There are many, many quotable passages in that famous letter by New York Times editor Bill Keller, in which he responded to a blue-ribbon panel that produced a study document entitled “Preserving Our Readers’ Trust.”
But here is the section that GetReligion readers will, I imagine, recall most vividly:
… (Diversifying) the range of viewpoints reported — and understood — in our pages is not mainly a matter of hiring a more diverse work force. It calls for a concerted effort by all of us to stretch beyond our predominantly urban, culturally liberal orientation, to cover the full range of our national conversation. …
I also endorse the committee’s recommendation that we cover religion more extensively, but I think the key to that is not to add more reporters who will write about religion as a beat. I think the key is to be more alert to the role religion plays in many stories we cover, stories of politics and policy, national and local, stories of social trends and family life, stories of how we live. This is important to us not because we want to appease believers or pander to conservatives, but because good journalism entails understanding more than just the neighborhood you grew up in.
Amen. Preach it.
Here’s why I bring this up again. If you were to list national-level news organizations — other than the Times — that provoke firestorms of criticism as well as almost reverent statements of praise, you would have to put National Public Radio, and the wider world of public radio in general, at the very top. And we had a lively discussion at this blog recently about bias in the wider NPR universe after an especially nasty skit about Catholicism and Mike Huckabee aired on the Fair Game with Faith Salie program from Public Radio International.
Some readers thought that, by airing any criticism of NPR & Co., I had joined the chorus of ultra-religious wackos who love to bash the network. Of course, my post had included statements from moi like the following:
Personally, I think that NPR does some of the best religion-news coverage that is being done today — period.
And:
Seriously, it’s hard to question NPR’s commitment to excellence.
Thus, some readers were convinced that I had gone too far in defending both NPR and some of the other organizations that cooperate with it in the whole web of public-radio affiliates and program providers.
None of these letters surprised me all that much.
But then there was this letter, from a person safely outside the Beltway, but in a public-radio newsroom. Needless to say, I cannot use this person’s name, but I have corresponded with him or her enough to know that this person is for real.
So here is a slightly edited version of this letter — I have removed some passages containing names — which opens with another pro-NPR quote from my earlier post:
“It’s way too simplistic to say that NPR people are all liberals and who are out to mock people like Mike Huckabee and the people who are voting for him.”
Speaking as somebody who’s been a public-radio producer for decades, it’s actually NOT too simplistic to say this. NPR is easily the most monolithically liberal institution I know of in the media. Unless they’ve hired somebody recently I don’t know about, they have zero conservatives or religious traditionalists. …
They talk a good game about all views being represented, but the fact is that NPR really has no room for any worldview except that of liberals. To say that they don’t understand believers is a huge understatement. And they have no interest in changing.
Not that they’re bad across the board on religion. … But I must stipulate that this by itself is not necessarily a sign of balance. NPR attracts a certain percentage of listeners who will fire off a scorching letter about any religion reporting that doesn’t pass the Hitchins or Dennett test of doctrinal purity. …
They do OK with “non-dogmatic” religion. If it doesn’t make them feel as if they’ve done the things they should not have done, or left undone the things they should have done, and there is no good in them — it’ll probably get a pass. Consequently, Episcopalians and Unitarians and other tame Christians whose creed is the Washington Post Style section ring no alarm bells. If your religion strikes an NPR reporter as a harmless idiosyncratic hobby along the lines of doing macrame or collecting tin-can labels, you’re safe. It’s the serious Christians who make their hackles rise.
Even then, certain varieties of dogmatic religion are OK, as long as they’re not perceived to represent a threat to the latte lifestyle. A Manichee in Macon, Georgia would be “colorful.” A Baptist in Macon by contrast often seems to strike NPR as the kind of person who might be making fertilizer bombs in his basement.
I have wondered for a long time what might make NPR wake up to what’s going on with the religious lives of most American Christians. I have concluded that nothing will make them change except the threat of irrelevance. The Internet has dead-tree newspapers quaking in fear. This and other new technologies may well smack NPR with the baseball bat of reality at some point in the future. But for now, they believe they know it all. And when you know it all, what can you learn from a Baptist in Macon? Or a Catholic in Baton Rouge?
In my original post, I had noted that many GetReligion readers seem to believe that “the whole NPR universe is somehow (a) anti-religion, (b) anti-traditional forms of religion, (c) anti-evangelicals or (d) some combination of the above.” This journalist falls into the (b) camp, it seems to me.
Again, I think that this position is too simplistic, applied to such a large news operation.
Still, I wanted to share the letter. Why? Because there is an issue at the heart of it that was also raised by Keller in response to the Times credibility study. It’s an issue that we have discussed dozens of times here at this weblog.
The big question: What should mainstream newsrooms do to add intellectual and cultural diversity?
Conservatives can complain and complain, but do they really want to see some kind of affirmative action program for journalists who hold ancient, traditional, beliefs (Jewish, Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, Muslim, you name it) when it comes to matters of doctrine and moral theology? Does anyone really think that is what editors should do?
I should mention, at this point, that conservative educational institutions have — for several decades — hardly set the woods on fire when it comes to preparing young journalists who are ready to work in these kinds of newsrooms, as opposed to the “safer” arena of religious magazines and denominational wire services.
In other words, we need more traditional believers who love journalism and fewer who act as if they hate journalism. That’s the flip side of the coin, the yin to the yang expressed in the painful letter that is at the heart of this post.
Let me end with a warning. Do not click “comment” if your intent is merely to bash the wider world of NPR or to bash the people who tend to criticize all things public radio. Click “comment” if you want to discuss the diversity challenge faced by the leaders of major newsrooms, such as the Times or NPR. I will try to spike all comments that offer more heat than light. So keep it clean, out there.
UPDATE: In addition to the comments building up on our site, Rod “friend of this blog” Dreher has written a lengthy post at his Crunchy Cons blog offering his take on this topic. Read it all.
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Comments (25) |
January 24, 2008, at 2:47 pm
I believe in journalism, mostly of the liberal sort. Why? Because I feel there is a better chance of finding balance — of hearing both sides of a story, fairly toldd. Yes, liberal journalists like Linda G of NYT can become unbalanced to the point where she should be reassigned to the editorial page, and not even know her condition. But the problem I have with conservative journalists is that I often feel like I’m being “sold” a dogma.
No, I don’t want to visit your church (your belief system on ANY topic); but I would be interested in knowing something of your theology (what makes your position on any topic compelling). If you can’t articulate that, it’s a conversation stopper.
I’ve said here before, that Jesus was a liberal. Think about it. He wasn’t a Temple guy, he was an outsider. He presented things very differently than did the religion scholars. He had a very, very different way with words than did the scribes and pharisees, who were always quoting and quibbling. Jesus was original. He was a liberal (ie: he was free to tell it freshly). Of course, he was a conservative, too, in that he said that he hadn’t come to destroy Torah, but to fulfill it. That takes real balance. That takes a liberal mindset.
~eric.
January 24, 2008, at 2:57 pm
Well, I’ll try. I think NPR should simply stop trying to tackle subjects about which they are utterly ignorant. That alone would require them to make a few calls to see how utter the ignorance is. Whether it’s some scientific discipline or another or any religious issue. I’ll give them credit for one sad interview a few years ago. Here is Ray Suarez *trying* to interview then Archbishop Spyridon of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese in the US in June of 1998.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1010501
Sigh. More like Suarez interviewing a bag of hammers. He did the best he could with what he had. There was an Orthodox layman as a research librarian at NPR, and I have a hunch he gave good suggestions to Suarez. The guest was simply not up to the topic. Usually the effort isn’t so great.
I certainly don’t look to the media for religious news. All they want to know from the Pope, for example, is 1) can priests marry? 2) can women be ordained? 3) can people have sex outside marriage? 4) abortion/birth control OK yet? 5) homosexuality OK? If a Catholic spokesman came to a media event with a card that simply read “Questions 1-5 : NO”, it’d save the religious beat folks alot of time.
January 24, 2008, at 2:58 pm
Is it OK to click “comment†if my intent is to agree with everything you’ve written?
January 24, 2008, at 3:07 pm
Darrell:
Please, just don’t say “megadittos” or something like that. Heaven forbid.
So you, too, are a critical admirer of the NPR world?
January 24, 2008, at 3:10 pm
What should mainstream newsrooms do to add intellectual and cultural diversity?
That, obviously, is the big question. Newsrooms need more diversity, and not just people from different ethnic groups, but people who grew up poor, people who served in the military, people with different religious perspectives, etc.
But as you note, some kind of ideological affirmative action program is unlikely to find much favor. A traditional Catholic who goes to Mass every Sunday and on holy days of obligation is not going to be much use at NPR if she knows nothing about radio journalism.
A partial solution may be for mainstream newsrooms to look for those folks who are already within their ranks. I don’t know if this NPR staffer’s impressions hold true for the organization, but in the large media companies I’ve worked for, the staffs have included people from a wide range of backgrounds. But like tends to promote like, so the people calling the shots may as well have all gone to grammar school together.
My suspicion is that there are already journalists from different backgrounds and perspectives working in the mainstream media, but they aren’t as prominent or as high up in their respective organizations yet.
January 24, 2008, at 3:14 pm
There are models for attempting to increase diversity in the newsroom. Minority journalism groups have been created and employers use those groups as a way of meeting lots of diverse candidates. These groups, and their members, have put pressure on employers to expand the pool of candidates they consider when filling jobs. These groups also create student projects to begin mentoring young journalists.
The challenge for “religious” journalists or conservative journalists is that these approaches often run counter to their ideological perspectives on diversity. Can you on one hand complain about PC and “quotas” while on the other hand insist that employers be more diverse and hire “religious” or conservative journalists? What will that sound like?
As minority journalists will tell you, it’s not easy diversifying any workplace and its not easy to raise concerns about how groups and issues are covered. If you talk to African American, Hispanic, Asian, women or gay journalists, they will give you a laundry list of concerns they have about how the news is covered regarding their communities and how they still have not broken through management ceilings.
January 24, 2008, at 3:37 pm
What the media should do is hire more conservative journalists.
What conservatives should do is go to “J” school.
January 24, 2008, at 3:49 pm
Looking at the http://www.npr.org/templates/topics/topic.php?topicId=1016 NPR religion web pageI see a problem - there’s lots of coverage of Catholicism, some for Islam/Hindu stories but there is a gap which will be apparent to all here. I note that the two topics much beloved by the bloggers here, the Episcopal dust-up and sports-oriented religion stories are totally missing.
It’s worthwhile to keep in mind that “public” broadcasting includes both NPR and PBS. The PBS umbrella includes a religion section of the News Hour web site as well as the Religion and Ethics Newsweekly show.
I’m not sure to what extent we should treat NPR as a single entity versus part of the PBS universe.
January 24, 2008, at 4:16 pm
Helpful hint for any curious cats. I keep a Live Bookmark to NPR’s RSS feed of stories by Barbara Bradley Hagerty. I don’t know of many reporters who get the job done better.
http://www.npr.org/rss/rss.php?id=2100608
She is a person of Christian faith. And more to the point, she is a great journalist and covers a wide assortment of religion stories exceptionally well.
January 24, 2008, at 4:17 pm
I’ve always thought that radio is a sublime medium for what NPR does best- those audio essays that paint soundscapes for the listener, evoking in a poetic way whatever the subject of the piece is. They interview people, but juxtapose the voices with music and ambient sound.. It’s utterly entrancing. Most of the major Public Radio shows do this brilliantly: Morning Edition, This American Life, Weekend Edition, all of them.
I’ve always (ever since I was in high school twenty years ago) thought that Christian Radio could do the same sort of work. But the evangelical radio stations rarely (if ever) do. I’m a Catholic, and I’ve always thought (somewhat snobbishly, perhaps) that if the Catholic or other Apostolic churches ever got their hindquarters out of their heads, that they could do something really compelling in the aesthetic and intellectual way NPR does.
Imagine: covering the liturgical wars. A good producer and reporter goes records in an Orthodox church, interviews the priest, deacons and parishoners on what is happening there, what they think about it. They do the same in traditionalist Catholic church, a more mainstream Catholic parish, a more “liberal” one. Then they go to a variety of Anglican/Episcopal churches, other mainline (Lutheran, Methodist, etc.) congregations, and then contrast them all with various evangelical and Pentecostal services.
All with interviews and contrasting commentary from experts and participants.
It would be sublime journalism. I mean, I am immersed in this subject up to my eyeballs, and I know I would learn a lot from reporting like that.
NPR sometimes does apply its virtuosity to religious topics, and I always love it when they do. But like your anonymous NPR producer says, they rarely seem to puncture into the realm of religion as it is seen by the believer. They rarely seem to try to consider it as the faithful do.
Instead they hover at an Olympian height, rather than examine it on the (admittedly often myopic and muddy) level of a believer in the “trenches.”
They may claim this is due to their neutrality, but I think it is because their secular presuppositions keep them from really immersing in the milieu they claim to be explaining. This tragically impoverishes their journalism, I think.
January 24, 2008, at 5:14 pm
I am comfortable with NPR, because they are a known quantity. I disagree with them on politics, I realize they hold in [usually] polite contempt people who do not agree with them, and I do not expect them to know anything about religious concerns. I read the Wall Street Journal, which can be a schizophrenic experience, because the news reporters are far to the left of the editorial page, but I do not expect much, including accuracy, from any news organization, regardless of their political basis, but it is good to know where they are coming from. I expect the newspaper to get it right about as often as the weather forecaster.
January 24, 2008, at 7:46 pm
I can kind of see where Jack O’Neill (SG1?) is going in his comments, though it seems odd that this should be true.
Every time I listen to NPR, especially on religion but also on politics, I really am convinced that these are smart people who know how to report news and respect them on that level. They are also easy to listen to on an aesthetic level and the production values are excellent.
But while they’ve got the mechanics of a story down, they usually fail to bring enough, and the proper, context, and a far-left tilt warps the subject to the point of absurdity, and ruins what otherwise might be both entertaining AND enlightening had some BALANCE been married to their great style with which their stories are presented.
Do they hate religion? No, they don’t. As hinted by Terry/tmatt, and as discussed here before, they actually love to cover “odd” religion stories, and revel in the obscure, the “unique” and virtually worship The Different. As in our discussion of the coverage of Christmas by the Dallas paper, covering “dog bites man” isn’t as exciting or sexy as “man worships Dog.” (or as someone wryly wrote once, “Dyslexic man worships Dog.”)
I have less understanding for those who scoff at the idea of a diversity of opinions in the newsroom. I’m amazed at those who say it’s enough to have a white, black, yellow and rainbow newsroom that is 100% Left-leaning on all social, political and religion issues, and think that they have successfully accomplished the hard task of “diversity.” That is a mockery of diversity, because it breeds Groupthink.
And before someone “goes there,” no, I don’t think that the same applies to the newsroom of the Christian Broadcasting Network or other private groups that, frankly, make no bones about their bias, are targeted to one demographic, and are not “public” - certainly in the same sense as publicly funded TV or publicly funded radio. They, even more so than other news outlets, have the most to answer for when it comes to outright bias and slanted news stories, and we have the right (literally, as taxpayers) to demand better.
January 24, 2008, at 8:50 pm
when asking how to get more conservatives into media newsrooms, you have to ask the big question. The vast majority of media business people (the folks who run the business end; owners, ceos, execs, etc) are politically and socially conservative and religiously mainliners. So why do they mostly hire politically and socially liberal reporters? Because the bottom line is making a profit, they hire people who write what sells because the greater the readership/listenership the more they can charge for ads. And that, not selling papers, is where the money is. It’s that simple: they hire the people who bring in the bucks. I speak as one who’s been in the business for some time, all with small daily newspapers (with circulations from 3,000 to 50,000) and all the owners and publishers I’ve worked for have been, without exception, “conservative” but nearly all the reporters they’ve hired (and I’ve worked with) have been “liberal.”
Also most reporters I’ve worked with have tried their best to simply “report,” to keep their personal opinons out of it, and most do.
As Terry says, hardly any “conservatives” seem to want to be reporters. I have a theory about why: most reporters (including most J-school grads) start at the bottom and work their way up. That’s how you learn the craft and learn if you want to stay in it. And believe me, the bottom pays very little. If you’re a college graduate, you can earn more at your first job than reporters at theirs, which, in my opinion, is another reason you won’t find many conservatives in the nation’s newsroom - but you will many in the newspaper executive suites and boardrooms.
By the way, after being an newspaper ad salesman, reporter and photographer, I now write an op/ed page column where I’m paid to express my political/social/religious beliefs - like I’m doing here. Peace
January 24, 2008, at 9:55 pm
Is it useful to compare the newsroom of a publicly traded company with that of an organization that is at least partially funded by the federal government? Aren’t the goals and market dynamics of the two organizations so different as to render such a comparison meaningless?
Like it or not, the primary goal of a publicly traded company is increasing shareholder wealth. You can talk about diversity in the newsroom or any other pet subject all you want, but the bottom line is that a company that thumbs its nose at a very large number of prospective customers is one that is not going to fare well in the long run. A federal government institution has a lot more staying power in this area.
January 24, 2008, at 10:20 pm
tmatt, I never thought of it in those terms, but yes, I guess I am a critical admirer of NPR. I still have my critical filters on when I listen to public radio (which is pretty much every day), but not the full shields I use when watching or listening to Fox.
So I shouldn’t go forward with my plans to start a Facebook group called “megadittos for tmatt”?
January 25, 2008, at 4:12 am
Eric — I don’t know why you think liberal bias is better than conservative bias. Sometimes the Fox attempts to avoid MSM jargon actually produces a rare TV example of “Fair and Balanced” coverage. And some of the Weekly Standard stuff — just like Washington Monthly in its more iconoclastic period — can actually give you a complete picture you get nowhere else.
As for tmatt’s question, I think it’s a pretty easy answer. If you’re pro-life, would you work an abortion clinic? (If you’re pro-abortion, would you work in the Vatican?) Yes it might be good for the cause, but in the long run it would be wearying to be the lonely (or token) voice for a particular point of view that no one else understands. What kind of friendships, empathy or support would you get?
If the media are infested with leftists, why not do something constructive like make some money? Or save souls? NPR is a shoestring operation and newspapers are going out of business, so it’s not like it’s a great career move.
(From a former journalist who went into business.)
January 25, 2008, at 4:57 am
Just echoing what’s already been said really, but it’s quite plausible that many journalists will be a bit left-liberal. Such people are probably more likely to be idealists who want to question or criticise the rich and the powerful (ie governments, corporations and churches).
January 25, 2008, at 4:58 am
Argh sorry double post, I meant to add that the left-liberal-types (who are less likely to be into organised religion) are probably more likely to be the creatively-inclined sorts that want to go into the media generally.
January 25, 2008, at 10:32 am
I think the true idealists are not those who throw up their hands and say “oh, well, the media must always be leftist.” The true idealists are those who fight for, and demand, balanced journalism, regardless of whether it’s for-profit or government-funded media.
January 25, 2008, at 1:00 pm
Interesting that last night in Oklahoma PBS was airing a show teaching women to pole-dance.
Just throwing it out there…
January 25, 2008, at 4:02 pm
I’m with Jack (#11); my primary sources of news are the local paper, the Wall Street Journal, and NPR.
Yes, it would be good if more conservative and Christian youngsters would go through the Schools of Journalism. However, they are intending to marry and raise a family, and cannot afford to take a low-paying job where rising through the ranks would require currying favor from the leftists that run the newsrooms. Also, would any unapologetic Christian conservative at a State U. College of Journalism get the referrals or recommendations or recognition from the faculty that would be needed to get a good start in Journalism?
January 25, 2008, at 8:03 pm
Though I know neither whether this is a dead horse or an unwelcome subject in these circles, I am going to ask the question anyway. Does not our educational system foster this predominantly liberal slant in most professional environments?
January 26, 2008, at 12:31 am
NPR has an excellent program called “Speaking of Faith,” which covers not only every kind of religion but different viewpoints within particular religions. It also covers beliefs that are not technically religious. If your NPR station doesn’t carry it, go to npr.org and download the podcast or listen online.
January 26, 2008, at 12:02 pm
Jared, I can’t cite the references, so GetReligion readers or a Google search will have to be your way to find them, but I have seen credible research that demonstrated liberal and secular biases at universities. The most impressive recent work noted that the more elite or expensive the university, the more liberal, and that community colleges or affordable state universities were neutral/balanced. I saw earlier work that noted which college faculties were more secular (biology, journalism, literature, etc.) and which had more religious adherents (math, engineering, business, etc.).
January 26, 2008, at 9:51 pm
If we’re going to take seriously the criticism made by Rod Dreher in the linked article, we should let NPR be snarky about religion — aside from the “tame Christianity” and the Reform Judaism that does not bother them.
After all, it would make for more interesting listening.