If you’re going to interview a white supremacist, do it like The Guardian did. Great video.
Headline shade
Fuck NPR. Seriously.
NPR: NPR Criticized For Interview With White Supremacist Jason Kessler
Some critics claim the Kessler interview reflected NPR’s whiteness. In this case, that’s just wrong. Noel King is biracial, Kenya Young is African-American, so is the NPR deputy managing editor who approved the interview.
I think we need to get away from this reaction of, “this media outlet is now bad because they ran stories i don’t like.”
Like saying WaPo shouldn’t get any support because they hired people you don’t like, and ignoring the fact that they are producing what is, unquestionably, the best investigative journalism of anyone today.
Any good media outlet is going to, by definition, put out stuff you don’t like. You need to be exposed to stuff you don’t like.
It doesn’t mean you need to love those pieces, you can still disagree entirely. You can even say they are bad stories. But we shouldn’t be attacking the outlets themselves on the basis of the writing some stories we feel are bad.
Says you. I still won’t read the Chicago Sun-Times because of Ebert’s one-star review of Tommy Boy!
This is a good thread from a historian about how press coverage of KKK rallies in the 1920’s helped turn a fringe movement into a nationwide powerhouse.
That isn’t my point at all. My point is that they’ve abandoned their moral grounding, and aren’t listening to their listeners. At all. After the backlash, they went with “You don’t understand what journalism is, let us explain it to you, and also, we have black friends,” and doubled down on their terrible decision to give a platform to white supremacists in the name of objective reporting. Doesn’t matter if all NPR reporters associated with the Kessler interview were POC. This sort of bothsidesism is incredibly dangerous, and NPR is using identity as a shield for a terrible series of judgement calls.
Yeah, unlike that paragon of journalism Sean Hannity that listens to his listeners!
See the problem with this mindset? Journalism via forced purity tests isn’t journalism.]
Now you can say interviewing Kessler isn’t a good idea, but to go from that to “Fuck NPR. Seriously.” is downright silly as is the talk earlier in this thread of how the Washington Post is the worst thing ever because they sometimes have Op Eds that people disagree with or are bad.
Because at this point you’re down to echo chamber people like Sean Hannity by your own words. Except, of course, your Sean Hannity is totally right unlike the actual Sean Hannity.
Yeah, the idea that they should “listen to their viewers” and use that to decide what they report on is not a good idea.
Sometimes you need to be shown stuff you don’t like.
Is this just a difference in interpreting sentiment? I read “fuck NPR” as “Man, they’re acting like assholes”, not as “this establishes them as an illegitimate news organization.”
We shouldn’t question the MSM normalization of trump, the glorification of his demon spawn or his supporters, their uncritical acceptance of GOP dogma, their willingness to peddle RMW conspiracy theories etc et al. Wouldn’t want to be trapped in a bubble, no sirree.
I don’t think you’re hearing me. Again, it’s absolutely not about “showing me stuff that I don’t like.”
I don’t think stories I don’t like is a reasonable way to summarize the reaction people are expressing here. I think they’re pointing to more than just violations of their personal taste. Don’t you agree?
Sure, you described it as:
I think that maybe on some level, you need to be shown stuff that offends your moral sensibilities. As a listener, you shouldn’t really be dictating what they show.
I realize this is especially complicated here, with Nazis being more than simply “different views”, and to be clear my original comment wasn’t directed solely at your comment. It was more about a broader sentiment I’ve seen multiple times here, with folks taking what appear to be extremely strong stances against very good journalistic outfits like NPR and WaPo. Saying that, for example, wapo doesn’t deserve money, is mind blowing to me. The world will be worse without the Washington Post.
Still, there used to be the idea that responsible media outlets would not allow themselves to be used as mouthpieces of vile viewpoints - that respectable news outlets wouldn’t devote space to serial killers explaining why their victims needed to die, or NMBLA explaining their “philosophy” of pedophilia, or Nazis explaining just exactly how inferior other races are.
There are good moral arguments for that. There are also good practical reasons. Historians have argued that simply giving the KKK way more coverage in the 1920s - even though it was negative coverage - helped increase its membership. Much like suicides, it may be that the responsible media action is to report less, not more, about extremist ideologues.
Given the completely pathetic nature of the actual march - two dozen losers in the rain - it’s hard to see NPR’s granting a platform to its loser organizer as anything but an unqualified and unearned media victory for Kessler and white supremacists. NPR went beyond their usual snarky nickname of Nice Polite Republicans into Nazis Perhaps Respectable.
Again, that’s a mischaracterization. The failure to listen to criticism comes after they run the story, and they simply hunker down and defend having done so. What they should be doing is admitting the mistake.
The NPR should have never given this guy a mic. They keep normalizing the abhorrent. Also, the other white supremacy groups will just claim this is a rejection of the one guy, not their groups and not their beliefs.
I’m guessing the distinction is like a one-night stand vs sending them to federal, pound you in the a** prison,. maybe?