Unfortunately NPR along with a lot of MSM are government propaganda machines. It's not just that they fail to produce honest reporting, it's that they skew it in order to support a certain narrative. Covid is obviously the most extreme example of this and it's dangerous for the public. I too used to love NPR and now I wouldn't listen to anything it spouts. sabrinalabow.substack.com
I'm curious as to what "journalism" students are even being taught at this time. In our own local paper, I find it increasingly difficult to follow the basic stories they print. Very convoluted, poor grammar, difficult to understand pieces. I often have to read a piece 3-4 times to fully comprehend the reporting.
Then there is the almost universal urge to present a point of view. There is no "curiosity" - no questioning. One viewpoint is presented as fact. As pointed out here. And it spans the gamut of medicine to politics and everything in between. Maybe the world is a simpler, less scary place if you don't have to question things.
ADHD has always in my view just been a cluster of symptoms with a label but no one aetiology. It is obvious that culture, social conditions, and context give rise to various unhealthy states through TV, bad food, other conditions and a hyper busy life with less grounding than ever. What child, especially boys, wouldn't express some symptoms under those conditions.
I used to listen to NPR all the time. 20+ years 6 am to 9pm most weekdays. As their reporting became one sided commentary I left and every once in awhile went back to see it if had changed - it had ! It got worse. The propaganda in the 2016 election was just more than I could take. I'm not a Trump fan boy but I can also smell propaganda and NPR was full tilt at that point.
Sadly NPR is not the only "news" organization that has these brain dead types reporting. from ocal to other national services its propaganda or human interest stories pulling at your heart strings. Their is ZERO intellect present in any newsroom. They are all now government mouthpieces. Not once during covid did any of these reporters do even simple math, what ever the propagandist MD or government propagandist stated like bubble headed bleach blondes they waged their heads up and down in agreement. It is not too much to ask for them to a least fake being intellectual and ask so - tell me since covid is 0.1 microns and that mask IF properly worn stops 1 micron particles how does the mask work? Not once after months of the spike protein being pushed as the dangerous part of covid did any of these intellectually challenged people question a jab that turns your body into a spike protein factory and how come natural spike bad but pharma's spike factory bad?
It ALL falls on journalism school and schools in general. Schools in general do not promote critical thought, if you step outside the corral they have built you will be smacked down like a pesky fly and your grades will suffer. Journalism schools reinforce this with a great big dollop of pull at the heart strings when reporting.
Great Britain does have something right. They call the talking heads on tv presenters - and that is exactly what they are here - presenters- they present the government, medical community or pharmas lies as facts. New at this point has reached the level of government in the trust department - if they say it its a lie.
Furthermore, NPR anchors now mostly interview other reporters and their own correspondents (as you noticed in your second example), not the people who are involved with the actual science, law, etc. of the story.
For another perspective on how far NPR has fallen in its standards and quality, there are several recent pieces at The Free Press. Including some juicy insider/whistleblower stuff. That the current reporters are not asking the right questions is of no surprise.
Most journalism has always been and will forever be a superficial and unreliable source of information. Many people have noted that media accounts of a happening or event of which they have personal knowledge usually get the facts wrong and often misrepresent the entire thrust of the story. But they then turn to the next page and accept as true some story about which they have no direct knowledge. I have never listened to NPR and am unaware of how they are funded but, judging from what I've heard from others, it sounds like they push the typical pro-government agenda. So I expect that they would stick to the establishment line on most, if not all, issues. Everyone should be skeptical of anything they read or hear from the major media sources. Seek out counter-arguments from alternative media sources on current events and their historical context. Three sources I find useful in this regard are CorbettReport.com, LewRockwell.com, and Antiwar.com.
Wow! Thank you, Ernest!! Corbett Report looks excellent. Adding immediately to my reliable, independent news sources. Antiwar i've checked out briefly before. Yes! Lew Rockwell is totally new. Not as enthused on first scan... however, i'll explore and see. Muchas gracias!
You are very welcome. You won't always agree with everything you read on those sites---neither do I---but they do present a lot of news and opinion that you will never get from the mainstream media.
right! not expecting to agree... more like wanting to trust them as being authentic... true to their principles, etc.
today... i learned something from Glenn Greenwald. i definitely don't always agree with him. i do trust him.
here's the gist of what he said on Friday's episode of System Update (on Rumble.com):
i never call it MSM anymore... since more people are online these days, it's NOT main stream anymore... and it's not really media so much as propaganda.
instead, i call it 'corporate press' he said. my hubs immediately told me he does the same. somehow, i'd missed that till today.
thanks to you and to Glenn for today's lessons! :D
I have spent a majority of my life as a NPR consumer (willing or not, due to circumstances). NPR has always done these quip articles. Pop science is pop science, and it seems that won't ever change. Has NPR gotten worse? Yes, demonstrably. But actually I don't think these are good examples of that, though I would say the worsening of the contexts makes pushes these articles much further out toward other politicized science media outlets, that are actually even worse, like Scientific American.
Dr. Cifu—question unrelated to churnalism. But I’m reading this post over a post-MOHS procedure bandage—-I had a basal cell carcinoma removed. Given the zillions of dollars going to derma procedures to remove things on our skin, are there any studies showing deaths from skin cancer going down as a result??
lost my brother to melanoma... tho IMHO it was really the ridiculous 'treatment' he received from some of the most highly regarded medical institutions.
Decades ago, I was quite fond of NPR. The evident liberal bias was tolerable, and the reporters tried to present some degree of balance. Over the last decade or so, it has become a superficial mouthpiece of wokism in its most detestable form.
The ONLY reason to listen is to get a glimpse into the irrationality and malevolence of the regressive left.
Yes, I'm one of those "right wing wackadoodles" that will be voting for Trump (even though I will have to hold my nose and clench my teeth to do it), I too was a listener to NPR for many many years from the drive to high school in the car with my dad to waking up to my clock radio and hearing the news of the 9-11 tragedy. For awhile I would try to edit the stories in my mind by discarding the adverbs and adjectives that biased the stories but that no longer works. The stories now seem to be click bait and finding the most absurd and borderline factual person or topic to report on, as in the topics Dr. Cifu mentioned in his article. I still push the "public radio station" button to hear what narrative NPR is pushing but find that my tolerance for their gibberish has diminished to the point where I keep my finger on the button. And don't get me started on public radio having government funding...
"For awhile I would try to edit the stories in my mind by discarding the adverbs and adjectives that biased the stories but that no longer works."
Accurate observation, Goldilox, that redacting the modifiers can no longer compensate for the ideological bias.
NPR crossed the line between misinformation and disinformation, many years ago.
Ultimately, it's not the slant that's objectionable, it's the complete lack of honesty, the active intent to say anything that will further their self-interested agenda, without regard for verified fact.
Did you hear that Fauci came out and said that Covid vaccines are dangerous and need to be stopped before they do even more harm?
Ok, that didn’t happen, but wouldn’t it make a great news story? Something very similar did happen in ADHD medicine, the Fauci of ADHD dramatically denounced his own life’s work before his death…. Yet the media totally ignored it. Perhaps the fact that every second advertisement is from a pharma company makes them hesitant to confront tough stories?
Anyway, if you’re interested in the ADHD over diagnosis story, a former ny times reporter (not Berenson! Schwarz) wrote a great book about it, ADHD Nation. Here is a very brief glimpse from my place:
Thanks for those articles you referenced. My practice was limited to adults but I advised my patients with children being medicated for ADHD to find another pediatrician.
They are paid not to, its been proven Big Pharma spends a lot of money are you going to bit the hand that feeds you 99.9% of people won't they have family and a life and its's only just one little story
I too reduced my addiction to NPR within the last few years, mainly because of its unhelpful Covid coverage. Bear in mind that the BBC, which we can hear late at night, was just as bad. I remember a BBC interview with someone suggesting that “women should learn to urinate standing,” quite early in the pandemic.
Thus, it was with great pleasure that I listened to an On Point report earlier this week on NPR, finally admitting that well-qualified scientists didn’t all agree about our pandemic response, and that their views were stifled by those in power. Many thanks to Jay Bhattacharya and Tracy Beth Hoeg for speaking, and even Ashish K. Jha for admitting he had some reservations. A long delayed step in the right direction.
I agree with Jennifer that churnalism has always been around (remember "yellow journalism?") but is on steroids now in the digital era, with even more perverse economic incentives. (For anybody who wants to know the history of this, see link #1). For some suggestions of what can be done to improve the situation, see link #2. As it pertains to improving medical journalism, support the Lisa Schwartz Foundation for Truth in Medicine and affiliated Medicine in the Media, and spread the word to health journalists that they can attend a FREE excellent workshop in August! (link #3)
Unfortunately NPR along with a lot of MSM are government propaganda machines. It's not just that they fail to produce honest reporting, it's that they skew it in order to support a certain narrative. Covid is obviously the most extreme example of this and it's dangerous for the public. I too used to love NPR and now I wouldn't listen to anything it spouts. sabrinalabow.substack.com
YES!!! Same for me.
I'm curious as to what "journalism" students are even being taught at this time. In our own local paper, I find it increasingly difficult to follow the basic stories they print. Very convoluted, poor grammar, difficult to understand pieces. I often have to read a piece 3-4 times to fully comprehend the reporting.
Then there is the almost universal urge to present a point of view. There is no "curiosity" - no questioning. One viewpoint is presented as fact. As pointed out here. And it spans the gamut of medicine to politics and everything in between. Maybe the world is a simpler, less scary place if you don't have to question things.
ADHD has always in my view just been a cluster of symptoms with a label but no one aetiology. It is obvious that culture, social conditions, and context give rise to various unhealthy states through TV, bad food, other conditions and a hyper busy life with less grounding than ever. What child, especially boys, wouldn't express some symptoms under those conditions.
I used to listen to NPR all the time. 20+ years 6 am to 9pm most weekdays. As their reporting became one sided commentary I left and every once in awhile went back to see it if had changed - it had ! It got worse. The propaganda in the 2016 election was just more than I could take. I'm not a Trump fan boy but I can also smell propaganda and NPR was full tilt at that point.
Sadly NPR is not the only "news" organization that has these brain dead types reporting. from ocal to other national services its propaganda or human interest stories pulling at your heart strings. Their is ZERO intellect present in any newsroom. They are all now government mouthpieces. Not once during covid did any of these reporters do even simple math, what ever the propagandist MD or government propagandist stated like bubble headed bleach blondes they waged their heads up and down in agreement. It is not too much to ask for them to a least fake being intellectual and ask so - tell me since covid is 0.1 microns and that mask IF properly worn stops 1 micron particles how does the mask work? Not once after months of the spike protein being pushed as the dangerous part of covid did any of these intellectually challenged people question a jab that turns your body into a spike protein factory and how come natural spike bad but pharma's spike factory bad?
It ALL falls on journalism school and schools in general. Schools in general do not promote critical thought, if you step outside the corral they have built you will be smacked down like a pesky fly and your grades will suffer. Journalism schools reinforce this with a great big dollop of pull at the heart strings when reporting.
Great Britain does have something right. They call the talking heads on tv presenters - and that is exactly what they are here - presenters- they present the government, medical community or pharmas lies as facts. New at this point has reached the level of government in the trust department - if they say it its a lie.
Furthermore, NPR anchors now mostly interview other reporters and their own correspondents (as you noticed in your second example), not the people who are involved with the actual science, law, etc. of the story.
I can see that that would be useful in maintaining your own echo chamber - you generally only want to talk to people who think just like you do.
So true.
For another perspective on how far NPR has fallen in its standards and quality, there are several recent pieces at The Free Press. Including some juicy insider/whistleblower stuff. That the current reporters are not asking the right questions is of no surprise.
Most journalism has always been and will forever be a superficial and unreliable source of information. Many people have noted that media accounts of a happening or event of which they have personal knowledge usually get the facts wrong and often misrepresent the entire thrust of the story. But they then turn to the next page and accept as true some story about which they have no direct knowledge. I have never listened to NPR and am unaware of how they are funded but, judging from what I've heard from others, it sounds like they push the typical pro-government agenda. So I expect that they would stick to the establishment line on most, if not all, issues. Everyone should be skeptical of anything they read or hear from the major media sources. Seek out counter-arguments from alternative media sources on current events and their historical context. Three sources I find useful in this regard are CorbettReport.com, LewRockwell.com, and Antiwar.com.
Wow! Thank you, Ernest!! Corbett Report looks excellent. Adding immediately to my reliable, independent news sources. Antiwar i've checked out briefly before. Yes! Lew Rockwell is totally new. Not as enthused on first scan... however, i'll explore and see. Muchas gracias!
You are very welcome. You won't always agree with everything you read on those sites---neither do I---but they do present a lot of news and opinion that you will never get from the mainstream media.
right! not expecting to agree... more like wanting to trust them as being authentic... true to their principles, etc.
today... i learned something from Glenn Greenwald. i definitely don't always agree with him. i do trust him.
here's the gist of what he said on Friday's episode of System Update (on Rumble.com):
i never call it MSM anymore... since more people are online these days, it's NOT main stream anymore... and it's not really media so much as propaganda.
instead, i call it 'corporate press' he said. my hubs immediately told me he does the same. somehow, i'd missed that till today.
thanks to you and to Glenn for today's lessons! :D
Yes. I think you have hit the key word---trust. We can't expect to agree with everything but at least we can sense that they are being honest.
I have spent a majority of my life as a NPR consumer (willing or not, due to circumstances). NPR has always done these quip articles. Pop science is pop science, and it seems that won't ever change. Has NPR gotten worse? Yes, demonstrably. But actually I don't think these are good examples of that, though I would say the worsening of the contexts makes pushes these articles much further out toward other politicized science media outlets, that are actually even worse, like Scientific American.
Dr. Cifu—question unrelated to churnalism. But I’m reading this post over a post-MOHS procedure bandage—-I had a basal cell carcinoma removed. Given the zillions of dollars going to derma procedures to remove things on our skin, are there any studies showing deaths from skin cancer going down as a result??
Have you read any of A Midwestern Doc's essays? He had a great one on skin cancer and which ones need removed.
He says that the sun doesn’t cause melanomas, but lack of vitamin D does. He’s on substack. I thought that essay was one of his best.
And did he present any data on that?
Nah…he just wrote the article with no facts or links whatsoever….
Why not read it yourself and see?
A great topic. Most relevant is the melanoma research. The progress we've made seems related to better treatment not more aggressive diagnosis.
lost my brother to melanoma... tho IMHO it was really the ridiculous 'treatment' he received from some of the most highly regarded medical institutions.
So sorry.
Decades ago, I was quite fond of NPR. The evident liberal bias was tolerable, and the reporters tried to present some degree of balance. Over the last decade or so, it has become a superficial mouthpiece of wokism in its most detestable form.
The ONLY reason to listen is to get a glimpse into the irrationality and malevolence of the regressive left.
There is a much bigger issue here. Here is my recommendation for "food for thought" from another substack that I follow. Likely few will read it but it gets to what I believe is more the heart of the matter. https://open.substack.com/pub/unskool/p/the-dei-bully-with-a-bloody-nose?r=tnkg1&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Yes, I'm one of those "right wing wackadoodles" that will be voting for Trump (even though I will have to hold my nose and clench my teeth to do it), I too was a listener to NPR for many many years from the drive to high school in the car with my dad to waking up to my clock radio and hearing the news of the 9-11 tragedy. For awhile I would try to edit the stories in my mind by discarding the adverbs and adjectives that biased the stories but that no longer works. The stories now seem to be click bait and finding the most absurd and borderline factual person or topic to report on, as in the topics Dr. Cifu mentioned in his article. I still push the "public radio station" button to hear what narrative NPR is pushing but find that my tolerance for their gibberish has diminished to the point where I keep my finger on the button. And don't get me started on public radio having government funding...
"For awhile I would try to edit the stories in my mind by discarding the adverbs and adjectives that biased the stories but that no longer works."
Accurate observation, Goldilox, that redacting the modifiers can no longer compensate for the ideological bias.
NPR crossed the line between misinformation and disinformation, many years ago.
Ultimately, it's not the slant that's objectionable, it's the complete lack of honesty, the active intent to say anything that will further their self-interested agenda, without regard for verified fact.
Did you hear that Fauci came out and said that Covid vaccines are dangerous and need to be stopped before they do even more harm?
Ok, that didn’t happen, but wouldn’t it make a great news story? Something very similar did happen in ADHD medicine, the Fauci of ADHD dramatically denounced his own life’s work before his death…. Yet the media totally ignored it. Perhaps the fact that every second advertisement is from a pharma company makes them hesitant to confront tough stories?
Anyway, if you’re interested in the ADHD over diagnosis story, a former ny times reporter (not Berenson! Schwarz) wrote a great book about it, ADHD Nation. Here is a very brief glimpse from my place:
https://gaty.substack.com/p/the-dog-that-barked
Ps rest is history is a really fun history podcast!
Pps listening to podcasts proves you have adhd:
https://gaty.substack.com/p/walk-and-chew-gum-at-the-same-time
Ok I’ll stop now : )
Thanks for those articles you referenced. My practice was limited to adults but I advised my patients with children being medicated for ADHD to find another pediatrician.
They are paid not to, its been proven Big Pharma spends a lot of money are you going to bit the hand that feeds you 99.9% of people won't they have family and a life and its's only just one little story
Wouldn't surprise me at all but do you have a link to the funding?
I too reduced my addiction to NPR within the last few years, mainly because of its unhelpful Covid coverage. Bear in mind that the BBC, which we can hear late at night, was just as bad. I remember a BBC interview with someone suggesting that “women should learn to urinate standing,” quite early in the pandemic.
Thus, it was with great pleasure that I listened to an On Point report earlier this week on NPR, finally admitting that well-qualified scientists didn’t all agree about our pandemic response, and that their views were stifled by those in power. Many thanks to Jay Bhattacharya and Tracy Beth Hoeg for speaking, and even Ashish K. Jha for admitting he had some reservations. A long delayed step in the right direction.
I agree with Jennifer that churnalism has always been around (remember "yellow journalism?") but is on steroids now in the digital era, with even more perverse economic incentives. (For anybody who wants to know the history of this, see link #1). For some suggestions of what can be done to improve the situation, see link #2. As it pertains to improving medical journalism, support the Lisa Schwartz Foundation for Truth in Medicine and affiliated Medicine in the Media, and spread the word to health journalists that they can attend a FREE excellent workshop in August! (link #3)
https://history.state.gov/milestones/1866-1898/yellow-journalism
https://aej.org/2023/07/17/whats-real-and-what-isnt/
https://lisaschwartzfoundation.org/about-medicine-in-media
Yes! There is no reliable platform to get news on this or any other subject.