Speaker 1: There Are No Girls on the Internet, as a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Toad, and this
Speaker 1: is There Are No Girls on the Internet. This is
Speaker 1: There No Girls on the Internet, where we explore the
Speaker 1: intersection of identity, technology and social media. And today I
Speaker 1: want to talk about what's going on with NPR National
Speaker 1: Public Radio, or honestly, I guess i'ld say that I
Speaker 1: don't really want to talk about it. If anything, I
Speaker 1: kind of don't want to. This is the kind of
Speaker 1: story that I would probably be tuning out. But it's
Speaker 1: been kind of a one two punch with this NPR
Speaker 1: story that dovetails with some of the issues that we've
Speaker 1: talked a lot about here on There are No Girls
Speaker 1: on the Internet, and I also want to connect them
Speaker 1: to some larger tech lessons that folks clearly have not learned.
Speaker 1: So let's get into it. Yuri Berliner, who had been
Speaker 1: NPR's senior business editor up until recently, published a piece
Speaker 1: in Free Press basically calling out the fact that audiences
Speaker 1: have lost trust in National Public Radio or NPR as
Speaker 1: an institution, and basically, Berliner blames wokeness and DEI for
Speaker 1: this larger distrust in journalism. More broadly, in his piece,
Speaker 1: he argues that NPR used to be really balanced and
Speaker 1: fair and curious, but, as he puts it, quote in
Speaker 1: recent years, however, that has changed. Today, those who listen
Speaker 1: to NPR or read its coverage online find something different,
Speaker 1: the distilled worldview of a very small segment of the
Speaker 1: US population. If you're conservative, you will read this and say, duh,
Speaker 1: it's always been this way, but it hasn't. So Berliner
Speaker 1: paints twenty eleven as this rosy golden age of trust
Speaker 1: at NPR, you know, before things like DEI and wokeness
Speaker 1: ruined everything. He writes, an open minded spirit no longer
Speaker 1: exists within NPR, and now, predictably, we don't have an
Speaker 1: audience that reflects America. So Berlinard argues that Trump really
Speaker 1: changed a lot of NPR's culture and trust and standards.
Speaker 1: He uses things like NPR not really reporting on the
Speaker 1: Hunter Biden laptop story and not reporting more on the
Speaker 1: COVID lab leak theory. He uses these as examples that
Speaker 1: show that since the rise of Trump, NPR is basically
Speaker 1: like in the bag for the Democratic Party. He also
Speaker 1: talks about how in twenty twenty, when many of us
Speaker 1: were having like a national conversation about race, NPR's former CEO,
Speaker 1: John Lansing published a piece that prompted staffers to really
Speaker 1: do some self analysis in their own roles in things
Speaker 1: like systemic racial issues. So apparently NPR's CEO writing a
Speaker 1: piece suggesting that NPR staff you know, think critically about
Speaker 1: their own biases and the way they might impact their reporting.
Speaker 1: Rather than that being just like thoughtful guidance for anyone
Speaker 1: whose job it is to help people understand the world
Speaker 1: around them. Berliner acts like this was a terrible sign
Speaker 1: of wokeness run amok quote, and we were told that
Speaker 1: NPR itself was part of the problem. In confessional language,
Speaker 1: the CEO said that leaders of public media, starting with me,
Speaker 1: must be aware of how we ourselves have benefited from
Speaker 1: white privilege in our careers. We must understand the unconscious
Speaker 1: bias you bring to our work and interactions, and we
Speaker 1: must commit ourselves, body and soul to profound changes in
Speaker 1: ourselves and our institutions. He declared that diversity on our
Speaker 1: staff and in our audience was the overriding mission. The
Speaker 1: quote north star of the organization. Phrases like that's part
Speaker 1: of the north Star became part of meetings and more
Speaker 1: casual conversation. Now, y'all, do not really believe that the
Speaker 1: former CEO of NPR said that diversity was now the
Speaker 1: most important mission of NPR, more important than any other
Speaker 1: part of NPR. Y'all don't actually believe that, do you? You
Speaker 1: obviously don't because he didn't say it. I actually went
Speaker 1: back and read the piece that Berliner is referring to.
Speaker 1: It never even suggests anything of the sort. It is
Speaker 1: the most basic, toothless, like we care about diversity, ya
Speaker 1: diversity message that you can imagine. But Berliner says that
Speaker 1: the CEO basically said that diversity now matters more than
Speaker 1: our journalism, which he just flat out never said that,
Speaker 1: just like doesn't appear in that piece. Berlinard goes on
Speaker 1: to complain about what our frankly pretty fairly humdrum inclusion
Speaker 1: efforts that NPR enacted in twenty twenty, things like tracking
Speaker 1: the makeup of their podcast listenership and guests. Honestly, these
Speaker 1: are things that I kind of can't believe that NPR
Speaker 1: did not have in place before twenty twenty. That is
Speaker 1: how standard these practices are like even the Shoe String
Speaker 1: startup podcast that I work for do and always have
Speaker 1: done this. It is a very common thing. Berliner in
Speaker 1: his piece he makes it sound like this is like
Speaker 1: the identity police, grilling everybody about their race and ethnicity
Speaker 1: and identity, rather than just having it be something that
Speaker 1: makes sure that your guests aren't like, oops, all white
Speaker 1: men talking about different issues. Right. So NPR also got
Speaker 1: some funding to do work highlighting specific underrepresented groups through
Speaker 1: things like affinity groups for staff like Jewish NPR staffers,
Speaker 1: or women, gender expansive and transgender people in technology throughout
Speaker 1: public media. Right, And what Berliner does in his piece
Speaker 1: is basically just assume that all of this is like progressivist,
Speaker 1: all of this is like synonymous with the Democratic Party.
Speaker 1: And this is a big gripe quote. And this I
Speaker 1: believe is the most damaging development at NPR, the absence
Speaker 1: of viewpoint diversity. He says that he doesn't think there
Speaker 1: are enough Republicans working at NPR, and apparently he tried
Speaker 1: to actually get a meeting with NPR's former CEO to
Speaker 1: discuss all of this, but that meeting ever happened, which
Speaker 1: is why he is breaking NPR's rules and publishing this
Speaker 1: piece in free Press. So one quick note that I
Speaker 1: feel like I have to add for context is that
Speaker 1: he published this piece in free Press. I don't really
Speaker 1: enjoy talking about this particular subset of like soft media
Speaker 1: grifter types, because I think it quickly gets into like
Speaker 1: a who's who of who's the worst, And these people
Speaker 1: are all so boring that I just cannot stand to
Speaker 1: think about them. But basically, all you need to know
Speaker 1: about Free Press is that it is a substack media
Speaker 1: publication run by Barry Weiss, and it's one of those
Speaker 1: places where like nobody has principles or cares about free
Speaker 1: speech but us, and you know, everybody who is writing
Speaker 1: is like just asking questions. We honestly could do an
Speaker 1: entire episode on Bari Weiss, But basically, you know the type.
Speaker 1: These are not people that I would say are operating
Speaker 1: in good faith, and their entire thing is branding themselves
Speaker 1: as these brave free speech truth tellers who are the
Speaker 1: only ones who think for themselves and are being punished
Speaker 1: for it. And they continue to say that as they
Speaker 1: get these huge platforms and lots of money to demonstrate
Speaker 1: just how unlistened to they are. Again I'm being glib,
Speaker 1: but you know the type. So it is really hard
Speaker 1: for me to see Berliner publishing this piece in free
Speaker 1: press as anything other than this really calculated move to
Speaker 1: turn himself into a martyr person who is canceled for
Speaker 1: telling the truth about whoa like be real? Had you
Speaker 1: ever heard of the name Yuri Berliner before he published
Speaker 1: this piece and everybody started talking about it exactly, So
Speaker 1: the exact right wing conservative voices in media that you
Speaker 1: would expect are completely lapping this piece up. And remember,
Speaker 1: he is not sharing this piece in a vacuum. It
Speaker 1: is being used as yet another data point in the
Speaker 1: ongoing conversation about defunding NPR and sowing distrust in our
Speaker 1: public institutions in general, like Senator Ted Cruz is renewing
Speaker 1: calls to defund PR. And again, I think a reason
Speaker 1: why he published this piece was to tap into that
Speaker 1: particular ongoing conservative argument. So to me, this entire thing
Speaker 1: reads like Berliner's kind of coming out party to curry
Speaker 1: favor with a particular kind of conservative media circle. I mean,
Speaker 1: why just retire when you can do this whole thing?
Speaker 1: So Berliner was suspended from NPR for five days for
Speaker 1: publishing this piece without NPR's permission, which is pretty clearly
Speaker 1: against the rules at NPR, and then he resigned. He
Speaker 1: blasted NPR's new CEO on the way out, saying, quote,
Speaker 1: I cannot work in a newsroom where I am disparaged
Speaker 1: by a new CEO whose divisive views confirm the very
Speaker 1: problems at NPR that I cite and my free press essay.
Speaker 1: And honestly, I'm sure that he probably will get a
Speaker 1: nice little booth in recognition from all the right people.
Speaker 1: Right wing outlets are already calling him a quote whistleblower,
Speaker 1: which as the host of a podcast where we talk
Speaker 1: to real whistleblowers, women who have risked their livelihoods and
Speaker 1: their actual safety and sometimes even their actual lives to
Speaker 1: speak up about wrongdoing, to actually speak truth to power,
Speaker 1: that is so offensive to me to see this white
Speaker 1: man like white man, irked by DEI and woke, being
Speaker 1: painted as a whistleblower.
Speaker 2: Let's take a quick break.
Speaker 1: At here back. So, after his piece came out, fifty
Speaker 1: NPR staffers wrote an open letter to NPR's new CEO,
Speaker 1: Catherine Marr, who will talk about more in a moment,
Speaker 1: demanding that she issue a public rebuke of the quote
Speaker 1: factual inaccuracies and illisions in his piece. So right here
Speaker 1: is where I was going to do an entire segment
Speaker 1: kind of responding to and pointing out the various factual
Speaker 1: inaccuracies in his piece. But it just kind of doesn't
Speaker 1: even seem worth it. Like Berliner suggesting that it is
Speaker 1: DEI efforts in media that have run amok and that
Speaker 1: is the reason why media and institutional trust is suffering,
Speaker 1: is just ridiculous, and at some level it gets really
Speaker 1: exhausting and repetitive to keep pushing it back against this stuff.
Speaker 1: When I was putting together the segment, I was like, Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is just me repeating the same things I've said
Speaker 1: already about this kind of stuff, and almost doesn't seem
Speaker 1: worth it to keep pushing back against this stuff. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like, why are planes falling out of the sky
Speaker 1: black people? Why can't my kid get into Harvard black people?
Speaker 1: Why don't people trust journalism black people? So after a while,
Speaker 1: it does get a little tiring. So I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: include the bit where I really pushed back on his claims,
Speaker 1: but I'll just cut to the chase and tell you
Speaker 1: what I actually think, you know that meme tweet where
Speaker 1: it's a bird saying I feel uncomfortable when we are
Speaker 1: not about me. I think that's kind of what's going
Speaker 1: on here. I think that what Berliner is actually saying,
Speaker 1: if you read between the lions, is I liked it
Speaker 1: better when journalism was about white men like me. I
Speaker 1: think he's somebody who's been in this business a long time.
Speaker 1: He's been in this business for twenty five years. I
Speaker 1: think in that time he has seen journalism go from
Speaker 1: mostly white to fairly white, and I don't think he
Speaker 1: likes it. I think that what he's actually saying reading
Speaker 1: between the lines is we need to go back to
Speaker 1: the times when this whole thing was about white men
Speaker 1: like me. I don't want to have to compete with
Speaker 1: the talents and interests and audience of people who are
Speaker 1: not white men, and that is the problem. I honestly
Speaker 1: don't think it is really that deep, and I'm kind
Speaker 1: of surprised to see so many media outlets responding as
Speaker 1: if he like did raise some very deep existential issues
Speaker 1: and questions beyond, like why is everything no longer exclusively
Speaker 1: about me? Like the fact that as a business editor
Speaker 1: he clearly felt some kind of a way that the
Speaker 1: big boss boss at NPR, like the CEO the main guy,
Speaker 1: did not feel the need to meet with him to
Speaker 1: discuss the gripes that he was trying to get on
Speaker 1: this guy's calendar. And this guy was like, no, I'm good.
Speaker 1: That tells me a lot, like what kind of person
Speaker 1: feels entitled that they can just meet with the CEO
Speaker 1: to discuss whatever their gripe is as opposed to meeting
Speaker 1: with their direct manager or whatever. On top of Berlin
Speaker 1: are probably not liking the fact that the CEO did
Speaker 1: not feel the need to make time for his complaints.
Speaker 1: When that CEO left NPR then goes and hires a
Speaker 1: young woman to replace him, and I bet berlinerd didn't
Speaker 1: like that and saw a young woman getting hired as
Speaker 1: yet another sign of wokeness run amuck at NPR. Now,
Speaker 1: don't get me wrong, I don't want to come off
Speaker 1: like I am defending NPR here, because I do think
Speaker 1: that they have some issues that are impact in audience
Speaker 1: trust much like media and journalism, just as an institution
Speaker 1: broadly does. Media trust is down and people are feeling
Speaker 1: disillusioned with journalism as an institution. Last year, a Gallup
Speaker 1: poll found that the thirty two percent of Americans who
Speaker 1: say that they trust mass media quote a great deal
Speaker 1: or a fair amount to report the news in a full,
Speaker 1: fair and accurate way Tide Gallup's lowest historical reading, which
Speaker 1: was previously recorded in twenty sixteen. So this distrust thing
Speaker 1: is real and NPR absolutely should be grappling with it,
Speaker 1: But blaming wokeness as the culprit just does not hold water.
Speaker 1: Alicia Montgomery, a black woman who worked at NPR since
Speaker 1: before Berliner worked there. She joined in nineteen ninety seven
Speaker 1: and he joined in ninety nine, published an excellent piece
Speaker 1: in Slate, where she now works, called the Real Story
Speaker 1: behind NPR's Current Problems. The entire piece is worth a read.
Speaker 1: We will put it in the show notes, but basically
Speaker 1: she throws cold water on this idea that the problems
Speaker 1: that NPR is having with audience trust is because of
Speaker 1: black people and like too much diversity and woke. She writes,
Speaker 1: it did take a kind of courage for Uri to
Speaker 1: publicly criticize the organization, but it also took a lot
Speaker 1: of the wrong type of nerve. His argument is a
Speaker 1: demonstration of contemporary journalism at its worst, in which inconvenient
Speaker 1: facts and obvious questions were ignored and the facts that
Speaker 1: could be shaped to serve the preferred argument were inflated
Speaker 1: in importance. So I mentioned that Berliner talks about twenty
Speaker 1: eleven as a kind of golden age of NPR trust,
Speaker 1: you know, the good old days before Race and Woke
Speaker 1: and DEI were sort of runn am up. Alicia is
Speaker 1: like wrong. She points out how this nostalgic view really
Speaker 1: is revisionist and completely self serve on his part, She writes,
Speaker 1: take a step into the way back machine into twenty
Speaker 1: eleven Fury's so called golden age. That's the year when
Speaker 1: senior members of the development team fell for a scam
Speaker 1: set up by professional provocateur James O'Keefe. The aftermath took
Speaker 1: them out and toppled the then CEO and President, Vivian Schiller.
Speaker 1: It came months after the ill timed, clumsy firing of
Speaker 1: Juan Williams, which led to senior Vice president of News
Speaker 1: Ellen Weiss residing under pressure. Fury also leaped frogs over
Speaker 1: a long list of contemporary fuck ups and questionable calls
Speaker 1: that could explain the growing public distrust that concerns him.
Speaker 1: There are questions about NPR legal affairs correspondent Nina Tottenberg's
Speaker 1: personal relationship with Ruth Bader Ginsburg compromising her reporting, the
Speaker 1: departure of news chief Mike Orecis and other prominent men
Speaker 1: in the newsroom after a wave of sexual harassment charges,
Speaker 1: the exposure of systemic exploitation of NPR's temporary workforce, and
Speaker 1: those are just the public problems. So Berlinard also claims
Speaker 1: that a big part of NPR's down fall with the
Speaker 1: rise of Trump, and that NPR did not or could
Speaker 1: not fairly cover Trump because like they were in the
Speaker 1: bag for the Democratic Party. But unsurprisingly, Alicia remembers it
Speaker 1: very differently. She writes URI's account of the deliberate effort
Speaker 1: to undermine Trump up to and after his election is
Speaker 1: also bewilderingly incomplete, inaccurate, and skewed. For most of twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: many NPR journalists wore newsroom leadership that they weren't taking
Speaker 1: Trump and the possibility of him winning seriously enough, but
Speaker 1: top editors dismissed the chance of a Trump win, repeatedly
Speaker 1: declaring that Americans would be revolted by this or that
Speaker 1: outrageous thing he'd said or done. I remember one editorial
Speaker 1: meeting where a white newsroom leader said that Trump's strong
Speaker 1: poll numbers wouldn't survive his being exposed as a racist.
Speaker 1: When a journalist of color asked whether his numbers could
Speaker 1: be rising because of his racism, the comment was met
Speaker 1: with silence. In another meeting, I and a couple of
Speaker 1: other editorial leaders were encouraged to make sure that any
Speaker 1: coverage of a Trump lie was matched with a story
Speaker 1: about a lie from Hillary Clinton. Another colleague asked what
Speaker 1: to do if one candidate just lied more than the other,
Speaker 1: another silent response. And again I feel like Berliner's claims
Speaker 1: here about media, particularly NPR, like being too hard or
Speaker 1: unfair on Trump, is a historical to the point of
Speaker 1: being like a little bit gas lighting, Like when Trump won,
Speaker 1: how many interviews did we all have to watch with
Speaker 1: like economically anxious rural Trump voters that we were told
Speaker 1: that we all needed to be listening to, to the
Speaker 1: point where it almost became a bit of a media cliche, right,
Speaker 1: like big city reporter goes to a rural diner to
Speaker 1: find out what's what? Like did that not happen? Did
Speaker 1: we dream it because I remember it, Alisha writes, when
Speaker 1: I came back to work on Morning Edition, I saw
Speaker 1: no trace of the anti Trump editorial machine that URI references.
Speaker 1: On the contrary, people were at pains to find a
Speaker 1: way to cover Trump's voters and his administration fairly. We
Speaker 1: went full bore on diner guide, a trucker hat coverage,
Speaker 1: and adopted the right label to describe people who could
Speaker 1: accurately be called racists. The network haud our flexive need
Speaker 1: to stay on good terms of people in power, and
Speaker 1: journalists who had contacts within the administration were encouraged to
Speaker 1: pursue those bookings. We regularly set up interviews with Republican
Speaker 1: officials and Trump surrogate, but it was tough because NPR
Speaker 1: always loved guests who would be insightful, honest, and perhaps
Speaker 1: above all, polite. There were plenty of people who for
Speaker 1: years fit that description across the partisan divide in official Washington,
Speaker 1: but they were scarce in the Trump administration. We changed
Speaker 1: the format of live political interviews, adding what we called
Speaker 1: a level set that would be a three ish minute
Speaker 1: after a conversation with a political operative or that's an official,
Speaker 1: when a host and NPR reporter would try to fact
Speaker 1: check what had just been said. So this claim that
Speaker 1: Berliner was making that NPR was in the bag for
Speaker 1: the Democrats and they did not fairly cover Trump voters
Speaker 1: just seems wildly out of step with what somebody who
Speaker 1: worked there said happened and what we all saw happened.
Speaker 1: Like if you were a during that time, I don't
Speaker 1: think you need to tell me that a lot of
Speaker 1: media outlets were bending over backward to provide fair and
Speaker 1: balanced coverage of Trump's campaign, And I do think it's
Speaker 1: worth looking at how that decision impacted media trust. I'd
Speaker 1: be willing to bet that coverage of Trump that was
Speaker 1: trying so hard to stay neutral instead of presenting the
Speaker 1: truth about what he was actually saying and doing probably
Speaker 1: did impact audience trust and journalism. And it's not just
Speaker 1: that Berliner doesn't think that that specific kind of bias
Speaker 1: is worth talking about. It's that he's presenting a version
Speaker 1: where that bias does not even exist and then telling
Speaker 1: people that that is objective reality. More after a quick.
Speaker 2: Break, let's get right back into it.
Speaker 1: So probably what I have found to be the most
Speaker 1: part in her response is when she talks about NPR's
Speaker 1: sometimes clunky handling of race. She says, if anything that
Speaker 1: would be the real symptom of like wokeness, run them up.
Speaker 1: In one anecdote, she talks about how there was resistance
Speaker 1: to covering the violent MS thirteen gang after it had
Speaker 1: become a major talking point in Trump's anti immigrant rhetoric.
Speaker 1: But this was while the gang was like murdering people
Speaker 1: in DC, pretty close to NPR's headquarters, just miles from
Speaker 1: where many of the staffers actually lived. She writes, I
Speaker 1: think a lot of critics would consider that wokeness pussyfooting
Speaker 1: around an issue because it might offend people of color.
Speaker 1: I saw it as a low key racial bias because
Speaker 1: MS thirteen's victims were mostly poor Central American immigrants, the
Speaker 1: kind of people we didn't think our affluent white listenership
Speaker 1: would pay attention to. So, if you want to talk
Speaker 1: about times where politics or quote wokeness was actually dictating
Speaker 1: coverage in a concerning way, this sounds like it would
Speaker 1: be like a fruitful conversation to have, right, But that
Speaker 1: is very different from what Berliner is doing calling MPR
Speaker 1: out for, which is just like too much diversity. It
Speaker 1: is such a lazy easy accusation that gets us away
Speaker 1: from the issues that might actually be meaty or substantive.
Speaker 1: Another example along those lines is when we were having
Speaker 1: a national conversation about police killings, there was a sort
Speaker 1: of side question about like, oh, well, police also kill
Speaker 1: white people under shady circumstances too, what about that? And
Speaker 1: Alicia writes that it seemed like nobody at NPR really
Speaker 1: wanted to talk about that. She talks about how the
Speaker 1: team at the race focused podcast Code Switch, which is
Speaker 1: one of my favorite podcasts, was the only team with
Speaker 1: n NPR to cover a police killing of an unarmed
Speaker 1: white teenager named Zachary Hammond. She suspects the reason why
Speaker 1: none of the other units within NPR covered it is
Speaker 1: kind of political in a sense because it would have
Speaker 1: complicated this dynamic of getting to smugly think of themselves
Speaker 1: as being on the correct side of the issue. Her
Speaker 1: entire piece is worth reading, but ultimately she gets at
Speaker 1: this point that I want to highlight, she writes, and
Speaker 1: that's what the core editorial problem at NPR is, and
Speaker 1: frankly has long been an abundance of caution that often
Speaker 1: crossed the border to cowardice. NPR culture encouraged an editorial
Speaker 1: fixation on finding the exact middle point of the elite
Speaker 1: political and social thought, planting a flag there and calling
Speaker 1: it objectivity. That would more than explain the lack of
Speaker 1: follow up on Hunter Biden's laptop and the lab leak theory,
Speaker 1: going full white guilt after George Floyd's murder and shifting
Speaker 1: to indignant white impatience with racial justice now. And I
Speaker 1: think anybody who reads mainstream reporting or media knows exactly
Speaker 1: what she is referring to, right, this kind of safe,
Speaker 1: middle of the road reporting that is going out of
Speaker 1: its way to not give any whiff of bias, to
Speaker 1: the point that it's not actually useful in terms of
Speaker 1: informing an audience anymore. Like I remember, when I was
Speaker 1: working in news media, we had to walk back calling
Speaker 1: things that were objectively obviously racist racist, Like you couldn't
Speaker 1: just call something racist. We had to bend over backward
Speaker 1: to use these weird phrases that like evoked race but
Speaker 1: were not the word racist. And I remember there was
Speaker 1: a story where it was some frat and there was
Speaker 1: a video of these members of the frat on a
Speaker 1: bus where they were singing this chant about how there
Speaker 1: would never be an N word in their frat. And
Speaker 1: so we were writing up that story and I called
Speaker 1: it a racist chant, and my editor was like, no, no,
Speaker 1: we can't say it's racist, and we had to walk
Speaker 1: it back to I think the phrase that we used
Speaker 1: was like racially tinged, which like, what does that mean
Speaker 1: if somebody is on camera singing about how they'll ever
Speaker 1: be an N word in their frat. I feel comfortably
Speaker 1: comfortable calling that objectively racist, but we had to be like, ooh,
Speaker 1: it's like racially infused. Like we're not talking about chili
Speaker 1: oil here, we're talking about race. So Berliner's free press
Speaker 1: piece calling out NPR for being too woke is one
Speaker 1: piece of it. But now enter our old friend, enemy
Speaker 1: of the show, Chris Rufo of the Manhattan Institute, who
Speaker 1: openly manufactures disingenuous right wing panics using the New York Times.
Speaker 1: He's the man that brought us the critical race theory panic,
Speaker 1: the DEI panic, the Claudine Gay is a plagiarist panic,
Speaker 1: And I guess now it's the CEO of NPR is
Speaker 1: bad panic. And of course guess who is helping him
Speaker 1: do this? The New York Times. So Catherine Marr was
Speaker 1: named CEO of NPR recently. She does not have a
Speaker 1: journalism background. She was most recently the head of Wikimedia Foundation.
Speaker 1: So after Berliner's piece, old tweets of hers were resurfaced
Speaker 1: by Chris Rutho. Now keep in mind these tweets were
Speaker 1: things that she tweeted before she ever worked at NPR.
Speaker 1: She wasn't a journalist when she tweeted them. It's things
Speaker 1: like quote Donald Trump is a racist, which she tweeted
Speaker 1: in twenty eighteen. She was photographed wearing a Biden hat
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty, and she tweeted about this dream that
Speaker 1: she had where she went on a road trip with
Speaker 1: Vice President Kamala Harris and they both got nuts together
Speaker 1: as a snack. Honestly, that is really it like pretty
Speaker 1: shocking stuff, I know. So now people are coming out
Speaker 1: of the woodwork close reading every public talk, every panel
Speaker 1: that she's ever given, even in the years before her
Speaker 1: tenure at NPR, to paint her in a bad light.
Speaker 1: And this is such a familiar strategy here, to make
Speaker 1: Catherine Mahr look foolish and embarrassing and to try to
Speaker 1: make any kind of association with her look like it's
Speaker 1: toxic because she is that foolish and that embarrassing. They
Speaker 1: want people to be embarrassed to stick up for her,
Speaker 1: to make sure that none of her allies publicly come
Speaker 1: to her defense. They want NPR's leadership and board to
Speaker 1: think that she is somebody who is too risky to
Speaker 1: be associated with, just like Claudine Gay and crt Rufo
Speaker 1: is very explicit that the point here is to make
Speaker 1: her toxic and synonymous with negativity, even though she didn't
Speaker 1: do anything wrong and the articles are already pouring in
Speaker 1: helping Rufo do exactly that. Here's one headline NPR's new CEO,
Speaker 1: Catherine Marr haunted by woke anti Trump tweets as veteran
Speaker 1: editor claims bias. The New York Post even published a
Speaker 1: piece today with the headline NPR's new CEO, who was
Speaker 1: called out by whistleblower over pervasive left wing biased recently
Speaker 1: purchased a two point seven million dollar NYC townhouse. The
Speaker 1: piece talks about how she bought a three bedroom townhouse.
Speaker 1: It is almost two thousand square feet, which like, yes, okay,
Speaker 1: as someone who lives in a one bedroom shithole, that
Speaker 1: sounds like a palace, But like, how is it news
Speaker 1: that the CEO of NPR, who was formerly the CEO
Speaker 1: of Wikimedia Foundation, who was married to somebody who was
Speaker 1: formerly a lawyer at Lyft, How is it news that
Speaker 1: she has a nice house? Like It's just so ridiculous
Speaker 1: and disingenuous. In response to all this, an NPR spokesperson
Speaker 1: said that Mar was quote not working in journalism at
Speaker 1: the time and was exercising her First Amendment right to
Speaker 1: express herself like any other American citizen. NPR also said
Speaker 1: that she has upheld the network's code of ethics since
Speaker 1: she was appointed, saying since stepping into the role, she
Speaker 1: has upheld and is fully committed to NPR's code of
Speaker 1: ethics and the independence of NPR's newsroom. The CEO is
Speaker 1: not involved in editorial decisions. So listen to how The
Speaker 1: New York Times writes about how mars old tweets came
Speaker 1: to be in the news quote. Christopher Rufo, a fellow
Speaker 1: at the Conservative Manhattan Institute, called attention to many of
Speaker 1: miss Marr's posts on x and shared a response from
Speaker 1: Tesla's CEO Elon Musk, who had responded to one of
Speaker 1: miss Marr's posts that mister Rufo highlighted saying this person
Speaker 1: is a crazy racist. If NPR wants to truly be
Speaker 1: national Public Radio, it can't pander to the furthest left
Speaker 1: elements in the United States. Rufos headed an interview to
Speaker 1: do so. NPR should part ways with Catherine Marr. And
Speaker 1: now he has gone from oh, she should be fired
Speaker 1: to calling on NPR to be defunded and for the
Speaker 1: staff to have masked layoffs. So here's my question. So
Speaker 1: the NPR piece makes it sound like Christopher Rufo is
Speaker 1: just this random person that we should care what he thinks.
Speaker 1: Don't you think it might be useful for readers to
Speaker 1: know who this guy is, Like, why should this random
Speaker 1: guy from the Manhattan Institute, Why should anybody care what
Speaker 1: he thinks about this lady's old tweets? Or maybe it'd
Speaker 1: be great context for readers to have that. The New
Speaker 1: York Times has actually mentioned Christopher Rufo quite a few
Speaker 1: times during their breathless recent coverage of Clauding Gay's tenure
Speaker 1: at Harvard University, which led to their coverage, or the
Speaker 1: fact that Christopher Rufo specifically said that it would be
Speaker 1: important for him to get pick up on that story
Speaker 1: from the New York Times, specifically to launder the fact
Speaker 1: that it was an attack coming from the right wing,
Speaker 1: to make it seem like a more left wing or
Speaker 1: moderate attack. Again, I don't know this because I'm some
Speaker 1: media savvy person. I know this because I can read
Speaker 1: and Christopher Rufo says it over and over and over
Speaker 1: again in plain, unambiguous terms, And The New York Times
Speaker 1: just pretends that that is not the case, when Rufo
Speaker 1: is not even pretending. Just yesterday, he tweeted out the
Speaker 1: New York Times story about the NPR CEO Catherine Marr, saying,
Speaker 1: the New York Times is directly quoting the NPR tweets
Speaker 1: I dug up over the last twenty four hours. We
Speaker 1: are driving the narrative. If you dream about sampling nuts
Speaker 1: with Kamala Harris, we will make sure America hears about it.
Speaker 1: So he's not even pretending that he's not trying to
Speaker 1: drive this narrative. And my question is, why is the
Speaker 1: New York Times allowing this? Why is the New York
Speaker 1: Times decided that this one person gets to dictate their
Speaker 1: editorial coverage. And Neil dash put it very well on Threads.
Speaker 1: He wrote, The New York Times exuplicitly lets its editorial
Speaker 1: decisions be made by Chris Rufo, even as he admits
Speaker 1: it's an intentional, bad faith campaign. The story here is
Speaker 1: nothing to do with NPR. It's The Times not caring
Speaker 1: that it's getting gamed with what it chooses to emphasize
Speaker 1: an exercise. Find media executive faces criticism over supporting fascist
Speaker 1: causes in their coverage. You won't because they think it's
Speaker 1: news when Rufo says it, not when you are. I do.
Speaker 1: Now I absolutely agree with him for the most part.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing. I don't know if I would
Speaker 1: say that The New York Times is getting gamed here.
Speaker 1: You know, you get gamed once or twice. Maybe you
Speaker 1: got gamed, but you get gamed three, four, five times
Speaker 1: like the New York Times. Maybe you weren't getting gamed.
Speaker 1: Maybe you're teammates in the same game. I don't know.
Speaker 1: And you'll notice that so far it's been Claudie Gay,
Speaker 1: a black woman, and Catherine Marr, a white woman. Isn't
Speaker 1: it interesting that Rufo keeps choosing people who are traditionally
Speaker 1: marginalized women and black women as his targets. And you
Speaker 1: know what that reminds me of Gamergate. So here's the
Speaker 1: reason that I want to talk about this. If you
Speaker 1: listen to our series Internet Hate Machine that we did
Speaker 1: with the Cool Zone Media, you know that we talk
Speaker 1: and think a lot about gamer Gate and the online
Speaker 1: harassment campaigns against black women that predated Gamergate, and how
Speaker 1: they were really weaponized for specific political gain. It is
Speaker 1: one of my deepest angers that the powers that be
Speaker 1: evidently learned nothing from any of that, And I would
Speaker 1: argue that it is in part because the original targets
Speaker 1: were black women, so everybody was just sort of like, oh,
Speaker 1: who cares, and we missed the window to actually learn
Speaker 1: anything or take anything away from it. But this is Gamergate.
Speaker 1: This is disingenuously whipping people up into a frenzy and
Speaker 1: weaponizing that to meet some political end. It is making
Speaker 1: existence in civic and public life impossible for women and
Speaker 1: then counting on media to write about it neutrally as
Speaker 1: opposed to honestly, these are the exact same tactics. You know,
Speaker 1: Gamergate was ten years ago, and people with power and
Speaker 1: institutions have not learned a thing from it. Nobody is
Speaker 1: served by the Internet becoming a never ending barrage of
Speaker 1: Gamergate tactics, except the reactionaries and extremists who use those
Speaker 1: tactics to ensure that they and they alone get to
Speaker 1: determine who gets to be in public in civic and
Speaker 1: political life. We deserve so much better, and we deserve
Speaker 1: a media that has the balls to tell the truth
Speaker 1: about it instead of just helping them along. In twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four, you need to understand how to write about
Speaker 1: it when actors are not working in good faith. You
Speaker 1: cannot let provocateurs write the playbook. You need to be
Speaker 1: helping the public understand the landscape and the players, which
Speaker 1: I acknowledge that can be hard, can be complicated. Public
Speaker 1: radio veteran and civic tech professional in North Carolina, Melody
Speaker 1: Kramer actually has built tools to do this at a
Speaker 1: hyper local level. She writes publics, radios, libraries, institutions, governments,
Speaker 1: nonprofit websites need a strategy for when people are not
Speaker 1: acting in good faith. We've been testing out various ways
Speaker 1: to approach this at the hyperlocal civic blog I help run.
Speaker 1: One is we call people out. Two is we provide
Speaker 1: a ton of context for bad actors. Three we use humor,
Speaker 1: stickers and all sorts of in person stuff. In short,
Speaker 1: we're priming people to understand the contexts and players. Almost constantly,
Speaker 1: we aren't neutral. Neutrality gives a platform to people who
Speaker 1: don't operate in good faith, and they wep and eyes
Speaker 1: objectivity and neutrality. We make clear what our point of
Speaker 1: view is and we back it up with loads of evidence.
Speaker 1: I've been using it as my testing ground over the
Speaker 1: past two years, and it seems to be working in
Speaker 1: all the ways we measure. We're all volunteers who care
Speaker 1: a lot about North Carolina, and I just got to say, like,
Speaker 1: if I sound tired and over this, it's because I am.
Speaker 1: I am so sick of this. And like I said already,
Speaker 1: Senator Ted Cruz is renewing calls for NPR to be defunded.
Speaker 1: Senator Marsha Blackburn has already said that she's planning to
Speaker 1: propose new legislative action that would threaten to cut national
Speaker 1: public radios federal funding. We're spending all of this energy,
Speaker 1: time and oxygen on this disingenuous panic over nothing, when
Speaker 1: we could be working on any number of the real
Speaker 1: issues facing us as a country. Heck, we could be
Speaker 1: working seriously and meaningfully toward having people have more faith
Speaker 1: and trust in journalism, but we aren't doing any of
Speaker 1: that because we're too busy talking about this whipped up
Speaker 1: panic over nothing. And it just feels like for the
Speaker 1: women and the black women in particular, who went through
Speaker 1: Gamergate as targets, they just did so for nothing. If
Speaker 1: institutions have not learned by now how to respond to
Speaker 1: this kind of thing when it happened, and honestly, we
Speaker 1: should not have to be collateral damage to extremists gunning
Speaker 1: for more political influence over our civic and public institutions.
Speaker 1: If you're looking for ways to support the show, check
Speaker 1: out our merch store at tenggodi dot com slash store.
Speaker 1: Got a story about an interesting thing in tech, or
Speaker 1: just want to say hi, You can reach us at
Speaker 1: Hello at tengody dot com. You can also find transcripts
Speaker 1: for today's episode at tengody dot com. There Are No
Speaker 1: Girls on the Internet was created by me Bridget Toad.
Speaker 1: It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative edited by
Speaker 1: Joey pat Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer. Tari Harrison
Speaker 1: is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Amado is our
Speaker 1: contributing producer, I'm your host, bridget Toad. If you want
Speaker 1: to help us grow, rate and review us on Apple podcasts.
Speaker 1: Podcast from iHeartRadio check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
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