Many thanks for this thoughtful reply. I was not saying that they should have used the term "pro-life". I was pointing out that it is a tell of what you are for by when you frame an issue as opposing a "right". The logic of your argument seems to lead to suggesting the term "pro-abortion control". Some years back NPR's morning news repor…
Many thanks for this thoughtful reply. I was not saying that they should have used the term "pro-life". I was pointing out that it is a tell of what you are for by when you frame an issue as opposing a "right". The logic of your argument seems to lead to suggesting the term "pro-abortion control". Some years back NPR's morning news reported on the March for Life by referring to it throughout as "the so-called March for Life." I wrote to them and asked why they don't speak of "the so-called Pride Parade." To their great credit, they wrote back acknowledging my point and saying they had put out an internal directive not to use "so-called". That is the NPR I love and long for. I'm not that worried that its employees overwhelmingly have a liberal bias. I am worried that they have gone so far into a mutually reinforcing silo of the likeminded that they can no longer even see an instance of it when it is pointed out.
I agree with your points about injecting "so-called" into any sort of labeling like what you describe, that's pretty on-its-face journalistic bias and should stay out of straight news reporting. I'm glad you got the response you did from NPR though - which IMO, does still demonstrate that NPR is at its core still an organization that cares about its integrity and perception (imagine notifying Fox News that its broad based characterizations of say, Black Lives Matter as "thugs" was "biased" and expecting a sincere response lol).
And I am inclined to agree with your last sentence - it's a mutually reinforcing silo that creates this bias, not some central plot so much. But it's also reinforced by the siloing of its audience, if NPR's audience is less diverse (in multiple ways) they are that much less likely to get the sort of feedback you provided in that example to even be aware that inserting "so-called" before the actual title of the demonstration itself did not belong in non-opinion reporting.
In a sense, the self-selection of the audience away from NPR is pushing it to be more ideologically out of step with a broader audience as a result. And for all the words spent dissecting the bias of NPR's staff, perhaps some attention should be pointed at the fact that to a large degree, conservative leaning audiences are self-selecting themselves from *any* media sources that are not fully displaying an obvert bias towards conservative viewpoints, ideology and politicians. Any news organization that doesn't report unquestionably favorable views and coverage of Trump, for example (or, conversely, focuses its reporting/opinion almost exclusively about the sins of the "left" and pretty much ignores the Right and Trump and/or publishes the sort of Berliner/The Free Press apologia about "Russiagate" - Matt Taibibi and The Free Press have gained quite the right wing following with this offering - that does nothing to challenge any perception that Saint Innocent Trump has been maliciously maligned rather than that there was a hell of lot a truth to "Russiagate" in the details), is considered by a large segment of Republican audiences to be "liberal media" and hopelessly biased against them.
There isn't a realistic outcome here where NPR starts hiring more conservative journalists and staff, and produces less "woke excess" programming (like the absurd "slow train" review that I mentioned) that ends up with large swaths of conservatives migrating back to NPR for news coverage. More likely, those conservatives will be viewed as "establishment", "RINOs", etc that are not at all representative of actual "movement conservatives" (and they will probably be right, the notion that NPR will hire Steve Bannon types is less than 0, let alone that Steve Bannon types would "sully" their right wing bonafides by working for NPR to begin with, so the hiring pool of "conservatives" will likely be a lot more of "Bulwark" types of Republicans, who will largely be in agreement with staff liberals when it comes to Trump and Trumpism,) so it's hard to see how this really can be changed outside of *conservatives themselves* being willing to consume media sources that allow any sort of critical reporting about the Right.
TLDR: it will take a movement on both the producers and journalists of NPR to modify their programming to appeal to a broader audience, but it also requires a broader audience being willing to listen to reporting (at the least) that does not simply promote their priors.
Many thanks for this thoughtful reply. I was not saying that they should have used the term "pro-life". I was pointing out that it is a tell of what you are for by when you frame an issue as opposing a "right". The logic of your argument seems to lead to suggesting the term "pro-abortion control". Some years back NPR's morning news reported on the March for Life by referring to it throughout as "the so-called March for Life." I wrote to them and asked why they don't speak of "the so-called Pride Parade." To their great credit, they wrote back acknowledging my point and saying they had put out an internal directive not to use "so-called". That is the NPR I love and long for. I'm not that worried that its employees overwhelmingly have a liberal bias. I am worried that they have gone so far into a mutually reinforcing silo of the likeminded that they can no longer even see an instance of it when it is pointed out.
I agree with your points about injecting "so-called" into any sort of labeling like what you describe, that's pretty on-its-face journalistic bias and should stay out of straight news reporting. I'm glad you got the response you did from NPR though - which IMO, does still demonstrate that NPR is at its core still an organization that cares about its integrity and perception (imagine notifying Fox News that its broad based characterizations of say, Black Lives Matter as "thugs" was "biased" and expecting a sincere response lol).
And I am inclined to agree with your last sentence - it's a mutually reinforcing silo that creates this bias, not some central plot so much. But it's also reinforced by the siloing of its audience, if NPR's audience is less diverse (in multiple ways) they are that much less likely to get the sort of feedback you provided in that example to even be aware that inserting "so-called" before the actual title of the demonstration itself did not belong in non-opinion reporting.
In a sense, the self-selection of the audience away from NPR is pushing it to be more ideologically out of step with a broader audience as a result. And for all the words spent dissecting the bias of NPR's staff, perhaps some attention should be pointed at the fact that to a large degree, conservative leaning audiences are self-selecting themselves from *any* media sources that are not fully displaying an obvert bias towards conservative viewpoints, ideology and politicians. Any news organization that doesn't report unquestionably favorable views and coverage of Trump, for example (or, conversely, focuses its reporting/opinion almost exclusively about the sins of the "left" and pretty much ignores the Right and Trump and/or publishes the sort of Berliner/The Free Press apologia about "Russiagate" - Matt Taibibi and The Free Press have gained quite the right wing following with this offering - that does nothing to challenge any perception that Saint Innocent Trump has been maliciously maligned rather than that there was a hell of lot a truth to "Russiagate" in the details), is considered by a large segment of Republican audiences to be "liberal media" and hopelessly biased against them.
There isn't a realistic outcome here where NPR starts hiring more conservative journalists and staff, and produces less "woke excess" programming (like the absurd "slow train" review that I mentioned) that ends up with large swaths of conservatives migrating back to NPR for news coverage. More likely, those conservatives will be viewed as "establishment", "RINOs", etc that are not at all representative of actual "movement conservatives" (and they will probably be right, the notion that NPR will hire Steve Bannon types is less than 0, let alone that Steve Bannon types would "sully" their right wing bonafides by working for NPR to begin with, so the hiring pool of "conservatives" will likely be a lot more of "Bulwark" types of Republicans, who will largely be in agreement with staff liberals when it comes to Trump and Trumpism,) so it's hard to see how this really can be changed outside of *conservatives themselves* being willing to consume media sources that allow any sort of critical reporting about the Right.
TLDR: it will take a movement on both the producers and journalists of NPR to modify their programming to appeal to a broader audience, but it also requires a broader audience being willing to listen to reporting (at the least) that does not simply promote their priors.