NPR left me behind sometime around 2014. Right around the time of the civil unrest initially centered in Ferguson, MO, but eventually applied to all Western countries. I grew tired of defending myself - a center left POC cop - from my dear friends, themselves loyal driveway momenteers, mirroring the BLM talking points and goals that have all but been slowly but steadily discredited by regular ol Americans.
Fast forward a decade, Mr Uri Berliner finally steps forward, blows the whistle, gets suspended and quits and what changes? Hint: Not much. The Free Press, evidently a dirty cross between People and Infowars, gets dragged through the mud and the report is subsequently buried. Meanwhile black Oakland cries for more police presence. Meanwhile NPR continues its aural blast of white supremacy, Jan 6, white supremacy, Jan 6.
I saw Steve Inskeep talk shit about Uri Berliner - clearly top NPR stars live in such a demented socialist/progressive bubble they can’t see how long time listeners have turned on them.
I listened to them from the moment I came to the US in the mid 1990s, and stopped completely around December 2023. Endless emails and calls pointing out bias and lies as they turned into National Palestine Radio, and clearly they’re proud of being a propaganda arm of Hamas. So personally, I’ve stopped listening to the radio stations, the podcasts, and I will never again donate a dollar to anything remotely associated with public radio or television, and definitely NPR. They can all burn to the ground or solicit Qatar for some of those sweet antisemitic propaganda petrodollars.
the same Steven Inskeep who let Trump talk about the election being stolen from him for 10 minutes straight without challenging him on it? Yeah...He is such a radical leftist that Inskeep.
I still listen to NPR regularly but my main criticism is that their politics sometimes cause them to get off-topic or to make spurious connections. For example, there's a tendency to end the discussion of any problem with a comment about how this affects vulnerable people, such as LGBT, the most. This was appended even to stories about abortion, a topic which affects lesbians and gays less than their straight peers.
This isn't a particularly big deal, but it did get annoying. I assumed that the writers had some sort of requirement to reference vulnerable groups for every story and were checking the box without considering how applicable it was. A lot of their content was this sort of box-checking which gets repetitive to listen to.
Thanks for going on The 21st to discuss this! I just listened to that episode this morning. I used to defend my listening to and support of my NPR station by saying certain reporters, like Nina Totenberg who admitted it, are clearly biased, but most of them are not. Most of the short newscasts are factual accounts of what's happening.
It's much more about what is covered, how it's covered, and how stories are framed during Morning Edition and All Things Considered. I stopped listening and donating about ten years ago because NPR didn't even try to give a variety of perspectives in longer pieces, two-ways, and analysis. Some NPR reporters and producers routinely decide what viewpoint to promote BEFORE even starting to gather facts and do interviews. They choose who to interview not based on getting the facts but rather based on getting sound bites to reflect their preconceived ideas about the subject or event.
I also read lots of comments on Steve Inskeep's Substack rebuttal of Uri's article. I found it very interesting that lots of them said NPR works too hard at "both-siderism" and should sort of abandon objectivity and balance.
I am in the market where the WVIK general manager is who was on the 21st with you as a guest. I agree with him and the writer from Current that Uri Berliner's article is not a big surprise and won't change most people's minds. The left-of-center slant has been obvious for years. But as you say, there are definitely program reasons NPR lost audience beyond changes in the industry, etc. Eric Deggans' comments about taking things out of context fails to address the main thrust of Uri's article which is based on his real and valid experience.
Sometimes I think NPR would be better off to refuse federal funding. That would remove that part of the problem. But then NPR wouldn't get as much free publicity every time Congress considers approving CPB funds, or whenever it's accused of bias. :)
I didn't know you had a podcast and will give it a listen. I always appreciated your sports reporting on NPR!
I used to listen all the time, like, hours a day in the background. But it's impossible to just listen to a neutral story or interview about X person doing Y interesting thing in Z place. No, there has to be a "they" or a "them" or a POC or systemic oppression or... well, you get it; you wrote the article.
And then, of course, in response to me saying anything like this, the fingers pointing "male fragility" and "white privilege" for saying anything like this are incessant - from a very small but very vocal and easily offended group.
No, I don't find any of those topics or group identities offensive in the least - I'm a city boy with a diverse group of friends and family from all of these groups. Rather, I find the not-so-subtle shoehorning of these issues from the margins of society into every single facet of every story, well, insidious. And again, I have to put a disclaimer: When I say margins of society, I will get accused of "marginalizing" groups of people. But that's not it either; I recognize you, and you matter. But you do not own the privilege of having your issues be the sole thing we hear about in every single story, any more than if management had decided to shoehorn the arbitrary issues of albino orphans and one-legged migrant lemon pickers onto the airwaves every 4 minutes. And the fact that I have to say that and disclaim every common-sense sentence is as tedious and annoying as having NPR on for 15 minutes.
You say, "every single facet of every story." Hyperbole aside, let's look to today's NPR Morning Edition as a sample to see if there is anything to your gripes:
1. A story about World Video Game Hall of Fame.
Sounds pretty white and male, so I think this one's for you!
2. A saxophone player.
Uh oh! A black musician. But no discussion of racism!
3. Arizona's Mexico-born Republican congressman on the border.
Kind of hard not to nationality at all when talking about immigration.
4. Panera Bread said it's discontinuing its Charged Sips drinks.
No race discussed.
5. Lionel Messi's contract.
Are soccer fans a marginal group?
6. Should commercial space companies contribute to the FAA the way airlines do?
No race or gender. It is your own "safe spaceX"!
7. Netflix tries more live programming with standup specials and Tom Brady roast.
An opportunity to include a dig at those "cancelled" comedians.... Don't worry, the segment is safe for you! No marginalized opinions expressed.
8. North Carolina's first marijuana dispensary opened last month on Cherokee land.
This does mention a minority group, but no mention of the history of racism against Native Americans, so its probably considered "neutral" for you. Your safe space remains in tact this AM.
9. Is Biden's border plan working?
Another immigration story with no mention of racism.
10. RFK Jr. is not alone. More than a billion people have parasitic worms.
Are the worm people marginal? I am not sure. Are you marginal?
11. A mother is called to work as a doula after her first child died shortly after birth.
Oh no "doula" sounds like a hippy thing and it has a person with a Hispanic name...
12. U.S. says military pier will increase aid to Gaza. Humanitarian groups have doubts
13. A lifelong conservative explains why he's voting for President Biden this fall
14. The adventures of Middle Earth will soon continue in theaters.
15. Eurovision 2024: Here are the songs with the best shot at glory
16. Biden says he would stop weapons shipments to Israel if it invades Rafah
17. May is expected to be an important month to turn things around in Haiti.
No mention of how colonial powers are responsible for Haiti's current situation, so your safe space is still going strong this morning!
18. Veterans who received other-than-honorable discharges may be eligible for benefits
Over 18 the stories on this day, I couldn't find a single "shoehorning" of a "marginal" issue. Do you disagree?
Did you ever consider that, despite your disclaimers, you are actually (unconsciously) offended about hearing ideas you don't like? That you have distorted and magnified how often "their issues" are mentioned? Maybe people have "pointed fingers" at you so many times because you keep making the same oblivious comments?
This line, "you do not own the privilege of having your issues be the sole thing we hear about in every single story" is odd. It suggests that there is some different group of people from you that has their own "issues" that are being given undue priority. Given the post above, I suppose you are referring to stories concerning racism. Personally, I do not consider myself part of a "marginal" group, but I consider these stories to be important and "their" issues are also *my* issues. Have you asked yourself, why are "their issues" not your issues?
You are making tedium even more tedious, as I knew that someone insecure who felt their safe space was threatened would do. Rather than actually think about a viewpoint that doesn't align with your sacred, unquestioned tenets and have an intelligent discussion, just go for the tired old predictable ad hominem with some predictable racist stereotypes and assumptions. Yawn. So incredibly boring. If you missed the point any further you’d actually come around and hit it by accident. Then again, I suppose you'd have to be pretty mobile to achieve that, and judging by your intelligence, I suspect you get watered twice a week.
Do you know what ad hominem is? It an argument that attacks a person rather than their argument. I set forth your argument, and then set forth evidence that contradicted your argument. Your response ignores this. It is, in sum, "you are boring and dumb" fails to address the evidence and argument I made.
You accuse others of needing safe spaces, when you are the one seeking a safe space. You accuse others of employing the ad hominem fallacy, but you ignore the evidence and call names.
A list of articles isn't counter-evidence; good counter-evidence would be taking a bunch of recent articles chosen randomly, and showing the percentage of those that discuss race/identity politics vs. the ones that don't. If the articles in your list discuss racial politics or other issues the woke are fascinated with, then you're making your point for him. If you didn't choose the articles randomly, you're just cherry picking. Not a good way to prove a point.
Sorry, I didn't see this before. But I did choose a random. I just picked *every* story from that day I wrote about. Cherry picking would be to look at the articles for many days, and then decide which ones I wanted to list and discuss. For a person who claimed that "every single facet of every story" offended his anti-woke sensibilities, the evidence provided is more than sufficient.
A list of articles isn't counter-evidence; good counter-evidence would be taking a bunch of recent articles chosen randomly, and showing the percentage of those that discuss race/identity politics vs. the ones that don't.
So funny you say that, considering neither Pesca NOR you did that. LoL. Go ahead, find a truly random sampling of articles and run an objective analysis on them. I look forward to the results.
Oh, and by the way, please describe the method you choose to use for random sampling, much like one would show for a review article in a peer-reviewed journal. I am not holding my breath!
Great read. What impresses me is that you care about the decline in quality at public radio. Average listeners simply change the radio station or move on to the next podcast (it's not like there's a shortage of programming/podcasts/audio.) They have no agenda other than to hear something that interests them. As for me, I listen to the NPR daily news podcast and maybe Morning Edition/ATC in once awhile in the car, but that's it. I guess I stopped subscribing to a lot of the NPR podcasts a few years ago for no other reason than that they were clogging my feed. It wasn't personal or political. I still contribute to my local station. I was just tired of forwarding through episodes I had no interest in listening to.
The other issue is that reporters, particularly at NPR, are extremely aware of the impact/pitfalls of decisions around vocab, with the result being a barrage of buzzwords that are coded political speech (for example "decolonize"). I find that type of advocacy, which also happens all the time of Fox News and MSNBC, to be insulting since it is intended to push the listener into a particular conclusion.
Again, report the news, tell good stories about all kinds of subjects, and respect the audience.
Some of those stories that you are citing as proof of the decline of NPR could actually be great work.
You included the renaming of some birds as an example of craziness…but if you learn about it, it was both fascinating and something that I am glad is being addressed. Exactly the kind of story I have always looked to NPR for.
Now I did not hear their story on it, so I can’t comment on its usefulness. But you picked a very bad example there.
I listened to that bird story ready to roll my eyes about renaming birds. But I recall it was a good story and, after hearing various perspectives, was convinced that we can have better bird names, regardless of whether the bird was named after a slaver or an abolitionist.
I kinda suspected you hadn’t gotten this topic fully out of your mind, so I’m glad to see a Pesca Profundity™️ about it! I listened to the 21st podcast. I found the format a bit stifling - a VERY public radio thing; can’t they space out the breaks better? - but I’m glad they gave you some time. That said, your arguments here are better than those on The Gist or on the 21st, because you get at the the issue more concretely. I have listened to NPR for about 17 years in my varied markets, from the TX panhandle to Portland, OR. I never found the news programming especially liberal, but perhaps biased toward the Democratic. Like others, I’ve noticed the progressive, Identitarian tilt of story framing, reporting , and interviewing. This is especially evident on topics of gender identity or race, and in the use of the “right” language (Latinx comes to mind). It gets tiresome. That may or may not be connected to the loss of talent; but the loss is felt, too.
I think NPR is on the midst of a classic brand identity crisis. Part of the crisis is unique to NPR, which is both a news organization and a synonym for public radio broadly. So NPR takes the brand heat for the shortcomings of any programming on public radio, but gets less benefit for successful ones (i.e. beloved local programs or programs with their own strong brand identities a la Planet Money). It’s also drifting away from its core customers, and by virtue of its brand reputation, will continue to struggle to expand programming beyond that core audience.
I don’t have the insights Mike does or completely understand the NPR business model. I’m just a humble listener who still has high praise for NPR news programming, but who’s growing tired of the ideological framing that programming has adopted.
To evaluate changes, its important to know if the numbers are determined in the same way each year. However, the reports provide vague citations as best; sometimes no citation at all.
Pew provides numbers for NPR weekly broadcast audience (https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/fact-sheet/public-broadcasting/?tabItem=8715c914-e732-4605-92f5-2f2714f71841) which shows a pretty steady 25m from 2005-2016, then a sudden bump upon Trump's arrival up to 30m, and then a steady decline to 23.5m in 2022. Of course, this is also at the same time as an increase in podcast/streaming, so apart from a Trump bump and covid effects, it is hard to be determine whether there is a real change in interest attributable to changes or a lack of change at NPR. (Pew did not show audience numbers for the radio news industry as a whole.)
For podcasts, counting could be determined in many different ways. File downloads? Downloads listened to? Surveys? A switch of methods (reasonable given changes in technology) will have changes unrelated to actual listenership).
Pesca says "Listenership is off by a massive 30%." This number comes doesn't line up with the NPR reports from 2019-2022 numbers, or the Pew numbers. It appears taken from the NYT article which says "While NPR still has an audience of about 42 million who listen every week, many of them digitally, that is down from an estimated 60 million in 2020, according to an internal March audience report, a faster falloff than for broadcast radio, which is also in a long-term decline." The 60 million number appears to come from NPR's 2020 report (https://readymag.website/npr/annualreport2020/), noted above, which is an estimate for "Spring 2020"—the covid outbreak. Absent any indication that the number comes from a different source, the claim is cherry-picking by the NYT and includes website visits (not "listenership"). The NYT does not include any information regarding overall broadcast numbers or changes in news website and news podcast usage over this time. (Something they should have some information on if they talked to their own marketing department.)
Pesca concludes that the decline is not industry-wide because Sean Hannity's radio show grew in size from 14 million to 16 million. Using a specific other program is not a good way to illustrate whether NPR as a whole is doing poorly compared to the entire industry. Shoddy.
I wondered where these Hannity numbers came from: The Washington Times who cite "Talkers," which has the look of a website set up by someone's nephew in 2006. How do "Talkers" get their numbers? They do not really say. (https://talkers.com/top-talk-audiences/) From "in-house research" and "sampling ratings services and other metrics-gathering sources and methodologies." This has all the reliability of overhearing something on the train. Shoddy. So, what is the truth on Hannity’s nubmers? I don't know. Would it even matter to the point of the piece? No. It is unreliable and pointless information.
Past all of these numbers, what is the PROFUNDITY offered here? Pesca thinks NPR went woke and listeners are turned off from hearing about white supremacy. Does he have any evidence for this? No.
Maybe if there was a disproportionate decrease in white (independent/GOP) listenership, but is there evidence of that? Not that I can see. Or you could look at popularity of regular news podcasts to race-conscious podcasts, or how often people skip stories on race vs. other topics. Are the new entrants taking listeners from NPR? If so, why? Are they more right-leaning? Talked more about racism? Any explanation would also have to deal with the overall changes in media and media diets. There has been a growth in radio/podcasting field; there is more competition. So, even if there is a loss in listenership one area, it may be from new entrants, not necessarily dissatisfaction. Maybe some listeners are upset that NPR continues to invite on-air and treat seriously the opinions of white supremacists?
The chart of mentions of "white supremacy" is also pointless, for so many reasons: why is this a good proxy for anything? Who are the people mentioning "white supremacy"? What is the context? How is this possibly changing listenership? The number of mentions goes *down* from 2020-2023, the same period that listenership has gone down--making it consistent with NPR saying "white supremacy" not often enough!! I could go on.
I don’t have the information necessary to evaluate NPRs listenership and this post did not help.
Thankfully, there were no gross errors of fact requiring a correction, but the post does reference "white supremacy," so I may not read the next post.
Are you merely asking for evidence here or do you sincerely think that NPR's overt wokeness isn't turning off listeners? Or, surely this isn't correct but I should ask, do you think that NPR isn't actually very woke?
Pesca makes claims about NPR numbers. I think he doesn't have actual evidence to support his claims and misread the NYT to mislead his readers. Pesca makes claims regarding the causes of a decrease in visitors/listeners. Pesca's thoughts are based upon his personal feelings and not any evidence.
This post did not discuss whether or not NPR is "woke" or if its "wokeness" has changed.
If 2019 was peak year for NPR, are you actually suggesting they have become more woke in the last 4 years? LoL. This person actually pointed out a truth to you: NPR was at an all time high in terms of listeners when Trump was president, and at the same time Berliner accused them of being blatantly anti-Trump/MAGA. If anything, the numbers prove the opposite of what you and your thought leaders are arguing: That being anti-Trump was indeed very profitable for NPR, and did NOT turn off listeners..In fact, it led to a record number of them.
I think you are just upset that more people hate Trump than love him, and I get that is a hard pill to swallow.
I feel like it's a couple of threads weing woven together. Universities have taught these topics (but often with balance). Students took the lesson to be that everyone who is in power and white gained that status via oppression. That might not have been professors' intent, but it's what we got.
Another thread I see is the forcing out of experienced journalists really quickly in favor of these cheaper more recent grads. Those old school folks would help marinate the young journos.
Of course all this has happened before. When NPR started, I bet my 60+ year old grandfather would have found it to be much more liberal than he might have expected compared to Walter Cronkite or John Chancellor. It just happens to stand out more because we live in the times of the hot takes. Cronkite had better things to do than count how many times NPR used "black" compared to "African American". Even with all our crises, we don't.
That's not a good comparison. Cronkite would have needed to sit next to the radio with a notepad and pencil four hours to analyze word usage. Today, someone uses a web scraper on AI-generated transcripts and completes word count analysis in a fraction of the time.
Personally, I don't mind hard numbers on this sort of thing. It's better to base accusations of bias or framing on word usage rather than vague "vibes".
This is a feel thing more than an objective measure, but I feel like more and more stories on NPR radio are facts-followed-by-overt-conclusion rather than reporting facts and letting the listener reach an endpoint. And many times that overt conclusion is presented in an absolutist tone.
Tell diverse stories, share the facts, and respect the intelligence of the audience.
That interview you did with those other radio presenters was so good!!! And that media critic sounded borderline delusional when he talked about the importance of airing radical anti-racist activists, without considering how little coverage was provided to moderate voices.
I'm from Australia so I don't have much skin in the game (I used to love shows like Invisibilia, though) but we do have our own issues with our national broadcaster, the ABC. There are serious issues with neutrality and while I appreciate some of their journalism, the overt bias in their coverage of hot-button issues makes me think they should be defunded (or, at the very least have a shake-up in leadership/employ fewer activist journalists).
NPR left me behind sometime around 2014. Right around the time of the civil unrest initially centered in Ferguson, MO, but eventually applied to all Western countries. I grew tired of defending myself - a center left POC cop - from my dear friends, themselves loyal driveway momenteers, mirroring the BLM talking points and goals that have all but been slowly but steadily discredited by regular ol Americans.
Fast forward a decade, Mr Uri Berliner finally steps forward, blows the whistle, gets suspended and quits and what changes? Hint: Not much. The Free Press, evidently a dirty cross between People and Infowars, gets dragged through the mud and the report is subsequently buried. Meanwhile black Oakland cries for more police presence. Meanwhile NPR continues its aural blast of white supremacy, Jan 6, white supremacy, Jan 6.
I saw Steve Inskeep talk shit about Uri Berliner - clearly top NPR stars live in such a demented socialist/progressive bubble they can’t see how long time listeners have turned on them.
I listened to them from the moment I came to the US in the mid 1990s, and stopped completely around December 2023. Endless emails and calls pointing out bias and lies as they turned into National Palestine Radio, and clearly they’re proud of being a propaganda arm of Hamas. So personally, I’ve stopped listening to the radio stations, the podcasts, and I will never again donate a dollar to anything remotely associated with public radio or television, and definitely NPR. They can all burn to the ground or solicit Qatar for some of those sweet antisemitic propaganda petrodollars.
the same Steven Inskeep who let Trump talk about the election being stolen from him for 10 minutes straight without challenging him on it? Yeah...He is such a radical leftist that Inskeep.
I still listen to NPR regularly but my main criticism is that their politics sometimes cause them to get off-topic or to make spurious connections. For example, there's a tendency to end the discussion of any problem with a comment about how this affects vulnerable people, such as LGBT, the most. This was appended even to stories about abortion, a topic which affects lesbians and gays less than their straight peers.
This isn't a particularly big deal, but it did get annoying. I assumed that the writers had some sort of requirement to reference vulnerable groups for every story and were checking the box without considering how applicable it was. A lot of their content was this sort of box-checking which gets repetitive to listen to.
Thanks for going on The 21st to discuss this! I just listened to that episode this morning. I used to defend my listening to and support of my NPR station by saying certain reporters, like Nina Totenberg who admitted it, are clearly biased, but most of them are not. Most of the short newscasts are factual accounts of what's happening.
It's much more about what is covered, how it's covered, and how stories are framed during Morning Edition and All Things Considered. I stopped listening and donating about ten years ago because NPR didn't even try to give a variety of perspectives in longer pieces, two-ways, and analysis. Some NPR reporters and producers routinely decide what viewpoint to promote BEFORE even starting to gather facts and do interviews. They choose who to interview not based on getting the facts but rather based on getting sound bites to reflect their preconceived ideas about the subject or event.
I also read lots of comments on Steve Inskeep's Substack rebuttal of Uri's article. I found it very interesting that lots of them said NPR works too hard at "both-siderism" and should sort of abandon objectivity and balance.
I am in the market where the WVIK general manager is who was on the 21st with you as a guest. I agree with him and the writer from Current that Uri Berliner's article is not a big surprise and won't change most people's minds. The left-of-center slant has been obvious for years. But as you say, there are definitely program reasons NPR lost audience beyond changes in the industry, etc. Eric Deggans' comments about taking things out of context fails to address the main thrust of Uri's article which is based on his real and valid experience.
Sometimes I think NPR would be better off to refuse federal funding. That would remove that part of the problem. But then NPR wouldn't get as much free publicity every time Congress considers approving CPB funds, or whenever it's accused of bias. :)
I didn't know you had a podcast and will give it a listen. I always appreciated your sports reporting on NPR!
I used to listen all the time, like, hours a day in the background. But it's impossible to just listen to a neutral story or interview about X person doing Y interesting thing in Z place. No, there has to be a "they" or a "them" or a POC or systemic oppression or... well, you get it; you wrote the article.
And then, of course, in response to me saying anything like this, the fingers pointing "male fragility" and "white privilege" for saying anything like this are incessant - from a very small but very vocal and easily offended group.
No, I don't find any of those topics or group identities offensive in the least - I'm a city boy with a diverse group of friends and family from all of these groups. Rather, I find the not-so-subtle shoehorning of these issues from the margins of society into every single facet of every story, well, insidious. And again, I have to put a disclaimer: When I say margins of society, I will get accused of "marginalizing" groups of people. But that's not it either; I recognize you, and you matter. But you do not own the privilege of having your issues be the sole thing we hear about in every single story, any more than if management had decided to shoehorn the arbitrary issues of albino orphans and one-legged migrant lemon pickers onto the airwaves every 4 minutes. And the fact that I have to say that and disclaim every common-sense sentence is as tedious and annoying as having NPR on for 15 minutes.
You say, "every single facet of every story." Hyperbole aside, let's look to today's NPR Morning Edition as a sample to see if there is anything to your gripes:
1. A story about World Video Game Hall of Fame.
Sounds pretty white and male, so I think this one's for you!
2. A saxophone player.
Uh oh! A black musician. But no discussion of racism!
3. Arizona's Mexico-born Republican congressman on the border.
Kind of hard not to nationality at all when talking about immigration.
4. Panera Bread said it's discontinuing its Charged Sips drinks.
No race discussed.
5. Lionel Messi's contract.
Are soccer fans a marginal group?
6. Should commercial space companies contribute to the FAA the way airlines do?
No race or gender. It is your own "safe spaceX"!
7. Netflix tries more live programming with standup specials and Tom Brady roast.
An opportunity to include a dig at those "cancelled" comedians.... Don't worry, the segment is safe for you! No marginalized opinions expressed.
8. North Carolina's first marijuana dispensary opened last month on Cherokee land.
This does mention a minority group, but no mention of the history of racism against Native Americans, so its probably considered "neutral" for you. Your safe space remains in tact this AM.
9. Is Biden's border plan working?
Another immigration story with no mention of racism.
10. RFK Jr. is not alone. More than a billion people have parasitic worms.
Are the worm people marginal? I am not sure. Are you marginal?
11. A mother is called to work as a doula after her first child died shortly after birth.
Oh no "doula" sounds like a hippy thing and it has a person with a Hispanic name...
12. U.S. says military pier will increase aid to Gaza. Humanitarian groups have doubts
13. A lifelong conservative explains why he's voting for President Biden this fall
14. The adventures of Middle Earth will soon continue in theaters.
15. Eurovision 2024: Here are the songs with the best shot at glory
16. Biden says he would stop weapons shipments to Israel if it invades Rafah
17. May is expected to be an important month to turn things around in Haiti.
No mention of how colonial powers are responsible for Haiti's current situation, so your safe space is still going strong this morning!
18. Veterans who received other-than-honorable discharges may be eligible for benefits
Over 18 the stories on this day, I couldn't find a single "shoehorning" of a "marginal" issue. Do you disagree?
Did you ever consider that, despite your disclaimers, you are actually (unconsciously) offended about hearing ideas you don't like? That you have distorted and magnified how often "their issues" are mentioned? Maybe people have "pointed fingers" at you so many times because you keep making the same oblivious comments?
This line, "you do not own the privilege of having your issues be the sole thing we hear about in every single story" is odd. It suggests that there is some different group of people from you that has their own "issues" that are being given undue priority. Given the post above, I suppose you are referring to stories concerning racism. Personally, I do not consider myself part of a "marginal" group, but I consider these stories to be important and "their" issues are also *my* issues. Have you asked yourself, why are "their issues" not your issues?
You are making tedium even more tedious, as I knew that someone insecure who felt their safe space was threatened would do. Rather than actually think about a viewpoint that doesn't align with your sacred, unquestioned tenets and have an intelligent discussion, just go for the tired old predictable ad hominem with some predictable racist stereotypes and assumptions. Yawn. So incredibly boring. If you missed the point any further you’d actually come around and hit it by accident. Then again, I suppose you'd have to be pretty mobile to achieve that, and judging by your intelligence, I suspect you get watered twice a week.
Do you know what ad hominem is? It an argument that attacks a person rather than their argument. I set forth your argument, and then set forth evidence that contradicted your argument. Your response ignores this. It is, in sum, "you are boring and dumb" fails to address the evidence and argument I made.
You accuse others of needing safe spaces, when you are the one seeking a safe space. You accuse others of employing the ad hominem fallacy, but you ignore the evidence and call names.
A list of articles isn't counter-evidence; good counter-evidence would be taking a bunch of recent articles chosen randomly, and showing the percentage of those that discuss race/identity politics vs. the ones that don't. If the articles in your list discuss racial politics or other issues the woke are fascinated with, then you're making your point for him. If you didn't choose the articles randomly, you're just cherry picking. Not a good way to prove a point.
Sorry, I didn't see this before. But I did choose a random. I just picked *every* story from that day I wrote about. Cherry picking would be to look at the articles for many days, and then decide which ones I wanted to list and discuss. For a person who claimed that "every single facet of every story" offended his anti-woke sensibilities, the evidence provided is more than sufficient.
A list of articles isn't counter-evidence; good counter-evidence would be taking a bunch of recent articles chosen randomly, and showing the percentage of those that discuss race/identity politics vs. the ones that don't.
So funny you say that, considering neither Pesca NOR you did that. LoL. Go ahead, find a truly random sampling of articles and run an objective analysis on them. I look forward to the results.
Oh, and by the way, please describe the method you choose to use for random sampling, much like one would show for a review article in a peer-reviewed journal. I am not holding my breath!
Great read. What impresses me is that you care about the decline in quality at public radio. Average listeners simply change the radio station or move on to the next podcast (it's not like there's a shortage of programming/podcasts/audio.) They have no agenda other than to hear something that interests them. As for me, I listen to the NPR daily news podcast and maybe Morning Edition/ATC in once awhile in the car, but that's it. I guess I stopped subscribing to a lot of the NPR podcasts a few years ago for no other reason than that they were clogging my feed. It wasn't personal or political. I still contribute to my local station. I was just tired of forwarding through episodes I had no interest in listening to.
NPR is run by Katherine Maher, so yes, it’s biased because it’s directly controlled by the intelligence agencies.
If they do get her in front of congress, I’d like someone to ask: “So who were you working on behalf of in Tunisia and Libya during the Arab Spring.
The other issue is that reporters, particularly at NPR, are extremely aware of the impact/pitfalls of decisions around vocab, with the result being a barrage of buzzwords that are coded political speech (for example "decolonize"). I find that type of advocacy, which also happens all the time of Fox News and MSNBC, to be insulting since it is intended to push the listener into a particular conclusion.
Again, report the news, tell good stories about all kinds of subjects, and respect the audience.
Some of those stories that you are citing as proof of the decline of NPR could actually be great work.
You included the renaming of some birds as an example of craziness…but if you learn about it, it was both fascinating and something that I am glad is being addressed. Exactly the kind of story I have always looked to NPR for.
Now I did not hear their story on it, so I can’t comment on its usefulness. But you picked a very bad example there.
I actually did that story https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-gist/id873667927?i=1000633526580 it was interesting, or at least I made it interesting in a way I have to say NPR didn't, bc they found no humor in an inherently humorous story.
Sorry, yours was much more boring. stay humble!
I listened to that bird story ready to roll my eyes about renaming birds. But I recall it was a good story and, after hearing various perspectives, was convinced that we can have better bird names, regardless of whether the bird was named after a slaver or an abolitionist.
I kinda suspected you hadn’t gotten this topic fully out of your mind, so I’m glad to see a Pesca Profundity™️ about it! I listened to the 21st podcast. I found the format a bit stifling - a VERY public radio thing; can’t they space out the breaks better? - but I’m glad they gave you some time. That said, your arguments here are better than those on The Gist or on the 21st, because you get at the the issue more concretely. I have listened to NPR for about 17 years in my varied markets, from the TX panhandle to Portland, OR. I never found the news programming especially liberal, but perhaps biased toward the Democratic. Like others, I’ve noticed the progressive, Identitarian tilt of story framing, reporting , and interviewing. This is especially evident on topics of gender identity or race, and in the use of the “right” language (Latinx comes to mind). It gets tiresome. That may or may not be connected to the loss of talent; but the loss is felt, too.
I think NPR is on the midst of a classic brand identity crisis. Part of the crisis is unique to NPR, which is both a news organization and a synonym for public radio broadly. So NPR takes the brand heat for the shortcomings of any programming on public radio, but gets less benefit for successful ones (i.e. beloved local programs or programs with their own strong brand identities a la Planet Money). It’s also drifting away from its core customers, and by virtue of its brand reputation, will continue to struggle to expand programming beyond that core audience.
I don’t have the insights Mike does or completely understand the NPR business model. I’m just a humble listener who still has high praise for NPR news programming, but who’s growing tired of the ideological framing that programming has adopted.
NPR was "top of the field" in 2019 with (2019 report)
11.2m podcast users
11.5m npr.org visitors
30m broadcast listeners
From NPRs 2020 report (https://readymag.website/npr/annualreport2020/)
14.3m podcast
19m npr.org
??m broadcast
60m "all platforms" (spring 2020)
From NPRs 2021 report (https://readymag.website/npr/annualreport2021/50-years/) shows:
12m podcast users
16.2m npr.org visitors
26m broadcast listeners
NPR is "losing audience at a troubling pace" in 2022 with
8m podcast listeners
13m npr.org visitors
24m broadcast listeners
To evaluate changes, its important to know if the numbers are determined in the same way each year. However, the reports provide vague citations as best; sometimes no citation at all.
Pew provides numbers for NPR weekly broadcast audience (https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/fact-sheet/public-broadcasting/?tabItem=8715c914-e732-4605-92f5-2f2714f71841) which shows a pretty steady 25m from 2005-2016, then a sudden bump upon Trump's arrival up to 30m, and then a steady decline to 23.5m in 2022. Of course, this is also at the same time as an increase in podcast/streaming, so apart from a Trump bump and covid effects, it is hard to be determine whether there is a real change in interest attributable to changes or a lack of change at NPR. (Pew did not show audience numbers for the radio news industry as a whole.)
For podcasts, counting could be determined in many different ways. File downloads? Downloads listened to? Surveys? A switch of methods (reasonable given changes in technology) will have changes unrelated to actual listenership).
Pesca says "Listenership is off by a massive 30%." This number comes doesn't line up with the NPR reports from 2019-2022 numbers, or the Pew numbers. It appears taken from the NYT article which says "While NPR still has an audience of about 42 million who listen every week, many of them digitally, that is down from an estimated 60 million in 2020, according to an internal March audience report, a faster falloff than for broadcast radio, which is also in a long-term decline." The 60 million number appears to come from NPR's 2020 report (https://readymag.website/npr/annualreport2020/), noted above, which is an estimate for "Spring 2020"—the covid outbreak. Absent any indication that the number comes from a different source, the claim is cherry-picking by the NYT and includes website visits (not "listenership"). The NYT does not include any information regarding overall broadcast numbers or changes in news website and news podcast usage over this time. (Something they should have some information on if they talked to their own marketing department.)
Pesca concludes that the decline is not industry-wide because Sean Hannity's radio show grew in size from 14 million to 16 million. Using a specific other program is not a good way to illustrate whether NPR as a whole is doing poorly compared to the entire industry. Shoddy.
I wondered where these Hannity numbers came from: The Washington Times who cite "Talkers," which has the look of a website set up by someone's nephew in 2006. How do "Talkers" get their numbers? They do not really say. (https://talkers.com/top-talk-audiences/) From "in-house research" and "sampling ratings services and other metrics-gathering sources and methodologies." This has all the reliability of overhearing something on the train. Shoddy. So, what is the truth on Hannity’s nubmers? I don't know. Would it even matter to the point of the piece? No. It is unreliable and pointless information.
Past all of these numbers, what is the PROFUNDITY offered here? Pesca thinks NPR went woke and listeners are turned off from hearing about white supremacy. Does he have any evidence for this? No.
Maybe if there was a disproportionate decrease in white (independent/GOP) listenership, but is there evidence of that? Not that I can see. Or you could look at popularity of regular news podcasts to race-conscious podcasts, or how often people skip stories on race vs. other topics. Are the new entrants taking listeners from NPR? If so, why? Are they more right-leaning? Talked more about racism? Any explanation would also have to deal with the overall changes in media and media diets. There has been a growth in radio/podcasting field; there is more competition. So, even if there is a loss in listenership one area, it may be from new entrants, not necessarily dissatisfaction. Maybe some listeners are upset that NPR continues to invite on-air and treat seriously the opinions of white supremacists?
The chart of mentions of "white supremacy" is also pointless, for so many reasons: why is this a good proxy for anything? Who are the people mentioning "white supremacy"? What is the context? How is this possibly changing listenership? The number of mentions goes *down* from 2020-2023, the same period that listenership has gone down--making it consistent with NPR saying "white supremacy" not often enough!! I could go on.
I don’t have the information necessary to evaluate NPRs listenership and this post did not help.
Thankfully, there were no gross errors of fact requiring a correction, but the post does reference "white supremacy," so I may not read the next post.
This is not the first time I have seen Pesca cherry pick or misunderstand data. He uses his intuition and feelings to guide his conclusions.
Are you merely asking for evidence here or do you sincerely think that NPR's overt wokeness isn't turning off listeners? Or, surely this isn't correct but I should ask, do you think that NPR isn't actually very woke?
Pesca makes claims about NPR numbers. I think he doesn't have actual evidence to support his claims and misread the NYT to mislead his readers. Pesca makes claims regarding the causes of a decrease in visitors/listeners. Pesca's thoughts are based upon his personal feelings and not any evidence.
This post did not discuss whether or not NPR is "woke" or if its "wokeness" has changed.
If 2019 was peak year for NPR, are you actually suggesting they have become more woke in the last 4 years? LoL. This person actually pointed out a truth to you: NPR was at an all time high in terms of listeners when Trump was president, and at the same time Berliner accused them of being blatantly anti-Trump/MAGA. If anything, the numbers prove the opposite of what you and your thought leaders are arguing: That being anti-Trump was indeed very profitable for NPR, and did NOT turn off listeners..In fact, it led to a record number of them.
I think you are just upset that more people hate Trump than love him, and I get that is a hard pill to swallow.
Don't you ever fucking attempt mind-read me. I detest Trump, you absolute genius.
I feel like it's a couple of threads weing woven together. Universities have taught these topics (but often with balance). Students took the lesson to be that everyone who is in power and white gained that status via oppression. That might not have been professors' intent, but it's what we got.
Another thread I see is the forcing out of experienced journalists really quickly in favor of these cheaper more recent grads. Those old school folks would help marinate the young journos.
Of course all this has happened before. When NPR started, I bet my 60+ year old grandfather would have found it to be much more liberal than he might have expected compared to Walter Cronkite or John Chancellor. It just happens to stand out more because we live in the times of the hot takes. Cronkite had better things to do than count how many times NPR used "black" compared to "African American". Even with all our crises, we don't.
That's not a good comparison. Cronkite would have needed to sit next to the radio with a notepad and pencil four hours to analyze word usage. Today, someone uses a web scraper on AI-generated transcripts and completes word count analysis in a fraction of the time.
Personally, I don't mind hard numbers on this sort of thing. It's better to base accusations of bias or framing on word usage rather than vague "vibes".
This is a feel thing more than an objective measure, but I feel like more and more stories on NPR radio are facts-followed-by-overt-conclusion rather than reporting facts and letting the listener reach an endpoint. And many times that overt conclusion is presented in an absolutist tone.
Tell diverse stories, share the facts, and respect the intelligence of the audience.
I really appreciated your “dead on the page” link.
That interview you did with those other radio presenters was so good!!! And that media critic sounded borderline delusional when he talked about the importance of airing radical anti-racist activists, without considering how little coverage was provided to moderate voices.
I'm from Australia so I don't have much skin in the game (I used to love shows like Invisibilia, though) but we do have our own issues with our national broadcaster, the ABC. There are serious issues with neutrality and while I appreciate some of their journalism, the overt bias in their coverage of hot-button issues makes me think they should be defunded (or, at the very least have a shake-up in leadership/employ fewer activist journalists).