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I once sat in on and hour with the news director of NPR editing copy right before guys would go to the mic and his thought process starting every new piece was literally "what about this would a conservative object to" and then would reword stuff accordingly. Everything. https://twitter.com/tadonovan/status/1252604138657112064">https://twitter.com/tadonovan...
Even anodyne stuff like market reports and whatnot, his inner reader was literally just bad faith conservatives yelling at him to both sides everything.
On some level that& #39;s not necessarily a bad thing—trying to internalize all points of view—but it was really weird to see.
On some level that& #39;s not necessarily a bad thing—trying to internalize all points of view—but it was really weird to see.
This was probably oh 2010-11 something like that—height of the tea party. Reporters would walk in with their copy, hand it to him, and then stand there as he made or suggested changes. Almost anything relating to Obama (mostly positive that day), he& #39;d add some extra thing to it.
He& #39;d couch it in neutral, passive unspecified language, like "...although objections have been raised about his handling of the policy" stuff like that. Sometimes a reporter might push back a little and I think he even conceded a few but mostly it went right in.
The most contentious was something like a good employment number coming out or somesuch and the reporter had written it as "good news for Obama" and he just wouldn& #39;t let him have it. He had to add in some whole other unrelated thing conservatives were mad about to balance it...
The reporter was like "C& #39;mon man that& #39;s not the story" but he was adamant—you couldn& #39;t just say something was good for Obama, you had to add some paean counterpoint about why conservatives would still be mad anyway. The reporter finally laughed it off and gave in.
Anyway, it was clear just how much "both sides" PTSD old newsmen had internalized. It was his whole value-add. Just, unprompted, anticipating and then adding conservative talking points to everything for the sake of "fair and balanced" CYA. It was a hecklers veto writ large.
He was a nice man and nothing he did was indefensible or even unreasonable, but the net effect was weird. It was like he was rewriting the day& #39;s news to preemptively appease the sort of people wading into their comments sections to blast NPR for being unrepentant liberal schills.
