sense on an individual level. People can be reasoned with. But when talking about a collective level, things get very scary very fast. You can't reason with a mob. Letting fascism grow is undoubtedly going to result in more people dying. This is something that no reasonable person should allow to happen. I would say that calling out fascists - especially when they are public figures like Donald Trump or his congressional fan club - is quite literally the least that we can do.
To put things in a more poetic manner, if calling out fascists is a form of violence, then it is only fair to say that we are already at war.
And Matthew Shepherd was beaten, tortured and left to die in 1998 for being gay.
And if we leave the specific term to the suffering of Black Americans, Ahmaud Arbery was essentially lynched in 2020 (it was 4 years ago?!).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lynching_victims_in_the_United_States
That's along the lines of what I'm trying to convey, and what prompted it was the comment I responded to saying that it's dangerous to see the circumstances that way without realizing the inherent danger of it. If calling out fascists is a form of violence, and that means we're at war, then we should stop pretending like we're not. I realize that you aren't agreeing that calling people fascist nazis is rhetoric of violence, but that phrase is basically what I was trying to express.
Right, and this is what part of what I'm trying to convey. After all that progress, now we're looking at going backwards, not forwards, and somehow people keep responding to me like I'm the problem because I'm trying to highlight that we're participating in a negative cycle that is possibly contributing to that reversal of progress. Why is it that 10-15 years after the rise of smartphones and more immediate and common access to the internet and social media by the general populace we're talking about the reversal of improvements that happened? Is it not more than just a coincidence that we're all just words on a screen now, if even that, that everyone is treated with less humanity to them than before because we interact through a medium that carries so little of that humanity in it? Is it not more than a coincidence that some of the people who have responded to me say that they don't see every republican as a fascist nazi and they can have relatively peaceful interactions with republicans they know in person, yet seemingly not so much online? Is it not a coincidence that the news and information people gather is a bubble of similar ideas, more groupthink and less dialoguing from different viewpoints? Why the rise of all of these things and the sudden and stark trend of reversing progress that you speak of?
Why is it that we can see how Israel attacking Iran military leadership in Syria and then Iran responding, and then Israel responding, and then Iran responding, as a negative cycle that is an escalation of violence regardless of who you see at fault for starting it or who is right or wrong for continuing to respond, but somehow if I try to say that moderating a response to violent rhetoric with less violent rhetoric is a possible means to avoiding violent outcomes, that I'm somehow the opposition? And no, I'm not interested in having a conversation about Israel and Iran or debating who is responsible or who isn't or who is in the right or who isn't, that isn't the point at all. The point is that we can look at that situation no matter what perspective you have of it and see the cycle and the outcome if that cycle is continued.
I find it quite compelling that simply arguing that using rhetoric that dehumanizes people is violent is somehow so controversial to garner the amount of responses I have. Yes, I get that it's a response to other people using similar or worse rhetoric to dehumanize, but how is it making anything better? This response doesn't seem to be dwindling their numbers but only growing them.
I think I might be a bit confused about what you are trying to say; I don't understand if you are trying to say that we shouldn't be calling people fascists or if you're just trying to point out that the fact that people are doing so is accelerating the pace of our journey towards a civil war.
More so the latter, but presumably anyone who thinks that puts them on the pace for civil war would also be saying that you shouldn't do something that potentially leads to that. That seems consistent to me. Though I hedge that a bit by not necessarily placing a value judgement on it in the sense that everyone has a limit for what they are willing to tolerate before they are willing to fight. So I don't cast judgement on someone who has been oppressed by Republican leadership or Trump or will potentially be oppressed by them should they gain even more power if they instead have an outlook that fighting is the way forward, but instead I get the impression that people don't want violence however they use rhetoric that I think contributes to the cycle that will lead to violence and I'm simply trying to say that if they don't want violence they should replace that rhetoric with something that doesn't contribute to the cycle of escalating rhetoric of violence. If they view violence as inevitable, then I don't blame them for fighting back.
Half your responses are because you conflated cancelling a subscription (which multiple people did over this coverage) with the outcome of intolerant people being justified and ultimately shunned.
I've commented about how dehumanization is absolutely unacceptable and a line I won't cross before and not had any pushback at all.
I’m confused by this statement. We essentially did bomb them into submission?
Are you saying they should have been removed before that?
A history aside: Bret Devereaux has argued that strategic airpower doesn’t win wars on its own, and of course the Allies had huge forces on the ground. They did try:
On the other hand:
Oh I agree completely that you can’t win a war with just air power. More just pointing out that violence was used heavily until they surrendered. Mostly because they had completely lost the capacity to fight.
We bombed them as much as necessary to subdue them. We did not annihilate them altogether.
I mean I literally italicized the counterexample to your logically false argument. I offered a clear, realistic, and non-violent alternative that has worked before, both in terms of fascists previously losing elections and in terms of fascists previously existing on the fringe of even right-wing politics. The suggestion that violence is a necessity is quite simply against the facts.
You seem to just really want to depict people opposed to fascists as being violent. On top of that you seem also imply with the "self fulfilling prophecy" idea that if you "incorrectly" say someone is a fascist, they're then justified to use violence against you, which is similarly absurd.
For the record, I don't even think 40% of the population are fascist, just that 40% might vote for fascists, in part because of absurd arguments, such as the above, which distract and discourage people from addressing the fascist problem in the country. And again, I'm talking about voting, not violence.
If you intend to do anything but provide cover for fascists like Trump, I leave that for your own self-evaluation.
What you italicized as the 'counterexample' I responded to by saying that every subsequent loss to the 'fascist' Republican party over the past couple decades has only given rise to Trump who has garnered some success in terms of his following after claiming an election was fraudulent. He was beaten at the ballot box, and then he claimed that it was fraudulent, and now he's back and potentially has more support than he did in the prior election, if polls are anything to go by. So what you are saying has simply led to an escalation of violent rhetoric from Trump and various supporters within that faction. So instead of acknowledging that I made a response to this, you simply pretended as though I said nothing at all and chose to make a snarky remark about how you italicized the solution.
I'm not going to respond to you any further because you're arguing in bad faith in terms of saying that I'm providing cover for fascists. That is a sign to me that you are not responding in good faith and are simply intending to align me with fascists in an attempt to nullify anything I say.
Except that it demonstrates how Uri used vague generality and "vibes" to try and make an objective point about how NPR was, in his view, not sufficiently covering all viewpoints. Details matter here. Writing, "they're all registered democrats" to prove there is a liberal bias is completely undermined when there are registered non-party voters, particularly in the upper echelons of the Org like Inskeep is. It means, at best, that the premise is totally wrong. Really it shows that Uri started the entire piece with a preconceived notion then selected anecdotes, which turned out to be false, to make his point. An irony considering the criticism.
It's sad, really, and he should not be taken seriously. After the OP article came out he resigned and I fully expect a persecution tour despite him having done it to himself.
Thanks for posting the substack response! It was a great counterpoint to the original.
I'm left with much the same perception that I started with regarding Uri. He might have a point, but his articulation has plenty of his own biases that obscure that point. I do believe that NPR has changed their coverage in ways that cause them to lose centrist readers, but there is a baby out with the bathwater element to Uri's claims.
I'm not sure I have much to say on the rest, but this has come up twice now. I listen to NPR rarely. I know many people who listen every day. I recall, vividly, some discussions with various friends about some article talking about how NPR was going to stop using Latinx as much as they had been. This would've been last year, and well outside "the last 90 days".
Likewise, while I do not agree with many of the positions of the author of the original article, I do not think it's apples to apples to pull last 90 days, when his complaints have been, supposedly, occurring for much longer than that.
Ok, so then his complaint was resolved, right? He's complaining about what they used to do.
He's complaining about a pattern of behavior of which this was one example? Like that's a pretty disingenuous sum up of his argument.
If he's complaining about a pattern of behavior, perhaps he would be better served by an example that doesn't counteract his point?
That was my recollection as well.
The New York Times and NPR are my two main news sources, in that order. However, I recognize each of their biases, and in fact try to catch their biases as I go through my daily reading. When I feel I need to, I get a third source to round out my coverage.
It should be fairly clear to any regular reader that NPR skews liberal, and skews to an urban, affluent -leaning audience. I spent years living in rural America, and there is little in the way of NPR (or really, NYT) coverage that reflects the day to day concerns of rural America. But between the two, I definitely feel like the NYT's does a better job of covering partisan issues in a less biased fashion, even though it also skews left.
NPR is free to do what it wants, but I do wish it would improve their coverage of partisan events if it wants to be taken seriously on such issues.
I remember a long NYT's piece that gave a blow by blow re-cap of the Hunter-Biden issue for those out of the loop, basically saying it's not as big a deal as Republicans make it to be, but it is a bigger deal than Democrats cop to, and it does deserve some scrutiny. NYT's hasn't shied away from reporting on events just because they don't fit the left leaning narrative or Democrats political plans. I can't envision that sort of editorial board and intentionally and carefully balanced coverage or story coming out of NPR.
Things like the lab leak issue do actually matter, especially when we see a huge knee-jerk reaction to research funding agencies halting long running programs out of new fears that we could create the next pandemic. It would be nice to know if that really was a factor or not, as we look to have a public conversation about what research controls best balance the public interest.
So they can punish the guy for outside work activity, but his essay did strike me as having elements of truth to it, along with some of his own bias.
Meanwhile I cancelled my NYT subscription for their persistent biased reporting of trans youth healthcare. (Somehow treatment with incredibly high satisfaction rates, recommended by the major psychological and medical associations in the US, is now radical, dangerous, and being pushed on children. Oh here's a de-transitioned trans person and an anti-trans parent of a trans kid to speak for trans people. And we'll just keep publishing it with no thoughts, but I digress.)
NPR isn't perfect, but I tend to get thoughtful discussions on their more in depth shows and my station pays for shows I find particularly interesting. And genuinely thought provoking. I listened to a lawyer speak about the Crumbley parental cases and he really made me reconsider whether or not the verdicts were ultimately good law. Because he was right that affluent white parents will be the rare target, and it's much more likely that it will be used against poor, mostly Black and brown, parents and mostly in plea deals. And I really appreciated being given a good reason to rethink those verdicts.
It also helps that many of the shows are produced by local stations with local editorial standards. I may be listening to my local station but the show is from WBUR or WBEZ, etc. (and local station(s) have shows too). It keeps things mixed up and is such an improvement from my childhood of classical music all day.
Yeah, I've pretty much abandoned NYT over trans healthcare coverage and honestly will gladly do the same for other orgs. It's not the first or only thing they've been awful about but it definitely was a big one.
It's not a topic I'm looking for faux-balanced coverage of either, because, as with it, so as with many issues, there are not two sides to the issue I consider remotely equal.
On the other hand, I value the NYT because it covers both sides of an issue, in long form, but without running story after story to drive or sustain a narrative. If there is a debate that is occurring, I want the NYT to present it to me, and that means learning about positions and views I disagree with. So long as NYT maintains the appropriate tone and structure of presenting what others have said, vs presenting their own opinion (other than opinion pieces), then I want to read about positions contrary to my own.
Additionally, I work in a space where these charged topics can come to the fore unexpectedly. Whether that is IRB issues or regulatory changes driven by partisan politics, I need to be in the loop. Occasionally I get asked questions by policy makers and legislators. The NYT prepares me for that far better than any other paper or publication I've tried.
I do enjoy many of NPRs and Propublica stories, but they don't match the breadth of domestic and international coverage provided by the NYT.
That's my point though, on this topic, which is one I'm passably familiar with by being non-binary and working with trans youth as part of my job, they're presenting this deep skepticism of trans youth healthcare as the only point of view, by using a tone of concern but then using only the trans-skeptic sources. And despite all of the feedback from journalists, the trans community, doctors, and the data itself, the stories keep coming from that perspective.
They have lost my trust in their reporting if they are willing to continue to publish what is incredibly biased material that is actively harming trans children. If the data showed incredibly high percentages of regret among trans adults who were treated as children, or children with seriously adverse outcomes, I would be 100% in favor of reevaluating trans medical care. That's what led to the reevaluation of conversion therapy. This is not a desire not to get different views. But if I can't trust them to report accurately on this topic that I have some passing familiarity on, how can I trust the editors in the New York Times that their reporting is accurate on other topics? And cancelling is the only way I can effectively communicate that.
I do think it's important to be informed, and I read a variety of news sources when I can. But I can't justify supporting the NYT through my subscription fees. NYT doesnt cover what I need for my work questions from policy makers either so it's not a work tool..
Where I consider NPR useful is that I'm not locked into one editorial newsroom - I may get information from 1A (NPR), The Twenty First (Illinois Public Media), Here and Now (NPR and WBUR), BBC World Service, and my local news show, and others from individual stations and APM.
It's not the end all be all but it's better than 24 hour news, local TV news and Sinclair radio (which may be a low bar but I think it's significantly better than those sources). I do seek other newspapers, and long form journalism but they serve different purposes to me than radio news does anyway.
I think it's important for people to support the journalism they want to see, and the NYT doesn't need people on the Internet to come to its defense. That said, are you sure all of the articles you are thinking of are actual investigative stories, or were they opinion pieces? I remember reading a handful of investigative pieces that I could see people close to the issue struggling with, but very few and balanced with investigative coverage of the harms to trans issues, such as the Idaho ban.
The opinion pieces are another story, which have been more in number and more, well, opinionated. While it is fair criticism to say that the NYT is giving those pieces a platform, the times gives lots of opinions a platform ranging from why we shouldn't fund Ukraine, to why the times coverage of a topic was problematic. They let a wide array of perspectives in as opinion pieces, and they disclaim that the views are only those of the authors.
I'm also passably familiar with trans, and more generally, LGBTQ+ issues having family and friends who are gay and trans. And I don't recall a sustained negative series of investigative pieces about trans care or issues. I do recall one or two that could be interpreted negatively, though I didn't see them that way. However, the vast majority of what I can find are opinion pieces.
Edit: for example, here is their gender Identity section. Everyone has a different perspective, bit I don't see that list, even with the guest essays, as a hit list against trans rights.
The issues I have started in February of last year (not saying there have never been things before) with the coverage of Jamie Reed as a "whistleblower."
I really don't know anything about Fair.org besides a quick look at their About Me indicating they're a "progressive media watchdog org," but this is a relatively accurate summary of my feelings on everything around that issue. (And indicates this is a pattern as well.) Bari Weiss may have left the NYT but afaik they've stood by their reporting.
Since I don't currently have a sub, I can't read most of the articles, but I'll clarify that the short news pieces are generally fine. But the in-depth reporting, which is the thing I can't get elsewhere, is where I have consistently had issues. I would love for them not to platform some of their guest essayists, but that's not really what I'm considering.
If there's a particular article on the Idaho ban for example, I'd be interested in reading a gift link - the other news articles I saw on the SCOTUS ruling were pretty thorough but I haven't dug into the Idaho ban specifically (bad LGBTQ news can be a bit overwhelming). (Did find Erin Reed's coverage of the original ruling after writing this though.)
I've read through the page you shared previously, and from what I can tell they are really focused on a single NYT article. They mention one or two other articles, but the vast majority of their criticism is focused on the following article. (It is a little hard to follow given how they cite the times articles they talk about.)
Gift link: How a Small Gender Clinic Landed in a Political Storm.
The FAIR page broadly criticizes the "both sides" nature of the times coverage, as well as the times not being sufficiently critical of the whistleblower. However, for a story about the politicization of a small clinic being overwhelmed in the delivery of a nascent specialty, I think it does ok. The times isn't trying to lobby for change, they are trying to present events that happened and the context they happened in. And I get why an activist organization would take issue with that. In the news world, if you don't make everyone at least a little angry, you probably missed something.
Here are some of the opening paragraphs of the times piece that frames the discussion:
Which feels like a fair framing of what happened. There was controversy, elements of the claims were unsubstantiated, and the reality was complex.
They go on to further frame the credibility of the whistle blower, and the core question raised by the investigation:
Different folks will read these paragraphs differently, but it seems a fair statement to make. The whistleblower had a mixture of corroborated and debunked claims, and a part of the public policy debate on minor care for gender transitions has been about the amount screening and care given.
It's a long article, but one last bit that I think is important to the FAIR criticism is where they thoroughly report on a case where the whistleblower was wrong:
That is pretty clear and through coverage of the potential political agenda of the whistleblower twisting the facts. The article spends a fair amount of column inches both confirming and disconfirming the claims.
I do understand why people close to trans or progressive issues wouldn't like the coverage. It strikes at the heart of their work in a very personal way, and it's being used to advance a political agenda.
However, to me, as someone who works with public health research and policy, I see a call for better resourcing care, so these clinics aren't overwhelmed, and we learn how to develop more specialists, etc. These sorts of articles, that cover all the facets of a situation, are important at bringing deficiencies in our systems to light, even when they give coverage to poor faith counter points, because that is the obstacle that we will face in trying to make things better. As they say, forewarned is forearmed. I would rather hear the political talking points in a times article, than in a policy session allocating funds for medical research.
That said, I'm not trying to argue that the times is the pinnacle of coverage on these issues. Just that I didn't find their investigative coverage to have an ongoing narrative that skewes too much any one way. In this story in particular, I don't think the FAIR criticism really holds up, because the times isn't an activist organization, and the times isn't running these topics week after week. And as far as a primary stop for a broad array of coverage, I haven't found a better source yet.
It's difficult no longer having the sub to cite things anymore. I was having a lot more of these discussions last year when they came out. I feel the focus of the coverage is often on the exceptions without really noting how rare they are. And like I said the Fair.org link was the best quick summary of that case article and the follow ups (as well as noting recent past coverage concerns from the prior year) that I could find at a quick glance.
In general I have found the "concerned" tone of the coverage to sort of "cover" for the overarching implication that youth trans healthcare is mismanaged and is harmful. I agree that you can take the message of needing more resources but I don't think that's what most folks got. And trans voices are almost never highlighted on these articles, they're often the brief "other side" given little in the way of inches.
I won't pretend to be unbiased and I won't say the NYT isn't the best single source for what you're looking for. I definitely end up cobbling together my news from multiple sources.
But in NPR's case we have one Sr Editor with concerns, and in the Times' case we have 200 contributors raising concerns over the coverage. (This article does explain some of the history as well.)
Ultimately I'd just rather not support them right now, I thought it worth mentioning because it's always interesting to see what types of bias lead to folks being turned off of particular outlets and my experience happened to be the reverse of yours (I think, unless I've lost track of this thread)
No worries, and thanks for the good discussion. We definitely meandered around. I definitely agree with the lack of actual trans interviews/voices in media.
Take care, and have a great day!
I think most of this comment is well-grounded and well-written, but framing this as "trans activists" not liking the NYT coverage is doing something many places do as part of biased anti-trans coverage -- framing all trans people and their opinions as "activism". Often "news" pieces will do this while simultaneously referring to their anti-trans sources as "concerned parents" or "feminists". I don't think you're intentionally doing that here, but as someone who has had to endure a lot of bad coverage of trans issues by virtue of being trans and needing to keep up with where and what I'm allowed to be/do, it strikes a nerve to have issues with biased coverage of trans issues framed as being criticized by trans activists rather than trans people.
Thank you for pointing this out, that is something I haven't heard before.
In this sort of situation, what would be a better wording? I worry that replacing "trans activists" with "trans person" wouldn't be quite right. Someone might be an activist, but not trans, and someone could be trans, and not find fault with the article on the way I suggest.
Would something like "I understand why people close to trans issues" be a better wording?
I personally think that wording is definitely better and suitably includes trans allies who also criticize the coverage.
Thank you, I edited the comment. I really do appreciate the feedback!
Thank you for this and for @krellor for the edit! I was focused on the big picture and didn't want to get into the details but this is good practice!
The NYT has sometimes done good longform journalism on trans interests like the story How Ben got his Penis, but I broadly agree they strike a "just asking questions" skeptic tone that often feels disrespectful and dismissive. Unfortunately, even that really good in-depth story about one of the best SRS clinics in the world (NYU Langone) made the mistake of including a link to TransBucket which encouraged brigading to a previously niche website... That caused the author to end up getting harassment and death threats from both transphobes and trans people :/
Ugh that's awful.
There have definitely been good pieces out there, but I just hit my limit on the coverage last year.
The general pattern with the NYT is that on any topic you’re only passingly familiar with their coverage does tend to do a good job of giving you a cursory enough overview on the subject to be able to evaluate what’s going on in the world.
But on any subject that you have any level of depth of expertise in it’s always going to seem pretty dumb, seem like it’s surfacing a lot of “conventional wisdom” that’s based on misinterpretations of facts and sources, and making major oversights. But this is really just a challenge for journalism as a discipline. Journalists have a skill set that revolves around finding a story and talking to the acknowledge subject matter experts on it. They’re not subject matter experts themselves. So almost everything they do is going to come from the position/perspective of a general person on the street who is missing a lot of the underlying foundational knowledge and experience of the subject to really be able to make sense of it.
But that’s still a valuable perspective to have because that tells you what the general consensus in society is on the topic, including among the people who make the important decisions in industry, corporate board rooms, and political chambers.
I have a decent amount of expertise on topics in international relations, tech policy, as well as history and religion and spirituality as they pertain to India. Let me tell you, all Times coverage on these topics are pretty damn bad and bring with them a ton of biased narratives and fundamentally incorrect frameworks for understanding key elements of the story. But I don’t really know how anyone is supposed to actually be able to teach those topics under the constraints of writing a newspaper article, most of it would require a graduate school seminar to make people unlearn stuff they’ve learned. But for a newspaper you’re constrained to about 1 broadsheet page, at most, and have to write at an 8th grade level. That’s a tall order.
Yeah and I do get that, it's more that to me this specific coverage, because of the author, because of the editing, because of whatever, has fallen into the trap of pretty much only talking to the skeptics and ignoring the experts without making it obvious how much of an outlier, say, de-transitioned trans people who begrudge their original transition are (vs people who de-transitioned due to stigma or cost or whose identities have fluctuated over time)
I don't have a broader answer either other than being able to identify and rely on experts. That's definitely harder when other countries are involved.
You give a great articulation to the value I find in the times articles. Namely, they tell me what the layperson thinks or knows, and gives me a starting point to go deeper on topics that seem important to me, society, etc. Knowing what people outside of my bubble think is hugely important to me.
This is why I’m somewhat sympathetic to “both sides” reporting. It’s superficial, but i at least it gets some facts out there. In-depth investigations would be better, but time, resources, and expertise are limited.
Yeah I definitely didn’t think his article was all nonissues, but my issue was with the manner of voicing his concerns. An open letter isn’t a bad idea when people are blowing you off, but why not have an open letter distributed within NPR? It sounds like either superiors blew him off, or discussed the issues and decided they didn’t want to make his requested changes.
The way he went about it made his opinion the authority on what is wrong with NPR. Nobody else was allowed to determine whether they had other issues or discuss whether there were good reasons behind the decisions he disagrees with.
It sounds like he has discussed things internally, without success. Whether that means his points are falling on deaf ears, or his points are flawed, I can't say. But NPR has a pretty big bullhorn to communicate their own narrative if they choose. Given the employer-employee relationship at play this feels more like a truth to power situation, with his union job being the only thread keeping him in place, and tenuously given the final notice letter.
"his essay did strike me as having elements of truth to it". Heh. I think that was the problem with even the editor who wrote that article's take. How things "strike you" is meaningless.
There are lots of services out there that use data based methods to investigate media bias though. Use something like that and not your gut.
The problem with this approach is that bias is at least partly subjective and emotional, maybe even spiritual. It’s also dynamic and contextual.
As such it’s hard to do any kind of meaningful and generalized statistical analysis that applies to more than the analysts own biases (at best).
He definitely seems to have tried, in good faith, to bring up the issues internally. I think that justifies his actions to some extent.
But we don't know what the conversations actually were. I imagine it's a hard topic at NPR where the consensus is likely that the majority of the republican party has lost its mind. To the degree that giving them representation is more problematic than the lack thereof.
It's not surprising that there aren't any (open) republicans at NPR. Ten years ago, before the republican party became the party of Trump, it might have been different, but these days it's really hard for anyone who's paying attention to be a republican. And of course everyone at NPR is paying attention.
I mean what is the answer to "there aren't enough republicans and NPR?" Hiring based on political affiliation?
I can imagine a meeting where everyone considered that rabbit hole a waste of time.
While you're right, we don't know how the conversations went, I still don't think it's fair to say he "jumped to the top of the ladder" based on the evidence we have. Maybe he was a complete asshole or it's all lies, but the only information we have on the subject is his, and it says he most certainly did not do that.
I do agree that it's not surprising there are no republicans at NPR, but I think that's not exactly what he's trying to say. The issue is that republican has become a word that basically identifies two near totally different groups pre and post trump. Lots of people use the term as if it only means one, but the simple truth is the one the republicans (or some of them) have been afraid to face, which is that there's been a bifurcation of the party.
The "we must win at any cost" nonsense has really just dragged out and empowered trump. The republicans could be halfway through a fucked schism by now (in which yes, they will not win major elections), and figuring out where the party really lies.
Instead we've got this pile of "not fully conservative, but not nearly as liberal as the dems claim they are" group of people, and it's a large pile. I don't think those voices are represented much at all anymore within NPR, and that is a loss.
To clarify, I'm not the "jumped to the top of the ladder" poster. I don't think there's anything terribly wrong with what he did, ethically speaking. Maybe a dick move, but that's for the people at NPR to judge.
I completely agree that we'd all benefit from expanding the umbrella to make space for near right conservative views. There's not really a place for them in the current republican party, and the left doesn't seem to want them either.
It’s at least possible that that’s because their perspectives are outmoded and need to pass in history.
The thing about progress is that it requires folks to be progressive.
The folks in the middle meed to get more progressive, and the folks at the far right margin need to be seen and heard, soothed, and then shown why progress is better.
To relate it to tfa, this editor should be heard, and a realignment perhaps at nor to help those dragging to be heard, but their views don’t deserve equal weight becaus their approaches are leading us to a second dark ages filled with environmental calamity and economic and political disparity.
I didn't get the impression that he was pushing for more Republicans to be hired, but rather, that the leadership strives for a sort of institutional disconfirmation of individual biases. A clear example is not running a newsworthy story because of its political impact. Other left leaning publications have managed this balance better than NPR, at least in my opinion.
I can't be the first one to speculate that Uri Berliner was recruited for this. He's a radio guy and he's now primed to start his own podcast. At least so far, he's following the right-wing podcast origin story template of Jordan Peterson, Bret Weinstein, and Bari Weiss (who published the NPR piece) where you manufacture some kind of "cancellation" stunt, and then get rich by joining the ranks of "anti-woke" podcasts, substacks, and the like.
He'll also no doubt make the rounds as a guest on Joe Rogan and various other podcasts in the same sphere of grifters that repeat ad nauseam right-wing talking points like Hunter Biden's laptop, the COVID lab leak, DEI / "wokeness" concerns.
Aside from the above speculation, the substance of his claims about NPR were stretched pretty thin to tailor it to a pretty specific audience. The facts were secondary to confirming the biases of the readers. This includes bias about bias in journalism itself, and the weakness of the evidence seems to get lost among various assumptions about what bias is present in journalism, what "diversity" of views is supposed to be included, etc.
If you do a google search with "site:npr.org", you can confirm that NPR did in fact have coverage of the Hunter Biden laptop and the COVID lab leak. Every place they discussed the "Don't Say Gay" bill, they used "so-called" or attributed the slogan to people opposed, in line with pretty typical journalistic standards. Even if you follow the links included in the story, it's hand-waving in the direction of "this is generally 'woke' so it must be bad", not examples of journalistic malfeasance.
In general, sweeping generalizations about "the (mainstream) media" or even the coverage of specific organizations should be treated with skepticism regardless of where it's coming from, because it's often someone looking to capture your attention for their own benefit.
It does follow the template of some previous stories, which is why I found it surprising and newsworthy that a guy who worked at NPR for 25 years would write that essay. I didn’t know anything about him before seeing a story about it (on the NPR website) and it would be interesting to know more. Maybe he will write about it more now that he resigned?
But I’m also surprised at the lengths that people will go to discredit him, sometimes even making stuff up, rather than admit that he might be a respectable, non-nutty journalist (a Democrat!) with a contrary opinion.
To me, that’s interesting, even if the essay he wrote is more about his subjective impression of how things went than hard facts. I would prefer more facts, but people do write subjective opinion pieces sometimes.
Why is there so much conflict in American news organizations about this? I would like a better explanation than “everyone who writes negatively about diversity initiatives is some kind of nut.”
Post about Uri Berliner's post can be found here
I feel like this is an issue that needs to be addressed at several major news outlets too. There is 'diversity' only in the outward characteristics of the reporters but not in their viewpoint. We just get used to certain outlets only presenting from one viewpoint or the other, but balanced reporting used to be the gold star for good journalism - where you never read a story from a single viewpoint and every article/story at least gave a chance for an opposing view out of respect for both sides. Now we have talking heads telling us the story from their perspective, followed by other commentators telling us why they are right. Where's the critical thinking and balance?
There is a diversity in viewpoint from the reporters’ unique experiences; but just not a political/partisan diversity. Partly, I think it’s due to the GOP going off the rails in recent years and partly to self-selecting listenership (your average GOP voter is listening to conservative talk radio, not NPR; plus the bulk of NPR’s funding comes from grants and donations from more liberal-leaning folks and orgs). I do think that NPR could do better at getting perspectives from Trump-supporters (they do okay with guest-speakers like David French and Jonah Goldberg, but those are more pre-2010 GOP folks), but ultimately they will be subjected to criticism if they start spouting bullshit.
Honestly my biggest issue is that I don’t get a lot of breadth in content. I learn more about what’s going on in the world in the five minute snippets at the top of the hour than in the rest of the program.
Oh I feel this in my bones.
"The fighting Gaza has intensified as Israel ramps up their ground operations....
The world of traditional Japanese ceramics has been roiled the past few months by allegations of counterfeits being sold at the most prestigious vendors. We'll spend the next hour diving into the history, scandal and the fallout with our guest..."
That's hilarious. I love how NPR will go deep on things. I know more about the economics of Christmas trees than I ever expected. But there is a reason my primary for scope is NYT, and then selectively NPR to get a rounder picture of a topic.
Planet Money is good for the small rabbit hole-esque deep dives on a particular topic like that.
Giving fair coverage to Trump folks is tough because, well, they’re inveterate liars. So if your role as a journalistic enterprise is to give people the facts and contexts to make sense of the world you’re in, just letting Trumpists talk works against that goal. But they’re also influential figures in the world so people do need to know what they’re thinking, so how much do you need to editorially signpost that this guy is a liar who has sworn fealty to a liar?
On some level all political coverage has this problem, because all politicians lie to some extent. And I think political coverage in the US in general has fallen into a trap of presenting partisan spin as “political analysis” and expecting to just put spin from “both sides” up and let people figure it out. But all this has ended up doing is creating a pervasive climate of bullshit that has eroded trust in journalism and the political system as a whole. I don’t know a real way around it when a prominent political movement actually goes off the rails into kookoo town.
Chapins comments at the end about diversity of viewpoint are I think central to the disagreement between Berliner and I guess the upper management or editorial staff of NPR. What it means to support a healthy diversity of viewpoints.
I will admit I have kinda stopped listening to NPR lately, but I think it has less to do with me being put off by the woke agenda and more to do with me just not wanting to listen to the news as much anymore.
If I ever do listen to NPR these days it's Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, which is a lighthearted gameshow. Apocalypse fatigue has across the board reduced my normal news consumption habits, including NPR.
I had to go on a complete podcast diet for the sake of my mental health. There are a few I really miss, like American Prestige, because they were informative more informative and less doom and gloom, but I'm waiting to find a job before I re-up my subscription.
Feels to me like NPR just proved his point. It doesn’t matter if you’re a tenured, award winning journalist. If you publish journalism that’s counter-narrative to their mandate, you’re in trouble.
I read his article, when it first came out (I think it was a top post here on tildes?). I disagreed with him strongly. I thought he was wrong. He basically is saying "NPR is not Republican enough" except in code words.
Anyways no comments on whether being wrong deserves a suspension or not. That is up to NPR to decide.
It seems like he said it pretty plainly:
I find it odd how people dance around this issue.
As a software engineer, I've worked on teams that were all guys, and although I don't think this was what anyone was aiming for, if you asked us "is there anything wrong with this," it's an easy and straightforward question to answer: yes, it's not ideal, and when hiring more people, we should try to do better.
The team I'm thinking of had five people. (One is gay, so we had some diversity in that respect.) If it were 87 people, well, something seems really wrong there? Software engineering has a skewed gender ratio, but women aren't that rare.
I would like to see people answer the question: do you think it's okay that NPR has 87 Democrats and no Republicans? Or, if this is a bad question to ask, explain what's wrong with it.
When the Republican party stops supporting hateful, regressive, and genuinely evil policies and leaders like Trump, maybe they will naturally get more representation in liberal news organizations. The Republicans are the party of family separation at the border, election results denial, stochastic terror, insurrection, LGBT+ and women's rights erosion, obstruction, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. So is it really a surprise that so few journalists with actual integrity are registered Republicans?
This "fair and balanced", bothsides bullshit needs to fucking stop!
The idea that a reporter who is registered as a Republican is the equivalent of a Nazi is extreme and I simply don’t buy it. I don’t think Republicans necessarily support the terrible things you mentioned. (Example: Arnold Schwarzenegger. Pro-choice Republicans exist, though I don’t think they get elected anymore?)
But thanks for answering the question.
This is the crux of the argument being repeated here.
Most of the republicans I knew literally left the party when trump was picked. Some did not but have refused to vote trump.
There is still a very large gradient from the left to the right and people act like it’s not there.
I had not read this, so thanks for sharing it. Yes, it’s rather unclear what he actually did to determine those numbers and it’s unclear what’s really true.
However, I’ll note that, reading carefully, he doesn’t claim it to be a complete poll or a random sample? He found 87 Democrats. He didn’t find any Republicans. We don’t know who he asked, or how.
I made a bad assumption about what these numbers meant. I think the reporter writing that “debunking” might have made the same assumption?
It would be good to know what Beliner’s methodology was.
That's kind of the point, though. His job was as a senior editor at a major news organization. That sort of unfounded statement isn't something he'd let fly in an article he was editing and yet it appears here as an easily disprovable gotcha. Take all of the opinion and viewpoint out of it and it's just shoddy journalism for a publication that is not his employer that he did not seek comment for nor inform his employer per their "outside work" policies. A 5 day suspension is a slap on the wrist, and his own resignation is his choice.
If I had made a fool of myself by showing I wasn't actually capable of doing my job well while complaining all my coworkers sucked I'd probably resign, too.
Simply put: yes, even if that biases their coverage, which it obviously will/does, and that's even as someone left of these Democrats that has issues with some of their coverage. The only qualm I have with it at all, is I wish they'd admit this instead of claiming balance. I don't care about balanced coverage, but I'm tired of orgs claiming it. I'd rather them own their bias instead of pretending its not there.
Separately, equating diversity of inherent traits (race, orientation, etc) to diversity of worldviews/ideas/opinions/viewpoints (choices) I think is pretty flawed.
The former are not chosen. The latter do not need to be given the same default weight or respect or pursuit of "diversity"
Honestly I find this really weird because I think it's the other way around. When ignoring the possible benefits for the individuals (giving a job to someone who might otherwise be discriminated against), what is the benefit of any kind of diversity if not diversity of opinions? Is that not the goal?
They are tied together in some ways sure, in that by focusing on real diversity of race, orientation, gender, etc you will get varied perspectives.
However not all ideas/views should be given equal treatment nor should they be assumed to be of any inherent quality simply because a particular type of person holds them. Ideas should be considered on their own merit alone and some ideas have none.
For example, if someone is anti-LGBTQ, I have zero need to include their perspectives in the name of diversity.
I agree with this, though from my side of the ocean it seems that american right wing media are too tolerant of hateful right-wing opinions whereas left wing media are too uncritical of dumb ideas expressed by members of marginalized groups, which is also wrong. Nevertheless, I am not saying that all ideas are equal.
There are two issues with this. Firstly if you limit diversity only to selected individual traits, you limit the diversity of opinions quite a bit. A black gay woman from California and a white heterosexual man from California have significantly more similar life experiences to each other than either has to a white heterosexual man from rural Appalachia. Some sociologists would also argue that for a majority of people their political affiliation is about as unchangeable as their sexual orientation, though I never bothered to check how legitimate some of that research is.
Secondly, excluding truly unacceptable opinions is the logical thing to do, but what seems to usually happen is that people throw out the baby with the bathwater and decide that nearly half of the US population is evil or stupid. Not only is it not true, it's making the political division in society worse. The way I understand the original article of the NPR editor, this is a big part of his problem.
I agree. The idea of inherent traits is really fuzzy too. If I'm building a website and want to make sure I'm properly supporting a variety of locales, it'd be good to have someone fluent in Arabic to help test right to left text. Unless Arabic is their mother tongue, I don't think it's an inherent trait. Engaging with other speakers and Arabic media surely colors their view of the world though.
A closeted queer person with a non-supportive family is presumably going to be very different from a flamboyant queer that grew up in a loving and supportive family. Their "inherent traits" are the same, but the two people's lived experiences are night and day.
Edit: grammar
I’m pretty okay with this in many cases, too. I don’t think news organizations need to be politically neutral and will read and share articles from The Guardian or the Economist.
The main things I’m looking for is that they will report on what happened even if they disagree with it, and without immediately telling you what opinion you’re supposed to have. I think there’s a difference between reporting and the full-fledged advocacy that you see when a lawyer zealously defends their client, where making the case for the other side is the job of opposing counsel.
I think there’s a good argument though, for diversity of experience. For example, in software engineering, when an application is available in multiple countries and multiple languages, it’s useful to have someone who speaks a language and knows a culture on the team. Sure, you can contract out to have the UI translated, but that’s second-best. Similarly for accessibility.
And I think the same thing is true of news organizations.
Political party affiliation is not the same as gender. Gender isn't something you choose, and it doesn't prevent you from being qualified to be a software engineer. It doesn't say anything at all about your values or your choices. The values and choices that someone has to hold in order to choose to be a Republican in 2024 do preclude you from being qualified to be a journalist. I think it's not just okay that they had 87 Democrats and 0 Republicans, I think it's the most sensible possible scenario.
That’s not why I chose gender as an example. To pick another example, when reporting on some stories, I think a news room would benefit from having someone with military experience? It doesn’t matter whether serving in the military is something you chose.
The framework I’m using isn’t being anti-discrimination as a legal or labor issue, it’s what benefits the organization for doing its mission.
Being a Republican isn't just any choice, either. The current republican party platform rejects science and fact in a number of ways. Rejecting reality like that is not beneficial to a news organization.
You make an extremely important point:
When you have a huge group of employees/ selected people who all share the same characteristic, whatever that may be, you'd almost certainly want your next person to add to that group to have a characteristic they don't.
Examples:
We're all products of a bunch of characteristics, beliefs and experiences. Many chosen, many not. We all bring a complete package. In recruitment and diversity, we want packages to cover all sorts of qualities we should have.
In a newsroom, you want varied folks, especially in just conveying whatever you like to all the people who don't share your points of reference, say a huge majority having certain political views. We cannot lay our biases at the door. Being aware of them is not enough.
Diversity is extremely diverse. It seems obvious NPR (and so many other organizations) are failing at diversity and that their products suffer in turn.
Yes, that's largely what I'm arguing, except that I don't think he made an open-and-shut case. It was a pretty long article with a lot of opinion and subjective observations, and a bit of suggestive evidence. It could have been better.
But I also don't think it shows incompetence or anything like that. It's surprising how harshly people will judge a writer when they're on the other side.
Not sure how I'd summarize what's going on at NPR other than "it's complicated." It seems even people who worked there many years are still surprised by some stuff that happened?
I agree with your overall sentiment but can't help but nitpick the nuances.
Overall, I'd say the place where diversity in background matters are in positions that make meaningful decisions. As your journalistic example shows, that does not imply leadership. In fact, C-suite diversification projects necessarily select for superficial & immutable diversity so long as the person is a capitalist. That's an example of leadership with limited decision-making power: they're already so bought into the system that saying "they could choose a radically different direction" is a moralistic copium.
To add to what others have brought up assuming these reporters live in DC and not Maryland or Virginia then it makes sense to me that they’d be registered Democrat.
It seems that DC has a closed primary and is basically all democrats on the council. The two independents typically being democrats that switch party affiliation since the whole council can’t be from one party. So if you want any real say in your local government then you would probably register democrat. To a lesser degree this is true of the surrounding MD counties and possibly VA as well.
He wasn't suspended for the content he published, he was suspended for not getting approval to publish with another organization.
In fact, they specifically did allow him to discuss the same content in other places when he sought approval for those appearances.
Obviously NPR could be being less-than-truthful about its reasoning, but Berliner broke an office rule that long pre-dated this controversy. It would be strange if NPR didn't reprimand him in some way.
Here's a long article that brings up a whole lot of other things that NPR has gotten wrong over the years. There's plenty that's quotable, but here's a summary:
...
He just announced his resignation from NPR:
https://x.com/uberliner/status/1780610524411048183