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Forbes
a day ago
- Politics
- Forbes
NPR's Good Taste And The Public Good
The odd spectacle of a DOGE Subcommittee hearing titled 'Anti-American Airwaves: Holding the Heads of NPR and PBS Accountable' trotted out the usual rhetorical suspects. Republicans, at least one of whom confused 'editorial standards' and 'editorializing,' echoed Uri Berliner's criticism of NPR's 'agenda-driven journalism by and for progressives.' Democrats invoked the spectre of McCarthyism for other Democrats with heavy-handed satire and puppets. NPR's President, Katherine Maher, performed a pop-therapeutic mantra during testimony. 'I hear, respect, and understand your concerns,' she testified. 'I want to recognize your concerns,' she reiterated. However, none of the stars of 'Anti-American Airwaves' seemed concerned with fundamental questions about what constitutes 'essential educational, local, and cultural programming.' WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 26: U.S. Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA) speaks in front of poster of Sesame ... More Street's Big Bird during a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing at the U.S. Capitol on March 26, 2025 in Washington, DC. The heads of NPR and PBS appeared before the House Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency to address allegations of bias in their programming against conservatives. (Photo by) Should the state sponsor journalism in the first place? Are there 'essential' elements of American culture that ought to be subsidized? If so, what are their artefacts or touchstones? Information and meaning are not the same thing. Determining that some stories or intellectual habits enrich the common good more than others first requires having a cultural outlook – whatever it might be – and a willingness to privilege it over alternatives. Arguments about what is or is not 'bias' often obscure this. Congressional Republicans can be quite wrong, for example, about journalistic standards at NPR and still be quite astute in their emphasis on rhetorical ethos. As former NPR Managing Editor, Bruce Drake, remarks, the 'NPR issue is not as much political bias as its sound, cultural orientation, sensibilities and tone.' WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 26: Katherine Maher, Chief Executive Officer and President of National Public ... More Radio, testifies during a hearing in front of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, in Washington, DC on March 26, 2025. (Photo by Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images) Marjorie Taylor Greene, for example, described NPR and PBS as 'radical, left-wing echo chambers for a narrow audience of mostly wealthy, white, urban liberals and progressives.' The first part of Greene's claim is tenuous. Indeed, consistent ideological stances are odds with the searching, faux-conversational, performative ethos that informs the aesthetic of the 'NPR voice.' The network has been criticized for being both pro-Isreal and pro-Palestine. It has garnered its fair share of passing controversies for, among other things, soliciting commentaries by Mumia Abu-Jamal for All Things Considered, but it also censored a poem by Martin Espada about Abu-Jamal. It aired Andrei Codrescu's remarks about Evangelicals, but it also condemned Codrescu for having 'crossed a line of taste and tolerance.' It maintained an editorial policy of refraining from calling waterboarding 'torture' during the Bush Administration, but it made glib work of titles like 'Waterboarding: A Tortured History.' As NPR's then-ombud, Alicia Shepard, remarked 'people have different definitions of torture and different feelings about what constitutes torture.' Policing speech around 'different definitions' can be a matter of journalistic distance or a philosophical commitment to tolerance, but one often has the sense that NPR's concern for 'different feelings' is also a matter of taste. WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 26: Subcommittee Chairwoman U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-SC) holds up ... More a poster of Democrats making gestures during a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing at the U.S. Capitol on March 26, 2025 in Washington, DC. The heads of NPR and PBS appeared before the House Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency to address allegations of bias in their programming against conservatives. (Photo by) For the sociologist, Pierre Bourdieu, 'taste' is an imagined criteria of value that allows privileged groups to communicate their own social capital, assert dominance, police social borders, and control access to class status. Greene's characterization of a 'narrow audience' echoes this. NPR's demographic does tend to vote Democrat and identify as liberal. However, the Democratic Party's membership rolls do not mirror NPR's audience makeup at all. Ideological self-identification is simply one of numerous social markers that comprise this demographic's high-status cultural position. The same might be said of expecting – and perhaps secretly wanting – to be called 'urban liberals' by Marjorie Taylor Greene's voters. NPR's listeners, for example, are overwhelmingly upper middle-class. They are also 104% more likely to be in top management positions than other Americans, 69% more likely to be C-suite, 112% more likely to have visited art galleries, 54% more likely to have purchased organic food, 85% more likely to go backpacking, 193% more likely to have contacted a politician, and 60% more likely to describe travel as their passion. NPR's Susan Stamberg ,second from left and Bob Edwards rehearse their parts in a radio drama with Ed ... More Asner and Anne Meara. The radio play, "I'd Rather Eat Pants," will be broadcast on NPR in five parts beginning on Dec. 16. (Photo by Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images) Such statistics are readily available from the numerous sources that describe NPR's demographic for advertisers. This 'influential audience,' Market Enginuity promises, will build 'brand reputation.' As Kentucky's WEKU explains, 'NPR listeners are a highly sought after, market-leading group,' comprised of 'leaders.' Masterpiece viewers might see echoes of Poldark's Georgian England in this acute attention to social risks, rewards, faux pas, and reputations. In all hierarchical societies, formal, ostentatious patterns of financial acquisition, contribution, and consumption demonstrate proper taste. 'Most notable is the fact that public media never runs political ads,' Market Enginuity observes. 'Thus, your brand is never placed alongside political messaging that the listener may not agree with.' The parlance of 'messaging' rather than 'ideas' suggests consumers who prefer unanimities of class perspective to fraught exchanges with 'outsiders' that risk social discomfort. WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 26: Chairman Rep. James Comer (R-KY) speaks in front of posters of NPR ... More headlines during a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing at the U.S. Capitol on March 26, 2025 in Washington, DC. The heads of NPR and PBS appeared before the House Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency to address allegations of bias in their programming against conservatives. (Photo by) From a marketing perspective, it would be foolish to suggest that NPR's demographic includes the broad, unruly spectrums of American life. It is niche media for a high-status demographic and those who aspire to share its mores, forms of social differentiation, and unwritten rules of 'good' taste. Indeed, NPR funding is as much about the symbolic value of its federal subsidies – a kind of status loss – as it is about real-world financial impact. Former NPR CEO, Ken Stern, for example, thought it important 'that NPR receive some federal funds so it would have 'a place at the table' and could advocate for public radio stations.' The problem is that NPR's federal funding mechanism elides its demographic's finite cultural position with aspirational claims about what 'enrich[es] man's spirit' nationwide. What this means in practice is that NPR never really has to answer foundational questions about what stories or voices are 'essential' to American culture because the answers seem self-evident to most of its listeners. UNITED STATES Ð MARCH 15: A group of public broadcasting supporters gathers in the Hart Senate ... More Office building to lobby lawmakers to keep funding the PBS and NPR on Tuesday, March 15, 2011. (Photo By Bill Clark/Roll Call) In Federalist 10, James Madison rejected the hypothetical possibility of 'giving to every citizen the same opinions, the same passions, and the same interests' as being injurious to republics. However, NPR's special status and public funding subsidize the social fiction that the sensibilities of one high-status demographic are the republic's. 'No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause,' Madison remarks, 'because his interest would certainly bias his judgment […] With equal, nay with greater reason, a body of men are unfit to be both judges and parties at the same time.' Perhaps this explains the peculiar tone of so much NPR content that seems both memoir-like and sermonic at once. Overweening expressions of 'good' taste often give rise to myopic elisions between public and private identities. WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 26: President and CEO of National Public Radio Katherine Maher (L) and ... More President and CEO of Public Broadcasting Service Paula Kerger prepare to testify before a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing at the U.S. Capitol on March 26, 2025 in Washington, DC. The heads of NPR and PBS appeared before the House Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency to address allegations of bias in their programming against conservatives. (Photo by) When I was a bouncer, I once explained the job to a new hire by quoting Federalist 10, the part where Madison states that 'the CAUSES of faction cannot be removed, and that relief is only to be sought in the means of controlling its EFFECTS.' It was not lost on me that most of the affluent, underage would-be patrons I turned away would fit the NPR demographic in ten years. It was also not lost on me that their fake IDs all had addresses in Greenwich, Darien, Wilton, or other Connecticut towns that inspired Ira Levin's The Stepford Wives. What is it like to be subsumed into a demographic fiction, as Levin imagines? The IDs were often quite realistic. I also found their owners' haughty, unearned familiarities and sense of entitlement quite realistic. 'How do you get from Greenwich to Bridgeport?' I would ask. 'How would you go to Waterbury?' If I did not see an unconscious scrunch of the nose or insulted scowl at the mention of such places, that is when I would catch them out. 'Do you expect me to believe that you would really choose to come here all the way from Greenwich to The Bronx? Do you know where you are?' I have a good tongue for bad taste.
Boston Globe
3 days ago
- Politics
- Boston Globe
NPR loses. The First Amendment wins.
It is a tiresome myth that the media are supposed to be unbiased. The First Amendment, which prohibits governments from 'abridging the freedom … of the press,' was crafted in part because the framers of the Constitution knew perfectly well that journalists cannot help bringing strong views to their work, that those views shape their coverage, and that it is no business of the government to decide what constitutes fair and accurate reporting. No — the reason to defund public broadcasting is that it should never have been funded in the first place. A government barred by the Constitution from 'abridging' the media ought never to have involved itself in subsidizing the media. Congress's vote to cut the flow of dollars from the Treasury to NPR and PBS was long overdue. As Walter Donway wrote in The Daily Economy, the rescission vote 'strips away the illusion, cherished since the late 1960s, that in a free country with a free press, government can somehow act as a neutral arbiter of public information.' Advertisement Yet right up to the last minute, the CEO of NPR, Katherine Maher, kept trying to save her network's federal funding by insisting that 'we are, of course, a nonpartisan organization' and promising to iron the bias out of its journalism. 'As far as the accusations that we're biased, I would stand up and say, 'Please show me a story that concerns you because we want to know,'' she said during a Wednesday appearance on CNN. I'll be happy to take Maher up on that request but her plea misses the point. NPR cannot be unbiased. And even if it could, that wouldn't entitle it to taxpayer dollars. That NPR leans left is not the problem. What is a problem is that its journalism has repeatedly fallen short of its own professed standards of accuracy, fairness, and intellectual honesty. Take, for example, NPR's handling of the story about Hunter Biden's abandoned laptop in the weeks before the 2020 presidential election. The network flatly refused to cover the revelations emerging from the laptop, Yet the laptop and its contents were Advertisement Or consider NPR's In reality, the photographs at the center of the story were egregiously misconstrued. An investigation by the Department of Homeland Security confirmed that no migrants had been struck. But NPR, like other outlets, did little to correct the record or to grapple with how avidly it ran with an inflammatory and unfounded accusation. On issues of race and the COVID-19 pandemic, NPR's record has often been problematic. It dedicated Advertisement When it came to COVID's origins, NPR leaned heavily into the narrative that the virus emerged from a wet market. The possibility that it might have escaped from a Wuhan lab engaged in gain-of-function research was almost 'immediately dismissed as racist or a right-wing conspiracy theory,' Berliner wrote. Indeed, NPR went so far as to even declare in April 2020 that the As late as 2023, when even the Biden administration was inclined to accept the lab-leak hypothesis, NPR was still These and Advertisement Just as — to be fair — every other media outlet does. Which brings me back to the key point: Even if NPR hadn't dropped the ball on these stories, even if its reporting were as careful, accurate, and objective as is humanly possible, it still would not warrant a nickel of government money. Freedom of the press means that government must not tell journalists what to say or punish them for saying the wrong thing. It also means that news organizations must make their own way in the marketplace of ideas, sustained by their audiences, their advertisers, or their benefactors — not by the public treasury. NPR has always described its work as indispensable. With the government out of the picture, it can finally prove its value in the only arena that truly matters: the free marketplace of ideas. If it can sharpen its journalism, confront its own biases, and earn the loyalty of more listeners willing to pay for it, so much the better — for NPR and for the nation. A free press thrives when it stands on its own feet, not on the public dole. This article is adapted from the current , Jeff Jacoby's weekly newsletter. To subscribe to Arguable, visit . Jeff Jacoby can be reached at
Fox News
3 days ago
- Business
- Fox News
Top NPR editor to leave organization amid Trump's federal funding cuts
NPR's top editor, Edith Chapin, is leaving the company later this year. Chapin, who is serving as acting Chief Content Officer along with being a senior vice president and NPR's editor-in-chief, is walking away from NPR on the heels of the Trump administration's rescissions package pulling federal funding from public media. Republicans in the Senate and House narrowly passed the rescissions package last week that yanked over $1 billion in federal broadcast funding for the fiscal year. "Edith Chapin is a leader in journalistic integrity, a champion for the newsroom, calm in the storm — and an indispensable partner during my first year at NPR," CEO of NPR Katherine Maher said in a statement. "Edith laid the foundation for a stronger public radio, and set us on a solid path with her expert navigation. She has led with conviction, clarity, and compassion — always putting the public's interest first," Maher continued. According to the New York Times, she notified leadership of her decision to leave before the funding cuts were official. NPR will begin a national search for new editorial leadership. Chapin will remain head of newsroom operations until she officially exits later this year. "It has been the honor of a lifetime to serve NPR's listeners and readers, and work alongside some of the most dedicated journalists in the world. I will leave deeply proud of what we've accomplished and confident in the strength and integrity of NPR's newsroom going forward," Chapin said. Chapin has "overseen some of the most consequential and ambitious coverage in the organization's history — from global conflicts and U.S. elections to the COVID-19 pandemic and a rapidly changing media landscape," NPR noted in a press release. Trump's multibillion-dollar clawback package teed up cuts to "woke" spending on foreign aid programs and NPR and PBS, as Republicans finally yanked federal money from public news outlets in a move advocates said was long overdue. Maher has vowed that NPR will continue to operate despite the loss of federal funding, while warning of local station layoffs. Chapin spent 25 years at CNN prior to joining NPR in 2012.
New York Times
3 days ago
- Business
- New York Times
NPR's Top Editor Is Stepping Down
Edith Chapin, the top editor and acting chief content officer of NPR, will leave the organization later this year, according to two people with knowledge of her decision. Ms. Chapin's decision comes at a delicate time for NPR. Last week, Congress cut all $500 million in annual federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which backs NPR and its members. While only a tiny portion of NPR's funding comes from those federal grants, the vote could have seismic effects on many of its member stations. Ms. Chapin informed Katherine Maher, NPR's chief executive, of her intention to step down before lawmakers approved the cuts, according to the people with knowledge of her decision. She will stay at NPR for a period of time to help with the transition. Ms. Chapin's resignation means that Ms. Maher will need to fill two top roles. In addition to overseeing NPR's news efforts, Ms. Chapin's oversight of NPR's content gives her a say over NPR's essential and growing podcasting business. Ms. Chapin, who became NPR's top editor in 2023 and added the title of interim chief content officer at the organization a few months later, served in those roles during a stormy period for the organization. Shortly before she was promoted, the network laid off 10 percent of its staff and halted the production of several podcasts. The next year, one of its senior editors, Uri Berliner, wrote an essay for The Free Press that accused NPR of having a liberal bias. Shortly after Mr. Berliner's essay was published, Ms. Chapin sent a memo to the staff defending the 'exceptional work' that NPR's journalists do to 'cover a wide range of challenging stories.' In the aftermath of Mr. Berliner's essay, NPR took steps to increase editor scrutiny on stories. Ms. Chapin announced a new layer of editing, called 'the backstop,' that required a handful of senior editors to review NPR's journalism before it could be released. The vote to claw back federal funding last week has been met with dismay by employees at NPR. Ms. Maher addressed the staff on Thursday, acknowledging that the public radio network would undergo 'a tremendous amount of change.' Ms. Chapin is a veteran journalist who has worked at NPR for more than a decade. Before she joined the public radio network in 2012, she was a vice president at CNN, where she had worked for a quarter-century. At NPR, she worked with NPR member stations to build a collaborative journalism network and worked with NPR's development team to help form a fund-raising strategy around news.
Bloomberg
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Bloomberg
Colbert Firing Signals the End of Late-Night TV and the Start of the Ellison Era
Good evening from New York City. I just got back from watching The Hidden Fortress at the Film Forum and am headed out for some Spanish food. Considering the news that Congress is cutting funding for public broadcasters, it feels like a good time to note that National Public Radio Chief Executive Officer Katherine Maher has joined the lineup for Screentime.
