It looks like James O’Keefe sexied up the NPR video with editing, though it should be noted Project Veritas released the full video the same day. Still when you look at the two full hours of context footage, what the two NPR executives said doesn’t look quite as bad. It still looks bad, just not as bad.
So we’ve always been in possession of “mitigating” information, though perhaps not in possession of exculpatory information. That means, in the grand scheme, very little has changed. The executives showed poor judgment. NPR is still a biased organization. Taxpayers are still forced to subsidize them.
Indeed. NPR does what James O’Keefe did, only better.
To compare what O’Keefe did and what NPR does every day, one certainly finds differences of degree. But not so much of kind. And the overall effect of NPR’s editiorial decisions, revisions, inclusions, cuts and omissions has kept a largely affluent liberal demographic listening and happy for some time.
NPR staff have become masters of a certain type of reporting. It all sounds so innocuous — so like the SNL NPR Ladies skit without the “Schweddy Balls.” Sprinkle on a bit of erudition and you’ve got the taste of credibility. Whether they’re being selective about whom they interview, how they frame a story, or what quotes to select, NPR’s bias is well known to those willing to listen. And they’re really, really good at it.
A Somewhat Random Example
Using framing techniques Edward Bernays would have admired, NPR correspondents present information in such a way that is designed to tap certain inference systems in the reader’s mind at the exclusion of others — all without having to hit the reader over the head with actual opinion. It’s brilliant. Let me give you an example.
Consider a recent post by Joanne Silberner — NPR’s health reporter and recently fellow at the Carter Center. I chose Silberner simply because when I hear her reports, I often think to myself “what wonderfully subtle propaganda.” So I decided to look at one of her most recent pieces to see what I could find.
What Google News turned up for me was this NPR blog post from February 24th — in which she not only seems to cheer for food “safety” regulation but laments inadequate funding of said regulation by none other than House Republicans. Here’s the craftily buried lede — which, in this case, serves as as a punchline.
The Food and Drug Administration asked for $326 million for new food safety activities in its next budget. But Republican leaders have been expressing great reluctance about coming up with the dough.
Please feel free to read the whole piece carefully and judge for yourself.
What’s brilliant about the post is not just the buried lede, but what Silberner either assumes or omits. For example:
- She simply assumes uncritically that the food safety legislation in question will have the intended effect of preventing thousands from getting foodborne illness and that such prevention justifies the cost of the legislation to small business and taxpayers.
- She neglects to mention that the groups who influenced the legislation stand to gain handsomely from raising regulatory compliance costs for smaller competitors. We get no estimate about how many small producers will be forced out of business due to the legislation — whether or not they’re “safe” producers. Nor did we in a prior post.
- She neglects the possibility that House Republicans and even Democrats might justifiably be concerned with the unprecedented debt levels.
- She offers a quote from not one single House Republican that would illustrate that these members are “expressing great reluctance” to come “up with the dough” they don’t actually have. It’s one thing to say they have failed to provide the dough to date, another to say they have expressed reluctance. It may be true, but we get no evidence.
- The requested amount from FDA would cost $108,333 per life saved ($325 million divided by 3000 people who dying of foodborne illness) — but only if we are to believe the new FDA regs are likely save each of the estimated 3000 who die from foodborne illness each year. Doesn’t sound likely. Even so, how would that compare with other of life’s costs and dangers — like driving? Such could be interesting and offer perspective.
Of course, all of this is capped with a picture of eggs, which pulls the reader’s mind to the salmonella outbreak. Such allows Silberner to leverage an information cascade based on a relatively isolated incident of danger perceived as pervasive and widespread. And all of this is couched in a blog post purportedly about another article on the topic of foodborne illness and calculating the number of people affected by it.
To be fair, there are a million things that could have shaped Silberner’s article. Why did she choose what she did? Why omit other things? Why did she choose such an ominous title for the piece “”Questions Hang Over Safety Of Nation’s Food Supply”? Remember: the real punchline of Silberner’s piece is: Republicans refuse to fund food safety.
Her article seems to have elicited the response I believe Silberner was looking for. Consider this from the comments:
So Republicans are not willing to spend on more inspections of food processing plants and check-ups of food manufacturers’ safety plans but they are willing to spend billions on defense contracts that only benefit a few corporations. Their priorities are all messed up.
And this one:
The Republicans will just redefine the terms, like they are trying to do with “rape.”
Anything to fit their agenda of what to pay for and what not to pay for . . .
There are others. And while I may be accused of cherry picking comments, I never claimed I wasn’t biased. Opinion writers are paid to be biased. And although the line between opinion writing and journalism is blurry — especially for bloggers — taxpayers aren’t having to bankroll my biases.
The Myth of Objectivity
And that, of course, is my fundamental point. It is not that I expect NPR reporters to be anything other than biased. The point is that no taxpayer should have to pay for someone else’s megaphone — especially considering the population of people who listen to NPR (read: affluent). There is simply no need. NPR is subsidized reporting for wealthy elite listeners. Wait. Subsidies for the rich? Where are the progressives when you need them? Oh, they’re defending NPR from sting operations.
NPR editors claim to strive for “fairness” and objectivity. But there is no such thing. The very idea of objectivity in journalism is a chimera. Whether it’s a radio report or a newspaper column, time and space are scarce. So certain things — facts, context, related information and ‘mitigating information’ — have to be excluded. And if you’re going to exclude things, you might as well exclude things that could steer people away from your worldview. Indeed, we often do this subconsciously.
When NPR or anyone else chooses whom to quote, whose quotes to exclude and even what part of a soundbite to include, that requires a value judgment. And while NPR’s editorial value judgments are not as egregious as that of, say, Democracy Now’s, they are still biased. The difference is Democracy Now takes no federal tax dollars. And as an independent voice, we should wholeheartedly support their right freely to broadcast their curious views. In my opinion, NPR doesn’t have that right. But really, it’s not an issue of bias. It’s an issue of principle.
Max Borders is a writer living in Austin. He blogs at Ideas Matter.
