The Double-Edge of Propagandistic Journalism
When I worked at Chicago Public Radio (2007-2017) one of the ongoing challenges the station faced was the rush to broadcast in the face of an increasingly Twitter-lead race.
With the rapid ascension of digital quasi-journalism came the dilemma of either getting the news out first or getting the news out right. For the most part within my decade there, the goal was to get it right so, often, the station was broadcasting news that had already hit for a day or so but provided that essential NPR context and nuance required for listeners not lead by the nose by the Twitterverse.
Given that the business model behind NPR relies heavily on public donations (at the time comprising a full 60% of the funding for WBEZ) the fact that many of their audience were also getting their news from Twitter became more of an issue to confront.
The media world has been shifting ever since. The result?
The United States ranks last in media trust — at 29% — among 92,000 news consumers surveyed in 46 countries, a report released Wednesday found. That’s worse than Poland, worse than the Philippines, worse than Peru. (Finland leads at 65%.)
In a recent conversation with a strident Trump-hater and hater of anyone who may have voted for him ("70 million racist idiots who can't comprehend the difference between fact and fiction...") it occurred that with so many distrusting our media outlets (including NPR) and the resulting rise in independent news substacks and mailers as well as the constant flow of mis- and disinformation readily available in social media platforms, we may very well be fucked.
There's a kind of moralistic paternalism at play here. One side of the partisan divide looks at the other and determines that they are either too morally bankrupt or too stupid to parse out what is truth versus what is propaganda. Like the antiracist phrasing around poor, young blacks who are too burdened with systemic racism to comprehend the criminality of taking a gun and shooting it at a rival, this bizarre infantilism of whole sections of society smacks more of the Church than anything else.
"Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do." becomes "Condemn them, Father, for they know not what is true."
This brings us to the rumors that the NYT has been taken over by Woke post-college Zoomers and that NPR has become more propaganda than neutral news source.
Of course, there is a response from NPR:
Outrage As A Business Model: How Ben Shapiro Is Using Facebook To Build An Empire
An NPR analysis of social media data found that over the past year, stories published by the site Shapiro founded, The Daily Wire, received more likes, shares and comments on Facebook than any other news publisher by a wide margin.
Even legacy news organizations that have broken major stories or produced groundbreaking investigative work don't come anywhere close.
The article notes that “other conservative outlets such as The Blaze, Breitbart News and The Western Journal” that “publish aggregated and opinion content” have also “generally been more successful… than legacy news outlets over the past year, according to NPR's analysis.”
Is the argument presented that Shapiro publishes lies? No.
“The articles The Daily Wire publishes don't normally include falsehoods.”
Is he Trump-y? Nope.
Shapiro “publicly denounced the alt-right and other people in Trump's orbit,” and “the conspiracy theory that Trump is the rightful winner of the 2020 election.”
The NPR piece can't even claim that The Daily Wire is a news organization as they are quite clear on the Shapiro's website that "the site declares, "The Daily Wire does not claim to be without bias," and goes on to say, "We're opinionated, we're noisy, and we're having a good time."
So, aside from being more successful in attracting eyeballs that NPR, what's the beef?
By only covering specific stories that bolster the conservative agenda (such as… polarizing ones about race and sexuality issues)… readers still come away from The Daily Wire's content with the impression that Republican politicians can do little wrong and cancel culture is among the nation's greatest threats.
Ah! This because NPR doesn't cover specific stories that bolster the progressive agenda (such as polarizing ones about race and sexuality issues), right?
Hypocrisy, thy name is Moralistic Propaganda.
What Does It Mean To Be Latino? The 'Light-Skinned Privilege' Edition Maria Garcia and Maria Hinojosa are both Mexican American, both mestiza, and both relatively light-skinned. But Maria Hinojosa strongly identifies as a woman of color, whereas Maria Garcia has stopped doing so.
The Racial Reckoning That Wasn't In the wake of several high-profile police killings last summer, support for Black Lives Matter skyrocketed among white Americans. Their new concerns about racism pushed books about race to the top of the bestseller lists, while corporations pledged billions of dollars to address injustice. A year later, though, polls show that white support for the movement has not only waned, but is lower than it was before.
Black TikTok Creators Are On Strike To Protest A Lack Of Credit For Their Work Tired of not receiving credit for their creativity and original work — all while watching white influencers rewarded with millions of views performing dances they didn't create — many Black creators on TikTok joined a widespread strike last week, refusing to create any new dances until credit is given where it's due.
New Zealand Weightlifter Will Be The First Openly Trans Competitor At The Olympics
She Struggled To Reclaim Her Indigenous Name. She Hopes Others Have It Easier
Monuments And Teams Have Changed Names As America Reckons With Racism. Birds Are Next
There is absolutely nothing wrong about the heavy-left lean from NPR. I personally still prefer them to almost any other news source. That said, it is anything but hypocritical to then level the accusation at Shapiro's obviously and fully transparent biased website that it is biased while exhibiting the exact same bias on the other side of the fence.
Is their any such thing as objective journalism? I don't believe so but there needs to be the attempt or the whole fourth estate is nothing more than a pack of moralists lecturing those they disagree with on how they should believe and behave and that isn't what journalism is supposed to be. That's what a nosy neighbor, an angry nun, or ideology-spewing lunatic does.
I don't care much for Shapiro or The Daily Caller but the stance of "Do as we say not as we do" is too pervasive in this instance. I expect better from NPR but the pressures of reach, finance, and facing the reality that half of the country finds the brand of scolding progressivism to be so offensive that they scatter to the type of click-bait infotainment on the right of the spectrum is daunting.
Stick to your guns, NPR. Don't buy into the post-modernist belief that objectivity cannot exist. Suffer the slings of neutrality and if the population ignores you, it wasn't like you were killing it in the ratings in the first place.
Like the reporters and producers I worked with years ago, get it right not popular.
