On April 10, 2024 By dekeriversIn Journalism, Media, NPR
I offer a few thoughts from 20,000 feet, as it were, concerning the column I read late Tuesday night by National Public Radio’s senior business editor Uri Berliner. Full disclaimer before I write this post. I am a listener of NPR and have been a fan of their news and talk shows for decades. I have donated money for the continued programming they offer. This is not my first effort to address what I consider to be unwarranted body blows to the news profession or to reporters. With that, I offer the following as a way to refute the context of what Berliner wants us to believe about NPR.
First, I want to begin with a fictitious local news story.
Two people were seriously injured at the Danville intersection this morning when a speeding vehicle side-swiped an eastbound car. This is the third accident of the year and the twelfth in the past twenty-four months. Last October the mayor, in his third successive budget, did not request funding for updating this main thoroughfare in the city.”
Consider that story in the context of a supposed narrative. All the sentences were factual, but depending on the frame of mind of the reader it was either straightforward journalism or could be viewed as a way to put pressure on the mayor for more accountability in traffic spending.The news story could even be understood to be a political slap at the mayor. I understand the argument that a report or even a reporter is biased, but what we seldom talk about is if the news consumer and their inherent biases have an equal role to play in how a story ‘lands’.
I take note that what Uri writes is an updated version of what we have witnessed over the decades in the nation concerning news operations. Objections from conservatives to media are not a new development. After Martin Luther King was assassinated viewers and readers wrote letters to television stations and newspaper publishers about the amount of time his grieving widow was featured in the news. The same type of response was offered regarding what we now know are the iconic photos from Birmingham where the use of water hoses and dogs on those pressing for social changes made for harrowing scenes. I recall all too well the blowback to how the coverage of gay civil rights by news outlets was considered to be allowing for the ‘lifestyle’ to be ‘normalized’.
Second, I would argue that journalists are both in the job of finding out the facts of a story and reporting them to the public, but those same professionals are also brokers of ideas. We know that Information leads to more thoughts among the public which leads to expanded questions as readers/viewers take notice. Stem cell research at UW-Madison allowed for possible breakthroughs in the future of aiding those with Parkinson’s disease or severe arthritis. But the research also added fodder to people who thought scientists were undermining religious concepts about life. There were arguments made that reporters were placing the importance of possible medical advances in their news stories over pro-life concerns.
Third, and this one leaped out at once when reading Uri’s column, though ironically, it lands at the end of my quick thoughts in this post. A few years ago, it was reported that digital platforms outpaced dollars being spent on television news programming.This means two things. People are getting more news from sources not always concerned about factual content, creating a complicated mess in a democracy. But with that digital turn, and this then was my initial thought, reporters and journalists could place their sources for information (not unnamed ones, of course,) at the bottom of stories to show transparency and allow for those dubious readers or viewers to understand how a story was researched and reported.
News reporters and their work are open for discussion and review. Berliner did that very thing with his column and surely expects a critique of his views, too. His desire for a more conservative mindset in the NPR news operation has often been cited by those who share his perspective on the world. I now hope he would join alongside others who have long advocated that high schools have a news consumer class to show how a journalist works, a publisher packages a newspaper, and a citizen interprets the news product.
