It would help if you read both of the pieces before commenting.
On point 1, here's Berliner's claim: "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. N…
It would help if you read both of the pieces before commenting.
On point 1, here's Berliner's claim: "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." Berliner claims that he "found" an 87-0 disparity, not that 100% of DC employees (or editorial staff) were registered Democrats. Inskeep did not disprove (or really even substantively address) Berliner's claim.
On point 2, the NY Post figured out how to do it, so the information was out there for any organization to find if they could do it. In Inskeep's words, that was due to "doubts" about the laptop's authenticity. Doubts should pervade the beginnings of nearly any story. It's the journalist's job to investigate whether those doubts are well-founded or not. There's no indication NPR undertook any such investigation, and Inskeep never claims it did.
On point 3, if you can find in Inskeep's piece where he showed that NPR's coverage of the major stories has been borne out, I'd appreciate it. I can't find any discussion of it. Inskeep seems to evade the issue entirely. Generalized and conclusory hat tips to claimed viewpoint diversity in the newsroom don't answer the question.
The NYP clearly also had some internal angst about publishing the story as evidenced by the weirdness that happened with the byline. The fact of the matter is this: The story was a TIMED RELEASE by a political campaign - Giuliani had the laptop for almost a year at that point - and it was designed to be difficult to verify or vet prior to the election due to Giuliani controlling who could access the source material. Which put news orgs in the position of either repeating the claims in the NYP story uncritically or declining to run the story at all until more info became available.
The primary source of anger and discontent from the conservative sphere is that the MSM did not dutifully play along with the October surprise smear as expected. I submit that it is not a media org's job to publish a story on a political party's schedule and terms. And if Giuliani thought the contents of the laptop were of critical import to the American people, he should have allowed unfettered access to the source material months prior to allow proper investigation. The fact that he didn't signals a lack of confidence in the substance of the material and that, if the source, narrative, and spin were not tightly controlled, the headline shock would quickly be replaced by "wait, that's it?".
All of this is to say that Berliner deploying the laptop story as an example of a failing and biased newsroom is dubious at best. He almost certainly is aware of all of this context and chose to press ahead with his claim anyway which really undercuts his whole argument which is that NPR is a biased news room that should work to be less biased. By invoking this particular example, he seems to be indicating that what he *really* wants is not less bias - it's that he wants his preferred brands of bias to be given equal time.
Do you really think NPR and the rest of the MSM would have been so circumspect if a Democratic operative had released evidence of Eric Trump cavorting with prostitutes, doing drugs, and engaging in slimy, if technically legal influence peddling?
We already know the answer based on how they handled the Steele dossier. The only difference between that and Hunter’s laptop is that the latter was 100% authentic.
I don't know where this narrative came from that the MSM embraced the Steele Dossier but it's patently false. Every single old media news outlet refused to run a story of the allegations from it. Buzzfeed News finally ran it when nobody else would and they ran it with the subheading "The allegations are unverified, and the report contains errors."
As for your first point, nobody at the time was alleging that Hunter's business dealings were legal and merely ethically shady. The whole point of withholding the source data was to launder salacious, yet vague, rumors into the discourse right before the election. Some people were even suggesting that maybe there were videos of sex acts with children on there!
Good point about the way the media handled the dossier story initially. They were actually far more reticent about it than the laptop story. Only Mother Jones, which isn't part of the MSM, published about it in any substantial way before the election, even though many outlets were briefed on it long before.
See the thing about Rudy Giuliani is that he was already known to have previously spread Russia-backed propaganda from his prior little private expeditions to Russia on behalf of Donald Trump as his personal lawyer. So not only was there absolutely no reason to trust anything coming from him that couldn't be verified, there was overwhelming evidence to suggest than anything coming from him might very well be more intentional deception from our adversaries.
And as it is, the intimation that there was evidence of criminality by Joe Biden on the laptop was completely false, so people getting outraged about how a "legitimate" story was "suppressed" before an an election are basically complaining that a precisely-timed political oppo dump wasn't allowed to deceive people to its full potential like it could have if legitimate news organizations had shown the same credulousness they did in 2016 with Jim Comey's abundance-of-caution notification to Congress on the matter of Huma Abdein laptop (which, of course, turned out to be nothing). Thankfully, they learned their lesson.
In the end, given how much the story blew up after Twitter prevented people from clicking on the NYP story for a whole twenty four hours before reversing its decision, it's questionable whether any aspect of the story was really "suppressed". But at least the mainstream media didn't treat it like an unqualified scandal, the first of a presumed Joe Biden presidential administration rather than an entirely suspect potential political hit job. Because that's absolutely what it was, regardless of the fact that the laptop was real.
Probably. Confronted with good reasons for the “MSM” to have held back on initially reporting on a story nakedly pushed by a political campaign, you retreated into an unfalsifiable hypothetical.
Also, as others have pointed out, the MSM handled the Steele dossier appropriately — almost completely ignoring it — despite your revisionism.
Most of the MSM treated the Russian collusion/Steele dossier story the same way it did the laptop story, reported both as allegations.
One difference was the timing and strange story, though, which naturally made people more suspicious of the laptop story. But both stories were covered with caution by the MSM.
Your comment prompted me to Google “pee tape” where I was treated to an avalanche of cautious, sober-minded reporting over a 4 year period, including one in New York Magazine by Jonathan Chait titled “I’m a Peeliever - And You Should Be Too.” Thanks for the trip down memory lane, full of careful reporting and healthy journalistic skepticism regarding the Steele dossier.
The scary part here is that you cannot differentiate between reporting and opinion pieces on your own. This is the type of media illiteracy in the general population that reinforces how uneducated in critical thinking Americans are.
A lot of the material on there - likely even the vast majority of it - was Hunter Biden's data. But the hard drive had obviously been tampered with. And I don't mean in the spy sense of tampering. I mean that the contents of the hard drive had been circulating amongst Republican operatives and someone took the time to organize some of the materials into folders that Hunter obviously didn't create. The chain of custody for the data was non-existent. So it's impossible to say that the laptop was actually his when it could have also been an iCloud hack transplanted onto a computer and taken into a blind man's repair shop.
Mac Isaac, the blind computer repairman who supposedly received several laptops from Biden, said those copies weren't true to what he downloaded when his lawyer gave CBS a copy.
CBS ought to reconsider who they hire as experts, as they didn't get an image of the hard drive: just a drive with files copied from another source or sources.
No one outside the FBI can tell if there was any tampering with the laptop as none of them have seen the laptop. MacIsaac didn't image the hard drive: he just copied files over to another drive.
It remains that if Hunter Biden had any reason to believe there was significant tampering, he would have said so. There's no getting around that. He's in a position to know.
Total nonsense. NPR Had no evidence that the laptop was Russian disinformation. Anyone with a brain would know the laptop was real from the jump. It was the Biden family. Wtf
You're acting as if the New York Post is some esteemed journalistic outlet of the highest integrity, and not a tabloid owned by a right wing media magnate who has quite intentionally used all of his platforms to benefit his openly preferred political agenda.
In fairness, other news organizations had no way to verify the NYP's claims. NYP refused to share their info with other news orgs, and it wasn't available from Giuliani, who was controlling the source by then, either.
I think NPR did a bad job of explaining their decision not to cover the story on air (they did have a piece online), but I don't think they were wrong not to cover it until its foundation was established, and only in limited ways after that. There was nothing in the evidence definitely tying Joe Biden to any wrongdoing, and little that even seemed to.
To be clear, I agree with the thrust of Berliner's piece, but not all of its arguments are strong ones.
I personally respect the "conservatism" expressed in waiting for verification of a story. Everyone knows printing a retraction three months after the fact for a story that's wrong or not true is vastly ineffectual to the weight of the story being out there in the first place.
This is a weakness of our current 24/7 news cycle mercilessly exploited by chaos agents and propagandists. It's no loss to NPR's audience not to join the bandwagon to being fast, but often wrong and deliberately used to manufacture false narratives.
Not sure what you have in mind, but they had the cooperation of the man who had the laptop, and its contents, and did check to see if they matched what facts they could confirm.
Where the NYP fell down was in putting a politically-motivated spin on their coverage, at the least. Whether they should have covered it at all when they did is also questionable.
At the time NYP wrote that story the FBI had had the laptop for about ten months. NYP did **zero** to check the tale Giuliani was spinning them. They posted screenshots and may not have received any more than that from Giuliani.
They published corroborating facts as well, including as I said corroboration from the person who owned the laptop. They were reported to have the entire contents.
They published two screenshots of emails and quoted Giuliani. That's not corroborating facts. Where were they reported to have "the entire contents"? Further, as I've shown already, the drives being passed around by Giuliani and other rightwing activists included files not copied by Blind Computer Guy.
They published a lot more than two screenshots. They published many, in a whole series of articles. They claimed to be working from a copy of the hard drive that Giuliani gave them.
The first article- which is the only relevant one as that's what the social media companies reacted to- had only two screenshots. You're now misrepresenting the discussion to cover for your misrepresentation of the NYPost's "reporting" (to use the term very loosely).
I'm not making anything up. The only article which Facebook and Twitter took measures against was the first one. It's the only one which is relevant to your claims here. You're reaching for things to justify your statements, and are now dishonestly accusing me. Your link doesn't prove your pretense other articles were suppressed.
You like to tell other people what to do a lot, but the fact is you need to start looking at your own conduct.
How many Green party candidates were there. Any libertarians? Who cares what political party they were registered as. The notion that party affiliation accretes bias is pretty weak. How many Democrats are in other bureaus? How many articles do these Democrats write that accurately reflect a Republican position, and report fairly and clearly on an important issue?
Personally, I think NPR is too beige and careful with its choice of language. I think they should be harder-hitting than they are about things.
I'm more interested in do they target a certain demographics in their fundraising? Groups that would that be so challenged by, say, a staunch Republican point of view, as to perhaps withdraw said funding and just keep using last year's tote bag and listen to last year's Perry Como's Greatest Hits? How can we, as a society and the American public, best ensure that level of influence on Public Journalism doesn't happen? What happened to the Office of the Ombudsman within the NPR newsroom? How can we leverage NPR to rebuild local journalism, because Rose Scott kicks some serious ass on her show. How can we encourage NPR to be more fearless in their coverage, and to stop using such banal overly-objective language when dealing with that which is so clearly NOT banal (e.g. Donald Trump and his insurrection).
We should not let fear of appearing biased cause us to be biased, even if said bias is to a fiscal "safe space." And, as for the folks who are covering this stuff... some of whom are dead or missing in the subsequent attacks on Gaza, we all owe it to them to demand quality and incisive reporting that helps us be informed and making the best choices we can in a complex world.
Even tho I am inclined to believe that there is a decline in NPR coverage as a whole since the time they reorged and sent their ombudsman packing, I was not particularly moved by the arguments in the Berliner piece when I read it.
It never escaped my notice when certain affiliate programs were brought to us by a generous donation from Koch Industries or one of the Koch Foundations.
In light of reporting that PBS nixed plans to air a Koch brothers documentary because of pressure from the Kochs and the weight of their financial donations, I am more inclined to believe there are important things that AREN'T getting reported based on the whims and preferences of the big money donors.
I'm sorry but the idea that party affiliation doesn't correlate somehow to viewpoint is pretty absurd. Practically speaking, the broader question should be how many people in NPR have leanings that are libertarian or similar to Green Party if you're really going to ask that question, and I think you know the answer.
1. How does one "look at" voter registration for one's workplace? Do you talk to HR or what
2. How many registered Republicans do you suppose are clamoring to work for NPR, which for decades has had a reputation for having a liberal bent? Isn't it at least equally possible that the lack of Republicans in the NPR newsroom is a matter of self-selection rather than viewpoint discrimination?
3. Why are only right-wing broadcasters allowed to have a partisan lean? How many registered Democrats are employed at OAN or Newsmax?
Anyway I'm happy for Uri, not only are people talking about him, but he never has to do any serious work again and can just ride the Bari Weiss grift train as long as he has a pulse.
Berliner's point isn't altered at all if the lack of Republicans at NPR is self-selection. It's still a problem for lack of diversity at NPR.
Obviously OAN and Newsmax are worse than NPR in by almost any standard. That doesn't change Berliner's point either. NPR, when it takes public funding, incurs a special obligation to be representative in a way it utterly fails to be.
In my opinion, conservatives typically aren’t interested in exploring an issue but rather they are highly opinionated, and convinced in their own point of view which they want others to share.
Why would any legitimate news organization go out of its way to recruit sociopathic nihilists just because that's the route one of the mainstream parties has consciously gone down
No one remotely suggested they do that. Your implication that all Republicans and conservatives are sociopathic nihilists only shows something about you, not them.
2. This is the same tired argument companies use for only hiring white men. If a certain group doesn’t want work for you, you’ve proven the thesis that you are not open and inclusive of those people. Conservatives Likely don’t choose to work at NPR because it is hostile to their viewpoints. That’s the whole point.
3. Because the P in NPR stands for “public”, and NPR receives funding from the government. You are citing private companies, who, like MSNBC, are expected to be tilted. A public radio station serves the entire public, and should reflect the entire public, not the beliefs of a small segment of coastal elites.
4. The definition of “grifter” when it comes to media is “anyone who makes a living publishing information I disagree with”. You nailed it. Liberals love to dismiss anyone who disagree with them (McWhortee, Weiss, Hughes) as merely grifters because, in their liberal bubble, they can’t imagine anyone ACTUALLY disagrees with them.
2. Your comparison is nonsense because nobody's born a Republican or a conservative. It's not an inborn or immutable characteristic. You can decide not to believe the ridiculous paranoid things the party demands its adherents think and say. And even though there are some outward characteristics that can give one a pretty good idea they're dealing with a Republican, like a squared-off goatee or a lifted F-150, it's not quite as easy to pick one out as, say, a woman or a black person.
3. There are many, many members of the public who think and act in cruel and sociopathic manners. This does not mean that NPR owes people like them equal time in the name of ideological diversity, even if the cruelty and sociopathy increasingly mirrors the attitudes of a certain major political party.
4. Pure projection. Weiss et al are the ones who have equated being an ideological minority or being challenged on their professed beliefs with discrimination, even as they were being employed and handsomely paid to let the world know what's on their mind by their supposed oppressors. Being a conservative does not automatically make one a grifter, but lazily pandering to the segment of society who is perpetually angry and confused about the fact that the world is different than how they remember it being does, and that is those people's meal ticket.
Berliner writes that he "found" 87 registered Democrats and 0 registered Republicans. How hard did he look? Did he find any non-registered, independents, Greens, Libertarians? Did he research Washington staffers who live outside DC in Maryland or Virginia? And what of the 88 percent of NPR staffers who work outside DC? And besides, none of this matters unless you assume that journalists can't and don't, as a matter of professionalism and ethics, set aside their partisan opinions to report objectively. So it's not clear that Berlinger's "finding" here tells us anything of value.
Doesn't really matter. Even if he did find a couple Greens or something (which would only help his case) and not look anywhere but DC (which is the only place he claimed to look), what he found is plainly very telling. 0 GOP. Many Dems. This isn't a subtle thing.
A lot of DC reporters (our host, for example) don't register with a party or register as independent because they want sources and listeners to see them as non-partisan. A lot of DC reporters don't live there and vote in VA or MD. The vast majority of NPR reporters neither live nor work in DC. So it appears Berliner's search wasn't very thorough, and there's no reason to assume his findings are representative of the whole organization. Besides, the whole exercise assumes that partisanship is the most impactful kind of bias, or that reporters lack the professionalism and ethics to free themselves of partisan bias in their reporting. Maybe Berliner was the only staffer at NPR who could see past his own partisanship, or maybe it just suits his confirmation bias (and yours) to think so.
None of that remotely alters the very plain significance of what Berliner found. And this isn't the first publication of evidence to similar effect about NPR.
Political ideology is the most salient factor in bias about political issues. It's closely tied with party affiliation. This isn't a subtle thing.
Look, all journalism is at least a little bit biased, not because of partisanship, but because journalism is an activity that requires. subjective human judgment about what's important and what's not. Even the most scrupulous reporters are human beings with personal opinions and with conscious and unconscious biases and blind spots. The scrupulous ones will look past their conscious biases, like party affiliation, in their reporting, but the unconscious ones (those tied to personal identity and lived experience, and those built into the newsrooms where they work and the business model and established practices of journalism)) are harder to overcome because they're unconscious. The political bias of individual reporters is much less impactful on an outlet's reporting than those institutional biases. They skew coverage at NPR, as at most other outlets, toward familiar narrative, expedience, and capital. Corporate sponsorship pays a plurality of the bills (38%) at NPR, so you're not likely to hear coverage that challenges the confirmation biases of corporate or individual donors, no matter how individual reporters may vote. Read Alicia Montgomery's Slate article (https://slate.com/business/2024/04/npr-diversity-public-broadcasting-radio.html ) for a more nuanced insider perspective than Berliner's or Inskeep's on NPR's institutional biases and how they skew coverage there. In her experience, editors at NPR try to keep coverage centrist to a fault, both sides-ing every story even when there really aren't two equally valid and credible sides. This performative objectivity is many reporters' and editors' way of responding to criticism like Berliner's, which the right wing has been leveling at mainstream journalism for more than 50 years, that they are not scrupulous enough to overlook their conscious partisan biases. Berliner thinks truth is not being served because of how his colleagues vote; Montgomery thinks truth is not being served because her colleagues have abdicated their editorial judgment. Since I have worked in a lot of newsrooms where this has happened, where management has effectively handed over the job of assignment editor to sponsors, shareholders, algorithms, focus groups, and bad-faith critics who don't want journalism that holds the powerful accountable to exist, I find her critique more plausible than his, but YMMV.
Your first three sentences show why this is a problem. NPR believes in magic, that a staff that isn't diverse ideologically can magically be as unbiased as one that is. Obviously not. And it matters, a lot.
I disagree that institutional factors such as you mention matter more than individual ones, but it doesn't matter to Berliner's point. Individual political biases matter for the same kinds of reasons that diversity of race, gender, etc matter.
But NPR does also have powerful institutional biases as well. It has always interpreted its mission to include voices that aren't usually included as a progressive one, and understood it only as progressives understand it.
About the Slate piece, I agree that that Berliner've view seems skewed about the past at NPR, and ignores other factors that might have contributed to the further decline in conservative trust in NPR. Conservatives have distrusted NPR for a lot longer than he believes, according to Pew data. But that doesn't alter his point that things have gotten markedly worse in some ways. Progressive language and ideology about race and gender has become more strident and acquired a stronger scent, and that's made the problem even more noticeable.
In a couple other places where she seems to think she's arguing against Berliner, she's only reinforcing his points, for example in regard to how the newsroom regarded Trump. in 2016.
But the piece as a whole simply passes over the elephant in the room. It's general explanation for what Berliner points out is that it was due to NPR's general reticence and conservative approach, etc. No. That doesn't explain most of what he pointed out at all.
She doesn't address the overwhelming lack of diversity of political ideology in any substantial way.
And that's typical of NPR staff and its defenders. They believe in magic.
>Your first three sentences show why this is a problem. NPR believes in magic, that a staff that isn't diverse ideologically can magically be as unbiased as one that is. Obviously not. And it matters, a lot.
Your whole argument here is garbage. Affiliation isn't ideology, and doesn't even show bias. That's even taking Berliner as being honest, which is dubious as if he had actually "found" the political registrations of 87 people at NPR he would have found at least one independent. This is a stat he found in his own rear end, not at the office.
You're avoiding the obvious. Affiliation is obviously highly correlated with ideology.
Berliner nowhere claimed or implied there were no independents. That wouldn't affect his point at all. Inskeep, ironically given his criticism of Berliner, badly misrepresented what Berliner said. And not only on that point.
You need to look inward before lashing out at Berliner.
Your response is nonsensical. Berliner claimed the 87 people at the D.C. office were 87-0 Democrats to Republicans. That certainly does imply there were no independents. He gave no basis for his claim other than to say he "found" that to be so. A finding which is called into heavy doubt by Inskeep being an independent.
Your claim affiliation is highly correlated with ideology is unsupported. You repeating the same allegation over and over again doesn't constitute support for said allegation.
LIkewise, your "wouldn't affect his claim" is idiotic. It debunks his claim. It shatters his credibility about what he "found." There's no reason to believe his "0 GOP," which you illogically seem to think still holds up.
Again, no. Read what Berliner actually said. In the context of what he said it's clear he didn't exclude the possibility of independents. He checked the party affiliation of those registered to vote in DC (public records) and found 87 Dems, no GOP.
I'm not going to argue about points as obvious as that political affiliation and ideology are highly correlated. You're avoiding the obvious. That's your choice, and no one else can fix it for you.
Since no reporter is capable of reporting on any story without skewing it, and NPR is an organization staffed by liberals, one can assume that NPR articles have a liberal bias, and accommodate for it in our judgment. The same goes for AM talk radio and the National Review.
Berliner (and presumably you) seem to want NPR to intentionally hire and fire so that the median opinion in newsroom on any political issue is close to the median national opinion. Putting aside how one would achieve that, can I ask how it would affect your belief or trust in any NPR reporting?
These days a lot of conservatives are registered unaffiliated for obvious reasons. It matters greatly how the unaccounted for are registered, but he didn't bother.
Even if some of them are registered independent, it doesn't get around the fact of what he did find, a huge imbalance between Dems and GOP. And it's always been that way at NPR, by all reports.
Inskeep's an independent, but he's no conservative, much less a GOP refugee. It's not the same.
Of course there are more Democrats than Republicans. There's probably a pretty heavy imbalance on the news staff of the Wall Street Journal, for goodness' sake. You folks are barking at the moon. I'll bet if you surveyed every journalist at every media outlet in the United States, it would be 75%-85% Democrat/left of center. This isn't news, and it isn't anything NPR can change. Conservatives don't do journalism. Never have, never will.
You're making Berliner's point, while ignoring its obvious significance. Not long ago, the media was 75%-85% white males. When they saw why that was bad, they changed it. NPR could do far, far better, but they refuse to even see or acknowledge that it's a problem.
Ha, trying to make NPR or its core audience see bias and why it matters is indeed beating one's head against a wall. Truth is no match for strong feelings, which politics is full of.
Firstly, the fact that the NYP "figured out how to do it" was because Rudy Giuliani refused to provide the laptop's contents to anyone outside the Rupert Murdoch owned news complex (Fox News, The Post, WSJ). It was almost like he was trying to make it look suspicious, and it sure as hell did. Legitimate media had nothing to go on, and were right to treat it cautiously as an unconfirmed story.
Secondly, Berliner's phrasing does not make it at all clear what he means about "finding" 87 Democrats and 0 Republicans. It sure makes it sound like he had some sort of easy access to everyone's voter registration in DC and found an 87-0 split. If that's not the case, then it's a bit hard to interpret what his comment means. Did he do a random sample? If not, how did he choose the people he investigated? Is it possible that people registered as Republican make it more difficult to determine, perhaps choosing not to specify in places where asked (DC is a pretty Democrat-leaning place after all)? He may have had a legitimate point here, but he was uninformative at best and misleading at worst.
Inskeep's response doesn't even come close to disproving anything Berliner actually said. Instead Inskeep mischaracterizes what Berliner says and then attacks a straw man, over and over. That you missed that and swallowed whole Inskeep's ironically poor response is a useful clue about you, should you be interested in seeing beyond your politics.
But if you don't believe me, please pick a point you think Berliner lied about and I'll show you who was actually misleading you.
No, Berliner didn't say or imply Inskeep is a Democrat. He didn't say or imply "his “editorial” colleagues were unanimously registered Democrats," as Inskeep claimed he did. Inskeep misled you.
What Berliner did say was that he checked the voter registration of NPR editorial staff in DC and *found* 87 Dems, no GOP. He didn't claim he checked everyone, didn't say he checked Inskeep (don't know if he lives in DC), didn't say anything but that he found 87 Dems and no GOP among those he checked.
I wouldn't say Mr Berliner lied exactly. But at the very least he seems to have used cherry-picked data to bolster his claim about lack of viewpoint diversity. As Mr Inskeep mentioned, eighty-seven staffers are just a percentage of the overall D.C. staff, which leads one to question how Mr Berliner arrived at that figure. For all we know the rest of the staff outside of that 87 are registered 'No Party' or Republican.
Also, as others here have pointed out, aside from the problem with the statistic itself, there is a problem with using is as evidence for lack of viewpoint diversity. Party registration does not necessarily translate to bias.
"For all we know the rest of the staff outside of that 87 are registered 'No Party' or Republican."
It's not at all plausible that this was a sampling error large enough to materially affect Berliner's point. Inskeep misrepresented what Beliner said, and then grasped at straws instead of addressing the very real problem.
I mean, it's vaguely arguable if he lied or not. It comes down to intent.
I feel like he lied, you feel like he cherry picked a bit. Either one's reasonable. He's probably the only person who will ever really know which it is.
But, either one also makes it impossible for me to trust anything else he says as accurate anywhere else in his essay, without some pretty persuasive proof.
It would help if you read both of the pieces before commenting.
On point 1, here's Berliner's claim: "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." Berliner claims that he "found" an 87-0 disparity, not that 100% of DC employees (or editorial staff) were registered Democrats. Inskeep did not disprove (or really even substantively address) Berliner's claim.
On point 2, the NY Post figured out how to do it, so the information was out there for any organization to find if they could do it. In Inskeep's words, that was due to "doubts" about the laptop's authenticity. Doubts should pervade the beginnings of nearly any story. It's the journalist's job to investigate whether those doubts are well-founded or not. There's no indication NPR undertook any such investigation, and Inskeep never claims it did.
On point 3, if you can find in Inskeep's piece where he showed that NPR's coverage of the major stories has been borne out, I'd appreciate it. I can't find any discussion of it. Inskeep seems to evade the issue entirely. Generalized and conclusory hat tips to claimed viewpoint diversity in the newsroom don't answer the question.
The NYP clearly also had some internal angst about publishing the story as evidenced by the weirdness that happened with the byline. The fact of the matter is this: The story was a TIMED RELEASE by a political campaign - Giuliani had the laptop for almost a year at that point - and it was designed to be difficult to verify or vet prior to the election due to Giuliani controlling who could access the source material. Which put news orgs in the position of either repeating the claims in the NYP story uncritically or declining to run the story at all until more info became available.
The primary source of anger and discontent from the conservative sphere is that the MSM did not dutifully play along with the October surprise smear as expected. I submit that it is not a media org's job to publish a story on a political party's schedule and terms. And if Giuliani thought the contents of the laptop were of critical import to the American people, he should have allowed unfettered access to the source material months prior to allow proper investigation. The fact that he didn't signals a lack of confidence in the substance of the material and that, if the source, narrative, and spin were not tightly controlled, the headline shock would quickly be replaced by "wait, that's it?".
All of this is to say that Berliner deploying the laptop story as an example of a failing and biased newsroom is dubious at best. He almost certainly is aware of all of this context and chose to press ahead with his claim anyway which really undercuts his whole argument which is that NPR is a biased news room that should work to be less biased. By invoking this particular example, he seems to be indicating that what he *really* wants is not less bias - it's that he wants his preferred brands of bias to be given equal time.
Do you really think NPR and the rest of the MSM would have been so circumspect if a Democratic operative had released evidence of Eric Trump cavorting with prostitutes, doing drugs, and engaging in slimy, if technically legal influence peddling?
We already know the answer based on how they handled the Steele dossier. The only difference between that and Hunter’s laptop is that the latter was 100% authentic.
I don't know where this narrative came from that the MSM embraced the Steele Dossier but it's patently false. Every single old media news outlet refused to run a story of the allegations from it. Buzzfeed News finally ran it when nobody else would and they ran it with the subheading "The allegations are unverified, and the report contains errors."
As for your first point, nobody at the time was alleging that Hunter's business dealings were legal and merely ethically shady. The whole point of withholding the source data was to launder salacious, yet vague, rumors into the discourse right before the election. Some people were even suggesting that maybe there were videos of sex acts with children on there!
Good point about the way the media handled the dossier story initially. They were actually far more reticent about it than the laptop story. Only Mother Jones, which isn't part of the MSM, published about it in any substantial way before the election, even though many outlets were briefed on it long before.
See the thing about Rudy Giuliani is that he was already known to have previously spread Russia-backed propaganda from his prior little private expeditions to Russia on behalf of Donald Trump as his personal lawyer. So not only was there absolutely no reason to trust anything coming from him that couldn't be verified, there was overwhelming evidence to suggest than anything coming from him might very well be more intentional deception from our adversaries.
And as it is, the intimation that there was evidence of criminality by Joe Biden on the laptop was completely false, so people getting outraged about how a "legitimate" story was "suppressed" before an an election are basically complaining that a precisely-timed political oppo dump wasn't allowed to deceive people to its full potential like it could have if legitimate news organizations had shown the same credulousness they did in 2016 with Jim Comey's abundance-of-caution notification to Congress on the matter of Huma Abdein laptop (which, of course, turned out to be nothing). Thankfully, they learned their lesson.
In the end, given how much the story blew up after Twitter prevented people from clicking on the NYP story for a whole twenty four hours before reversing its decision, it's questionable whether any aspect of the story was really "suppressed". But at least the mainstream media didn't treat it like an unqualified scandal, the first of a presumed Joe Biden presidential administration rather than an entirely suspect potential political hit job. Because that's absolutely what it was, regardless of the fact that the laptop was real.
Probably. Confronted with good reasons for the “MSM” to have held back on initially reporting on a story nakedly pushed by a political campaign, you retreated into an unfalsifiable hypothetical.
Also, as others have pointed out, the MSM handled the Steele dossier appropriately — almost completely ignoring it — despite your revisionism.
Most of the MSM treated the Russian collusion/Steele dossier story the same way it did the laptop story, reported both as allegations.
One difference was the timing and strange story, though, which naturally made people more suspicious of the laptop story. But both stories were covered with caution by the MSM.
Your comment prompted me to Google “pee tape” where I was treated to an avalanche of cautious, sober-minded reporting over a 4 year period, including one in New York Magazine by Jonathan Chait titled “I’m a Peeliever - And You Should Be Too.” Thanks for the trip down memory lane, full of careful reporting and healthy journalistic skepticism regarding the Steele dossier.
An opinion piece is not "reporting". Legacy media orgs like NPR keep their editorials completely separate from their hard news departments.
New York Magazine isn't part of the MSM, and who knows what Chait, who isn't a reporter, was talking about.
You haven't refuted what I said, if facts matter.
The scary part here is that you cannot differentiate between reporting and opinion pieces on your own. This is the type of media illiteracy in the general population that reinforces how uneducated in critical thinking Americans are.
Uh buddy, the laptop was compromised: https://www.emptywheel.net/2023/07/08/the-laptop-everyone-knows-as-hunter-bidens-appears-to-have-been-deleted-starting-february-15-2019/
Hard to tell from that how it was compromised. Hunter Biden hasn't ever disputed anything published from the NYP's copy, as far as I've seen.
A lot of the material on there - likely even the vast majority of it - was Hunter Biden's data. But the hard drive had obviously been tampered with. And I don't mean in the spy sense of tampering. I mean that the contents of the hard drive had been circulating amongst Republican operatives and someone took the time to organize some of the materials into folders that Hunter obviously didn't create. The chain of custody for the data was non-existent. So it's impossible to say that the laptop was actually his when it could have also been an iCloud hack transplanted onto a computer and taken into a blind man's repair shop.
The person who would best know whether any substantial tampering occurred has never alleged that. It seems highly unlikely he wouldn't if it occurred.
Mac Isaac, the blind computer repairman who supposedly received several laptops from Biden, said those copies weren't true to what he downloaded when his lawyer gave CBS a copy.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hunter-biden-laptop-data-analysis/
CBS ought to reconsider who they hire as experts, as they didn't get an image of the hard drive: just a drive with files copied from another source or sources.
This doesn't conflict with what I said. It's highly unlikely there was any substantial tampering.
No one outside the FBI can tell if there was any tampering with the laptop as none of them have seen the laptop. MacIsaac didn't image the hard drive: he just copied files over to another drive.
It remains that if Hunter Biden had any reason to believe there was significant tampering, he would have said so. There's no getting around that. He's in a position to know.
Total nonsense. NPR Had no evidence that the laptop was Russian disinformation. Anyone with a brain would know the laptop was real from the jump. It was the Biden family. Wtf
You're acting as if the New York Post is some esteemed journalistic outlet of the highest integrity, and not a tabloid owned by a right wing media magnate who has quite intentionally used all of his platforms to benefit his openly preferred political agenda.
Oh no! But it's NPR that's so biased.
In fairness, other news organizations had no way to verify the NYP's claims. NYP refused to share their info with other news orgs, and it wasn't available from Giuliani, who was controlling the source by then, either.
I think NPR did a bad job of explaining their decision not to cover the story on air (they did have a piece online), but I don't think they were wrong not to cover it until its foundation was established, and only in limited ways after that. There was nothing in the evidence definitely tying Joe Biden to any wrongdoing, and little that even seemed to.
To be clear, I agree with the thrust of Berliner's piece, but not all of its arguments are strong ones.
I personally respect the "conservatism" expressed in waiting for verification of a story. Everyone knows printing a retraction three months after the fact for a story that's wrong or not true is vastly ineffectual to the weight of the story being out there in the first place.
This is a weakness of our current 24/7 news cycle mercilessly exploited by chaos agents and propagandists. It's no loss to NPR's audience not to join the bandwagon to being fast, but often wrong and deliberately used to manufacture false narratives.
NPR is among the most conservative that way, or has been historically, especially when some kind of personal scandal is involved.
They did have a piece online about the story early on, by the way, but nothing on air.
NYP didn't verify their story, either.
Not sure what you have in mind, but they had the cooperation of the man who had the laptop, and its contents, and did check to see if they matched what facts they could confirm.
Where the NYP fell down was in putting a politically-motivated spin on their coverage, at the least. Whether they should have covered it at all when they did is also questionable.
At the time NYP wrote that story the FBI had had the laptop for about ten months. NYP did **zero** to check the tale Giuliani was spinning them. They posted screenshots and may not have received any more than that from Giuliani.
They published corroborating facts as well, including as I said corroboration from the person who owned the laptop. They were reported to have the entire contents.
They published two screenshots of emails and quoted Giuliani. That's not corroborating facts. Where were they reported to have "the entire contents"? Further, as I've shown already, the drives being passed around by Giuliani and other rightwing activists included files not copied by Blind Computer Guy.
They published a lot more than two screenshots. They published many, in a whole series of articles. They claimed to be working from a copy of the hard drive that Giuliani gave them.
The first article- which is the only relevant one as that's what the social media companies reacted to- had only two screenshots. You're now misrepresenting the discussion to cover for your misrepresentation of the NYPost's "reporting" (to use the term very loosely).
You're now making stuff up that was nowhere said or implied above, and which is flatly false in any case. Look inward about misrepresentation.
NYP pushed several articles the first day, and all were subject to the same initial suppression.
https://www.google.com/search?q=hunter+biden+laptop+site%3Anypost.com&sca_esv=725efba4277893af&rls=en&cs=0&biw=946&bih=915&sxsrf=ACQVn0_InYL_jSvQhVhIFEPzmqZ6Pdm4jQ%3A1713562102145&source=lnt&tbs=cdr%3A1%2Ccd_min%3A10%2F14%2F2020%2Ccd_max%3A10%2F14%2F2020&tbm=
Before you imply someone else is misrepresenting something, you should check yourself.
I'm not making anything up. The only article which Facebook and Twitter took measures against was the first one. It's the only one which is relevant to your claims here. You're reaching for things to justify your statements, and are now dishonestly accusing me. Your link doesn't prove your pretense other articles were suppressed.
You like to tell other people what to do a lot, but the fact is you need to start looking at your own conduct.
How many Green party candidates were there. Any libertarians? Who cares what political party they were registered as. The notion that party affiliation accretes bias is pretty weak. How many Democrats are in other bureaus? How many articles do these Democrats write that accurately reflect a Republican position, and report fairly and clearly on an important issue?
Personally, I think NPR is too beige and careful with its choice of language. I think they should be harder-hitting than they are about things.
I'm more interested in do they target a certain demographics in their fundraising? Groups that would that be so challenged by, say, a staunch Republican point of view, as to perhaps withdraw said funding and just keep using last year's tote bag and listen to last year's Perry Como's Greatest Hits? How can we, as a society and the American public, best ensure that level of influence on Public Journalism doesn't happen? What happened to the Office of the Ombudsman within the NPR newsroom? How can we leverage NPR to rebuild local journalism, because Rose Scott kicks some serious ass on her show. How can we encourage NPR to be more fearless in their coverage, and to stop using such banal overly-objective language when dealing with that which is so clearly NOT banal (e.g. Donald Trump and his insurrection).
We should not let fear of appearing biased cause us to be biased, even if said bias is to a fiscal "safe space." And, as for the folks who are covering this stuff... some of whom are dead or missing in the subsequent attacks on Gaza, we all owe it to them to demand quality and incisive reporting that helps us be informed and making the best choices we can in a complex world.
Even tho I am inclined to believe that there is a decline in NPR coverage as a whole since the time they reorged and sent their ombudsman packing, I was not particularly moved by the arguments in the Berliner piece when I read it.
It never escaped my notice when certain affiliate programs were brought to us by a generous donation from Koch Industries or one of the Koch Foundations.
In light of reporting that PBS nixed plans to air a Koch brothers documentary because of pressure from the Kochs and the weight of their financial donations, I am more inclined to believe there are important things that AREN'T getting reported based on the whims and preferences of the big money donors.
I'm sorry but the idea that party affiliation doesn't correlate somehow to viewpoint is pretty absurd. Practically speaking, the broader question should be how many people in NPR have leanings that are libertarian or similar to Green Party if you're really going to ask that question, and I think you know the answer.
1. How does one "look at" voter registration for one's workplace? Do you talk to HR or what
2. How many registered Republicans do you suppose are clamoring to work for NPR, which for decades has had a reputation for having a liberal bent? Isn't it at least equally possible that the lack of Republicans in the NPR newsroom is a matter of self-selection rather than viewpoint discrimination?
3. Why are only right-wing broadcasters allowed to have a partisan lean? How many registered Democrats are employed at OAN or Newsmax?
Anyway I'm happy for Uri, not only are people talking about him, but he never has to do any serious work again and can just ride the Bari Weiss grift train as long as he has a pulse.
In DC voter registration is a public record.
Berliner's point isn't altered at all if the lack of Republicans at NPR is self-selection. It's still a problem for lack of diversity at NPR.
Obviously OAN and Newsmax are worse than NPR in by almost any standard. That doesn't change Berliner's point either. NPR, when it takes public funding, incurs a special obligation to be representative in a way it utterly fails to be.
In my opinion, conservatives typically aren’t interested in exploring an issue but rather they are highly opinionated, and convinced in their own point of view which they want others to share.
That's my experience with people with strong political views in general. I've seen no difference on either side that way here, for example.
Why would any legitimate news organization go out of its way to recruit sociopathic nihilists just because that's the route one of the mainstream parties has consciously gone down
No one remotely suggested they do that. Your implication that all Republicans and conservatives are sociopathic nihilists only shows something about you, not them.
Are you under the impression that anyone who works in D.C. lives in D.C.?
No, it doesn't matter to Berliner's point. He did a sample and the results were very skewed.
1. Not sure. Good question.
2. This is the same tired argument companies use for only hiring white men. If a certain group doesn’t want work for you, you’ve proven the thesis that you are not open and inclusive of those people. Conservatives Likely don’t choose to work at NPR because it is hostile to their viewpoints. That’s the whole point.
3. Because the P in NPR stands for “public”, and NPR receives funding from the government. You are citing private companies, who, like MSNBC, are expected to be tilted. A public radio station serves the entire public, and should reflect the entire public, not the beliefs of a small segment of coastal elites.
4. The definition of “grifter” when it comes to media is “anyone who makes a living publishing information I disagree with”. You nailed it. Liberals love to dismiss anyone who disagree with them (McWhortee, Weiss, Hughes) as merely grifters because, in their liberal bubble, they can’t imagine anyone ACTUALLY disagrees with them.
1. I know, it was, thanks.
2. Your comparison is nonsense because nobody's born a Republican or a conservative. It's not an inborn or immutable characteristic. You can decide not to believe the ridiculous paranoid things the party demands its adherents think and say. And even though there are some outward characteristics that can give one a pretty good idea they're dealing with a Republican, like a squared-off goatee or a lifted F-150, it's not quite as easy to pick one out as, say, a woman or a black person.
3. There are many, many members of the public who think and act in cruel and sociopathic manners. This does not mean that NPR owes people like them equal time in the name of ideological diversity, even if the cruelty and sociopathy increasingly mirrors the attitudes of a certain major political party.
4. Pure projection. Weiss et al are the ones who have equated being an ideological minority or being challenged on their professed beliefs with discrimination, even as they were being employed and handsomely paid to let the world know what's on their mind by their supposed oppressors. Being a conservative does not automatically make one a grifter, but lazily pandering to the segment of society who is perpetually angry and confused about the fact that the world is different than how they remember it being does, and that is those people's meal ticket.
How many are paid by the government?
Berliner writes that he "found" 87 registered Democrats and 0 registered Republicans. How hard did he look? Did he find any non-registered, independents, Greens, Libertarians? Did he research Washington staffers who live outside DC in Maryland or Virginia? And what of the 88 percent of NPR staffers who work outside DC? And besides, none of this matters unless you assume that journalists can't and don't, as a matter of professionalism and ethics, set aside their partisan opinions to report objectively. So it's not clear that Berlinger's "finding" here tells us anything of value.
Doesn't really matter. Even if he did find a couple Greens or something (which would only help his case) and not look anywhere but DC (which is the only place he claimed to look), what he found is plainly very telling. 0 GOP. Many Dems. This isn't a subtle thing.
A lot of DC reporters (our host, for example) don't register with a party or register as independent because they want sources and listeners to see them as non-partisan. A lot of DC reporters don't live there and vote in VA or MD. The vast majority of NPR reporters neither live nor work in DC. So it appears Berliner's search wasn't very thorough, and there's no reason to assume his findings are representative of the whole organization. Besides, the whole exercise assumes that partisanship is the most impactful kind of bias, or that reporters lack the professionalism and ethics to free themselves of partisan bias in their reporting. Maybe Berliner was the only staffer at NPR who could see past his own partisanship, or maybe it just suits his confirmation bias (and yours) to think so.
None of that remotely alters the very plain significance of what Berliner found. And this isn't the first publication of evidence to similar effect about NPR.
Political ideology is the most salient factor in bias about political issues. It's closely tied with party affiliation. This isn't a subtle thing.
Look, all journalism is at least a little bit biased, not because of partisanship, but because journalism is an activity that requires. subjective human judgment about what's important and what's not. Even the most scrupulous reporters are human beings with personal opinions and with conscious and unconscious biases and blind spots. The scrupulous ones will look past their conscious biases, like party affiliation, in their reporting, but the unconscious ones (those tied to personal identity and lived experience, and those built into the newsrooms where they work and the business model and established practices of journalism)) are harder to overcome because they're unconscious. The political bias of individual reporters is much less impactful on an outlet's reporting than those institutional biases. They skew coverage at NPR, as at most other outlets, toward familiar narrative, expedience, and capital. Corporate sponsorship pays a plurality of the bills (38%) at NPR, so you're not likely to hear coverage that challenges the confirmation biases of corporate or individual donors, no matter how individual reporters may vote. Read Alicia Montgomery's Slate article (https://slate.com/business/2024/04/npr-diversity-public-broadcasting-radio.html ) for a more nuanced insider perspective than Berliner's or Inskeep's on NPR's institutional biases and how they skew coverage there. In her experience, editors at NPR try to keep coverage centrist to a fault, both sides-ing every story even when there really aren't two equally valid and credible sides. This performative objectivity is many reporters' and editors' way of responding to criticism like Berliner's, which the right wing has been leveling at mainstream journalism for more than 50 years, that they are not scrupulous enough to overlook their conscious partisan biases. Berliner thinks truth is not being served because of how his colleagues vote; Montgomery thinks truth is not being served because her colleagues have abdicated their editorial judgment. Since I have worked in a lot of newsrooms where this has happened, where management has effectively handed over the job of assignment editor to sponsors, shareholders, algorithms, focus groups, and bad-faith critics who don't want journalism that holds the powerful accountable to exist, I find her critique more plausible than his, but YMMV.
Your first three sentences show why this is a problem. NPR believes in magic, that a staff that isn't diverse ideologically can magically be as unbiased as one that is. Obviously not. And it matters, a lot.
I disagree that institutional factors such as you mention matter more than individual ones, but it doesn't matter to Berliner's point. Individual political biases matter for the same kinds of reasons that diversity of race, gender, etc matter.
But NPR does also have powerful institutional biases as well. It has always interpreted its mission to include voices that aren't usually included as a progressive one, and understood it only as progressives understand it.
About the Slate piece, I agree that that Berliner've view seems skewed about the past at NPR, and ignores other factors that might have contributed to the further decline in conservative trust in NPR. Conservatives have distrusted NPR for a lot longer than he believes, according to Pew data. But that doesn't alter his point that things have gotten markedly worse in some ways. Progressive language and ideology about race and gender has become more strident and acquired a stronger scent, and that's made the problem even more noticeable.
In a couple other places where she seems to think she's arguing against Berliner, she's only reinforcing his points, for example in regard to how the newsroom regarded Trump. in 2016.
But the piece as a whole simply passes over the elephant in the room. It's general explanation for what Berliner points out is that it was due to NPR's general reticence and conservative approach, etc. No. That doesn't explain most of what he pointed out at all.
She doesn't address the overwhelming lack of diversity of political ideology in any substantial way.
And that's typical of NPR staff and its defenders. They believe in magic.
>Your first three sentences show why this is a problem. NPR believes in magic, that a staff that isn't diverse ideologically can magically be as unbiased as one that is. Obviously not. And it matters, a lot.
Your whole argument here is garbage. Affiliation isn't ideology, and doesn't even show bias. That's even taking Berliner as being honest, which is dubious as if he had actually "found" the political registrations of 87 people at NPR he would have found at least one independent. This is a stat he found in his own rear end, not at the office.
You're avoiding the obvious. Affiliation is obviously highly correlated with ideology.
Berliner nowhere claimed or implied there were no independents. That wouldn't affect his point at all. Inskeep, ironically given his criticism of Berliner, badly misrepresented what Berliner said. And not only on that point.
You need to look inward before lashing out at Berliner.
Your response is nonsensical. Berliner claimed the 87 people at the D.C. office were 87-0 Democrats to Republicans. That certainly does imply there were no independents. He gave no basis for his claim other than to say he "found" that to be so. A finding which is called into heavy doubt by Inskeep being an independent.
Your claim affiliation is highly correlated with ideology is unsupported. You repeating the same allegation over and over again doesn't constitute support for said allegation.
LIkewise, your "wouldn't affect his claim" is idiotic. It debunks his claim. It shatters his credibility about what he "found." There's no reason to believe his "0 GOP," which you illogically seem to think still holds up.
Again, no. Read what Berliner actually said. In the context of what he said it's clear he didn't exclude the possibility of independents. He checked the party affiliation of those registered to vote in DC (public records) and found 87 Dems, no GOP.
I'm not going to argue about points as obvious as that political affiliation and ideology are highly correlated. You're avoiding the obvious. That's your choice, and no one else can fix it for you.
Since no reporter is capable of reporting on any story without skewing it, and NPR is an organization staffed by liberals, one can assume that NPR articles have a liberal bias, and accommodate for it in our judgment. The same goes for AM talk radio and the National Review.
Berliner (and presumably you) seem to want NPR to intentionally hire and fire so that the median opinion in newsroom on any political issue is close to the median national opinion. Putting aside how one would achieve that, can I ask how it would affect your belief or trust in any NPR reporting?
These days a lot of conservatives are registered unaffiliated for obvious reasons. It matters greatly how the unaccounted for are registered, but he didn't bother.
Even if some of them are registered independent, it doesn't get around the fact of what he did find, a huge imbalance between Dems and GOP. And it's always been that way at NPR, by all reports.
Inskeep's an independent, but he's no conservative, much less a GOP refugee. It's not the same.
Of course there are more Democrats than Republicans. There's probably a pretty heavy imbalance on the news staff of the Wall Street Journal, for goodness' sake. You folks are barking at the moon. I'll bet if you surveyed every journalist at every media outlet in the United States, it would be 75%-85% Democrat/left of center. This isn't news, and it isn't anything NPR can change. Conservatives don't do journalism. Never have, never will.
You're making Berliner's point, while ignoring its obvious significance. Not long ago, the media was 75%-85% white males. When they saw why that was bad, they changed it. NPR could do far, far better, but they refuse to even see or acknowledge that it's a problem.
Perhaps because it isn't.
Yet it is. Berliner did not expose anything. He made world news for being the first prominent NPR voice to state the obvious.
Thanks for illustrating my point. Lots of denial of the obvious at NPR and among its defenders
Tempest in a teapot. Keep beating your heads against the wall.
Ha, trying to make NPR or its core audience see bias and why it matters is indeed beating one's head against a wall. Truth is no match for strong feelings, which politics is full of.
Firstly, the fact that the NYP "figured out how to do it" was because Rudy Giuliani refused to provide the laptop's contents to anyone outside the Rupert Murdoch owned news complex (Fox News, The Post, WSJ). It was almost like he was trying to make it look suspicious, and it sure as hell did. Legitimate media had nothing to go on, and were right to treat it cautiously as an unconfirmed story.
Secondly, Berliner's phrasing does not make it at all clear what he means about "finding" 87 Democrats and 0 Republicans. It sure makes it sound like he had some sort of easy access to everyone's voter registration in DC and found an 87-0 split. If that's not the case, then it's a bit hard to interpret what his comment means. Did he do a random sample? If not, how did he choose the people he investigated? Is it possible that people registered as Republican make it more difficult to determine, perhaps choosing not to specify in places where asked (DC is a pretty Democrat-leaning place after all)? He may have had a legitimate point here, but he was uninformative at best and misleading at worst.
One doesn't address claims made without any evidence - one dismisses them.
Which is what Uri's editor should have done.
He gave evidence, some of which anyone can verify.
But people will naturally dismiss what doesn't fit their politics.
I have yet to see any evidence from Uri.
I've seen some lies, that claim to be evidence, but as soon as you see those, it becomes hard to credit anything else said in the same essay.
Those lies are absurdly easy to verify as lies, and steve does so in his piece.
Inskeep's response doesn't even come close to disproving anything Berliner actually said. Instead Inskeep mischaracterizes what Berliner says and then attacks a straw man, over and over. That you missed that and swallowed whole Inskeep's ironically poor response is a useful clue about you, should you be interested in seeing beyond your politics.
But if you don't believe me, please pick a point you think Berliner lied about and I'll show you who was actually misleading you.
Deep denial at NPR, and among its core audience.
What is Steve Inskeeps political registration?
Uri said it was democrat.
It is not.
Uri lied.
Period.
Why are you claiming this did not happen?
Amazing.
No, Berliner didn't say or imply Inskeep is a Democrat. He didn't say or imply "his “editorial” colleagues were unanimously registered Democrats," as Inskeep claimed he did. Inskeep misled you.
What Berliner did say was that he checked the voter registration of NPR editorial staff in DC and *found* 87 Dems, no GOP. He didn't claim he checked everyone, didn't say he checked Inskeep (don't know if he lives in DC), didn't say anything but that he found 87 Dems and no GOP among those he checked.
Look inward.
You know you just said you didn't know something that's stated in the article?
You expect people to take you seriously?
*sigh* Yeah, you do, and that's the entire fucking problem. Bye now. You're just entirely worthless to talk to.
What? You're completely lost. Willfully, it appears.
Worthless indeed.
*pat*
I wouldn't say Mr Berliner lied exactly. But at the very least he seems to have used cherry-picked data to bolster his claim about lack of viewpoint diversity. As Mr Inskeep mentioned, eighty-seven staffers are just a percentage of the overall D.C. staff, which leads one to question how Mr Berliner arrived at that figure. For all we know the rest of the staff outside of that 87 are registered 'No Party' or Republican.
Also, as others here have pointed out, aside from the problem with the statistic itself, there is a problem with using is as evidence for lack of viewpoint diversity. Party registration does not necessarily translate to bias.
"For all we know the rest of the staff outside of that 87 are registered 'No Party' or Republican."
It's not at all plausible that this was a sampling error large enough to materially affect Berliner's point. Inskeep misrepresented what Beliner said, and then grasped at straws instead of addressing the very real problem.
Again, the news isn't that Berliner is a whistle blower or exposed disputable facts. The news is that an NPR executive stated the already obvious.
I mean, it's vaguely arguable if he lied or not. It comes down to intent.
I feel like he lied, you feel like he cherry picked a bit. Either one's reasonable. He's probably the only person who will ever really know which it is.
But, either one also makes it impossible for me to trust anything else he says as accurate anywhere else in his essay, without some pretty persuasive proof.
There isn't the slightest evidence Berliner lied or cherry-picked.
There's direct and clear evidence that Inskeep misrepresented what Berliner said more than once, and that he and many NPR fans are in willful denial.
Like the laptop: Uh buddy, the laptop was compromised: https://www.emptywheel.net/2023/07/08/the-laptop-everyone-knows-as-hunter-bidens-appears-to-have-been-deleted-starting-february-15-2019/