NPR changed from a news and commentary outlet to a propaganda organ of the government that pays its bills. That progression was inevitable. From Uri Berliner at thefp.com:
Uri Berliner, a veteran at the public radio institution, says the network lost its way when it started telling listeners how to think.
You know the stereotype of the NPR listener: an EV-driving, Wordle-playing, tote bag–carrying coastal elite. It doesn’t precisely describe me, but it’s not far off. I’m Sarah Lawrence–educated, was raised by a lesbian peace activist mother, I drive a Subaru, and Spotify says my listening habits are most similar to people in Berkeley.
I fit the NPR mold. I’ll cop to that.
So when I got a job here 25 years ago, I never looked back. As a senior editor on the business desk where news is always breaking, we’ve covered upheavals in the workplace, supermarket prices, social media, and AI.
It’s true NPR has always had a liberal bent, but during most of my tenure here, an open-minded, curious culture prevailed. We were nerdy, but not knee-jerk, activist, or scolding.
In recent years, however, that has changed. Today, those who listen to NPR or read its coverage online find something different: the distilled worldview of a very small segment of the U.S. population.
If you are conservative, you will read this and say, duh, it’s always been this way.
But it hasn’t.
For decades, since its founding in 1970, a wide swath of America tuned in to NPR for reliable journalism and gorgeous audio pieces with birds singing in the Amazon. Millions came to us for conversations that exposed us to voices around the country and the world radically different from our own—engaging precisely because they were unguarded and unpredictable. No image generated more pride within NPR than the farmer listening to Morning Edition from his or her tractor at sunrise.
“There is no news in Truth and there is no truth in News.”
(Russian proverb)
Pravda was truth Izvestia was news, the official party organs of information dissemination in CCCP.
Colonel Jessup approves of Not Particularly Real as most cannot handle the truth.
If you have a few drinks and turn on Pure Bolshevik Soviet or any of their outlets it is up there with the Communist News Network or PMSNBC for laughs.
I regret selling that XXL USSR hockey jersey with hammer and sickle on the front, it was fun to wear around just for the reactions. (h/t-HQ)
The illusion is that by measuring one can control the other. It work for a while and then when discovered is insulting to the measured one. Even more retribution is sicked!