Uncentered

Uri Berliner, a Senior Editor for National Public Radio's Business Desk, is the latest in a long line of people to complain that NPR is too left-leaning, and doesn't have enough Republican (a.k.a. critical of American Leftism) voices on staff.

Like many critics, Mr. Berliner accuses NPR of telling people how to think. But I still agree with Brooke Gladstone's contention from The Influencing Machine that "it's unprofitable to ignore your readers' emotions, assumptions and values."

While I understand the critique that NPR should play everything straight up the middle, and that, in hindsight, its editorial decisions shouldn't appear to have any partisan or ideological bias, at the end of the day, NPR is a business. And it has to appeal to its listeners and readers. Do I find NPR biased? Yes, I do. Not in the sense that it's actively advocating for a particular set of values, but in the stories that it chooses to tell and the guests and experts they choose to interview and consult.

In my opinion, NPR understands its target audience to be younger, less White, less straight and more Left-leaning/Democratic than the nation as a whole. So that's where their coverage lands. I don't understand why this is surprising to anyone, given that no-one wants to hand the network a giant pot of no-strings-attached cash to spend without regard to operating income. If catering to the "center" of American politics actually paid off in terms of subscriptions and/or advertising revenue, news outlets would be actively doing it, and as near as I can tell, no-one is. I consider NPR's general bent to be to the Left of where I am. I also don't pay them anything... so given the choice between catering to me, and catering to someone who writes a check every pledge drive; not a difficult decision.

And that's why I think that Brooke Gladstone offers a better understanding of what is up with NPR than Uri Berliner does. While it may be true that NPR's listener and reader numbers are down, I don't think that NPR not speaking to all of America equally is the culprit. I think it's because it doesn't go far enough to stake out a partisan position and really own it. Because people don't go to the news media to understand what their viewpoint on the world should be; they patronize those media outlets that agree with the viewpoints they already have. This is why Fox News so recently found itself in hot water; it wasn't playing the tune its audience wanted to dance to. NPR is no different. If the most vocal part of the audience is young, racially diverse, queer (or queer-adjacent/sympathetic) and both socially and economically Progressive, then that's the news that an outlet that needs that audience is going to present.

Mr. Berliner, like a number of people who want news outlets to cater to other people's priorities, believes that the news outlet makes the audience. And in certain cases, that's true. But much more often, the audience makes the news outlet. If, as former Republican Speaker of the House of Representative John Boehner (possibly paraphrasing John Maxwell) noted, "A leader without followers is simply a man taking a walk," a news outlet without an audience is simply people speaking to one another. And NPR aspires to speak to more than just itself. There's a valid point to be made that NPR has an obligation, as, well, public radio, to attempt to appeal to everyone. But valid is not the same as workable.