Interesting discussion. After listening to this I was reading some of the coverage surrounding the NPR senior editor's criticism of NPR. It is more or less the same story we have heard across a lot of newsrooms post 2020. I think a lot of Berlingers criticism are valid. NPR does suffer from a lack view point diversity and as result its coverage is a bit too lop sided. So much of this though I think is the result right news becoming so unhinged from reality. Trying create balanced coverage while also striving for accuracy inevitably come in conflict. And it is incredibly frustrating that right media is all but immune from such internal critiques (i think shikha made that point in this conversation).
I am starting to think more and more that there is honestly little reporters themselves can do to combat this institutional distrust. I think a lot of the responsibility falls on the news consumers. The best thing reporters can do is to stay honest in their reporting and not fall into the trap of just saying what their audience want to hear. Eventually those who spouting lies will lose public trust because you can fall on your face so many times. I think media literacy is becoming more of responsibility for everyone.
Any analysis of media based on symmetrical terms like partisanship (and even populism) is bound to fail. The question isn't one of left or right "bias". The divide is between truth and lies. Republicans want to hear lies and not to have their noses rubbed in the truth, on elections, climate change, vaccination and just about any issue you care to name.
The attempts by media organizations to retain a Republican audience mean that they can never report the truth without wrapping it in euphemisms and obfuscation. The only outlet that made a serious attempt to present centre-right views on policy issues while telling the truth about Trump was the Weekly Standard, and look what happened to them,
An interesting discussion, but I was a little surprised at one omission. It talks constantly about the polarization in the media, and the bad effect on media on both sides: Matt says "there has not been a market niche for, I would say, ideologically rigorous, factual, right-of-center media content". But it does not mention the one successful newspaper on the conservative side which does fill that niche, namely The Wall Street Journal.
The WSJ is obviously more business-oriented than the average newspaper (and Matt does refer to specialist business papers like Bloomberg as occupying a sober niche in the market), but, unlike Bloomberg (or Barrons or Market Watch or whatever) it has extensive general news coverage which goes way beyond business interests - and, at least on my reading, it presents that news without any obvious ideological slant, even when it cuts against the paper's editorial line. The editorial line is hard-right, but in an old-fashioned pre-Trump manner, and it is certainly prepared to challenge the populist right when it wants to. Among its regular columnists are some Trumpians, like Holman Jenkins and Kimberley Strassel, but also old-style conservatives who regularly criticize Trump and his supporters, like Peggy Noonan and Karl Rove, and also even a handful of more liberal writers, like William Galston.
And the most important thing is that it's a successful model - it is, as I understand it, one of the few newspapers still surviving which turns a solid and consistent profit rather than needing subsidy.
I would have been interested to hear whether Matt and Shikha and Berny share this perception - and if so, to understand from them how they think that the WSJ has managed to maintain this approach in so politically polarized an environment, and whether that is replicable elsewhere in the media (could one, for example, imagine a newspaper with disproportionate sports or arts coverage but which still has a strong news division which takes a factual non-polarized line?). As it is, failing to mention it seems an obvious gap in the argument.
"I just prefer clarity..." says a commenter writing some of the most obtuse prose on the "internets."
"Being hard to understand is not the same as being intellectually advanced, despite the (understandable) proclivity to conflate them. The opposite, on many occasions, is actually true: obfuscation does not reveal a higher level of skill and intelligence but a higher level of rhetoric. Explaining the complex as clearly and concisely as possible in writing is (or should be) what is impressive. Being able to explain an idea in several ways for several audiences evinces a better understanding of that idea than writing that appeals to the smallest audience, namely, writing that seeks to impress through its inaccessibility, ambiguity, and shiny jargon. Good ideas should sit in as many minds as possible, not in ivory towers. As the French philosopher Henri Bergson stated, “There is no philosophical idea, however deep or subtle, that cannot and should not be expressed in everyone’s language.'" Hipster Intellectualism: When the Obscure Feeds the Ego, Sam Woolfe
You have now written several hundred words in the comments of this post alone, and hardly a single sentence is coherent. Please stop spamming this section with these absurd ramblings.
Interesting discussion. After listening to this I was reading some of the coverage surrounding the NPR senior editor's criticism of NPR. It is more or less the same story we have heard across a lot of newsrooms post 2020. I think a lot of Berlingers criticism are valid. NPR does suffer from a lack view point diversity and as result its coverage is a bit too lop sided. So much of this though I think is the result right news becoming so unhinged from reality. Trying create balanced coverage while also striving for accuracy inevitably come in conflict. And it is incredibly frustrating that right media is all but immune from such internal critiques (i think shikha made that point in this conversation).
I am starting to think more and more that there is honestly little reporters themselves can do to combat this institutional distrust. I think a lot of the responsibility falls on the news consumers. The best thing reporters can do is to stay honest in their reporting and not fall into the trap of just saying what their audience want to hear. Eventually those who spouting lies will lose public trust because you can fall on your face so many times. I think media literacy is becoming more of responsibility for everyone.
Just wondering why my muting/blocking function doesn't seem to work.
Any analysis of media based on symmetrical terms like partisanship (and even populism) is bound to fail. The question isn't one of left or right "bias". The divide is between truth and lies. Republicans want to hear lies and not to have their noses rubbed in the truth, on elections, climate change, vaccination and just about any issue you care to name.
The attempts by media organizations to retain a Republican audience mean that they can never report the truth without wrapping it in euphemisms and obfuscation. The only outlet that made a serious attempt to present centre-right views on policy issues while telling the truth about Trump was the Weekly Standard, and look what happened to them,
Yes. Yes it does. Check all other "populist" regimes.
An interesting discussion, but I was a little surprised at one omission. It talks constantly about the polarization in the media, and the bad effect on media on both sides: Matt says "there has not been a market niche for, I would say, ideologically rigorous, factual, right-of-center media content". But it does not mention the one successful newspaper on the conservative side which does fill that niche, namely The Wall Street Journal.
The WSJ is obviously more business-oriented than the average newspaper (and Matt does refer to specialist business papers like Bloomberg as occupying a sober niche in the market), but, unlike Bloomberg (or Barrons or Market Watch or whatever) it has extensive general news coverage which goes way beyond business interests - and, at least on my reading, it presents that news without any obvious ideological slant, even when it cuts against the paper's editorial line. The editorial line is hard-right, but in an old-fashioned pre-Trump manner, and it is certainly prepared to challenge the populist right when it wants to. Among its regular columnists are some Trumpians, like Holman Jenkins and Kimberley Strassel, but also old-style conservatives who regularly criticize Trump and his supporters, like Peggy Noonan and Karl Rove, and also even a handful of more liberal writers, like William Galston.
And the most important thing is that it's a successful model - it is, as I understand it, one of the few newspapers still surviving which turns a solid and consistent profit rather than needing subsidy.
I would have been interested to hear whether Matt and Shikha and Berny share this perception - and if so, to understand from them how they think that the WSJ has managed to maintain this approach in so politically polarized an environment, and whether that is replicable elsewhere in the media (could one, for example, imagine a newspaper with disproportionate sports or arts coverage but which still has a strong news division which takes a factual non-polarized line?). As it is, failing to mention it seems an obvious gap in the argument.
"I just prefer clarity..." says a commenter writing some of the most obtuse prose on the "internets."
"Being hard to understand is not the same as being intellectually advanced, despite the (understandable) proclivity to conflate them. The opposite, on many occasions, is actually true: obfuscation does not reveal a higher level of skill and intelligence but a higher level of rhetoric. Explaining the complex as clearly and concisely as possible in writing is (or should be) what is impressive. Being able to explain an idea in several ways for several audiences evinces a better understanding of that idea than writing that appeals to the smallest audience, namely, writing that seeks to impress through its inaccessibility, ambiguity, and shiny jargon. Good ideas should sit in as many minds as possible, not in ivory towers. As the French philosopher Henri Bergson stated, “There is no philosophical idea, however deep or subtle, that cannot and should not be expressed in everyone’s language.'" Hipster Intellectualism: When the Obscure Feeds the Ego, Sam Woolfe
You have now written several hundred words in the comments of this post alone, and hardly a single sentence is coherent. Please stop spamming this section with these absurd ramblings.