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Columbia Journalism Review content tagged NPR

1. December 8, 2011 02:14 PM

   Morning Edition Connects With Regular People

   But is anybody listening in Washington, DC?

   By Trudy Lieberman

   The other day NPR did some solid man-on-the-street reporting, and found—as we have found in our ongoing Town Hall series—the public is disconnected from Washington politics. Reporter Andrea Seabrook visited Cincinnati and asked those whom she met about their opinion of Congress. It was hardly shocking to learn it was not very high. Danny Korman, a small businessman who runs...

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2. April 30, 2012 01:54 PM

   On the Media silent on NPR retraction

   The show should address This American Life's disavowal of its Mike Daisey story

   By Justin D. Martin

   I rarely miss an episode of NPR’s On the Media, which is essential listening for information on media trends and best practices. When something gut-pummeling happens in the media world, I expect OTM to discuss it. My faith in the program has recently been shaken, as it has yet to broadcast a single phoneme on NPR’s retracted story, “Mr. Daisey...

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3. March 14, 2011 04:53 PM

   A Down Under View On Public Broadcasting

   CJR talks NPR and more with Jonathan Holmes, host of Australian TV’s Media Watch

   By Joel Meares

   Last week saw NPR CEO Vivian Schiller resign after the organization’s chief fundraiser was caught in a hidden-video sting seemingly calling the Tea Party racist, Republicans stupid, and declaring that NPR would be better off without government funding. The sting was the latest imbroglio for the broadcaster in the lead-up to what will be a tough fight in a...

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4. May 25, 2011 12:19 PM

   A Soros Problem at NPR

   The broadcaster ducks again when it should be swinging

   By Joel Meares

   In what will presumably be one of her final columns as NPR ombudswoman, Alicia Shepard has chosen to address concerns about a $1.8 million grant that the Open Society Institute made to NPR back in October of last year. As Shepard points out, the money is directed at a worthy cause: NPR’s Impact on Government project. Shepard explains that “the...

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5. January 11, 2011 01:00 PM

   Accuracy and Crisis

   Were early, erroneous reports of Giffords’s death preventable?

   By The Editors

   “Initial reporting on the attempted assassination of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, Democrat from Arizona’s Eighth District, was riddled with the kind of quick-to-judgment errors that often flow in the aftermath of mass shootings and disasters,” CJR’s Joel Meares reported Sunday, following the Saturday shooting spree in Tucson. Poynter and Regret the Error’s Craig Silverman both carried timelines and summaries of the...

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6. June 7, 2012 11:00 AM

   An eye on environmental justice

   EHN series focuses on an under-covered angle on toxics

   By Curtis Brainard

   A number of media reports in last year have examined the impacts of toxic pollution on communities, but few have emphasized, let alone focused on, the fact that low-income, minority neighborhoods tend to bear the brunt of the burden. That changed on Monday, when the website Environmental Health News (EHN) launched a special series, “Pollution, Poverty, People of Color,” about...

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7. March 16, 2011 04:48 PM

   Another Take on NPR’s “Liberal Bias”

   Its reporting on Social Security is anything but

   By Trudy Lieberman

   It was easy to understand why a story yesterday on NPR’s All Things Considered appeared to favor the Republican position on Social Security. Let’s be clear. The piece pretty much stacked the deck against those who believe that Social Security is fine for the moment, and that benefits should not be cut or privatized, a position that polls show much...

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8. March 17, 2011 04:49 PM

   Bill to Defund NPR Passes House Vote

   White House needs to come out stronger

   By Joel Meares

   It’s been a busy twenty-four hours on the “defund NPR” beat. Yesterday, the House Rules Committee convened an emergency hearing to send a bill to the floor that would stop federal funding from supporting NPR programming, as well as that of its local affiliates. Anticipating today’s vote, the White House released a statement this morning strongly opposing passage of...

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9. August 8, 2011 01:57 PM

   Blaming the Audience: Almost Always a Bad Idea

   By Ryan Chittum

   Marketplace's Heidi N. Moore lays into a listener for getting upset about Wall Street wanting to cut her entitlements. In a Tumblr post responding to the listener’s letter to Marketplace, Moore says she and the rest of the press are just reporting what powerful people are saying, whether you want to hear it or not.
 Well, take your hands off...

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10. September 27, 2011 12:20 PM

    Boom Towns Amid the Bust

    NPR finds "man camps" and $1,200 parking spaces in North Dakota

    By Ryan Chittum

    This paragraph jumps out from an NPR's All Things Considered report on an oil boom town in North Dakota: Two years ago, America was importing about two thirds of its oil. Today, according to the Energy Information Administration, it imports less than half. And by 2017, investment bank Goldman Sachs predicts the US could be poised to pass Saudi Arabia...

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11. March 15, 2011 01:55 PM

    Brooke Kroeger on James O’Keefe and Undercover Reporting: A CJR Podcast

    By The Editors

    Is James O’Keefe a “journalist”? Does it matter? Do the political goals of an undercover reporter—or activist—affect the value of the truths he or she reveals? How does a hidden camera compare to a faked identity, when there’s a story to be told? What are the “best practices for undercover” reporting—or are there any? In CJR’s latest podcast, assistant editor...

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12. January 7, 2011 11:51 AM

    Cable Access

    Once again: WikiLeaks did not publicly release 250,000 diplomatic cables

    By Craig Silverman

    [Update: Craig Silverman elaborates on this column in a new CJR podcast, which you can listen to elsewhere on CJR.org here, or via iTunes here.] Time for a pop quiz: How many of the leaked diplomatic cables in WikiLeaks’s possession has the organization released publicly? A) Roughly 2,000 B) Roughly 250,000 C) None. They’ve all been released by media outlets....

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13. November 2, 2010 03:19 PM

    Captive Customers

    NPR reveals a behind-the-scenes role by private prisons in Arizona's tough immigration law

    By Ryan Chittum

    An NPR investigation goes right to the heart of the problem with private prisons: Putting a profit motive behind taking away people's freedom. It looked into Arizona's powerful private-prison system and found that it helped boost the notoriously tough law the state passed against illegal immigration earlier this year. The bill was written and named in D.C. by a small...

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14. March 9, 2011 10:20 AM

    CJR Rewind: NPR Amps Up

    Can Vivian Schiller build a journalism juggernaut?

    By Jill Drew

    This story originally ran in the March/April 2010 issue of CJR. If I were writing this story for All Things Considered, I might open with some audio: the sound of applause. The clapping would come from hundreds of employees gathered for an all-staff meeting at National Public Radio’s downtown Washington headquarters in December, as they acknowledged the tenor being set...

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15. June 7, 2011 01:33 PM

    Delaying the Dodd-Frank Rules

    An NYT story shows the WSJ parroting bogus Wall Street spin

    By Ryan Chittum

    Planet Money's Jacob Goldstein makes a great catch this morning, noting that The Wall Street Journal and New York Times have stories about Wall Street and the delayed installation of Dodd-Frank regulations, but that "they tell very different stories about what the delays mean." And indeed they do. The Journal's frame is that Wall Street is upset over the delay...

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16. August 29, 2012 02:50 PM

    Finding the local in vast swathes of data

    An NPR map of 2010 census information is a great example of how reporters can make big data locally relevant

    By Anna Codrea-Rado

    Census data was made for mapping, showing the relationship between data points over a geographical area. In 2010, when the decennial census results were released, NPR worked with Development Seed, a data visualization consultancy, to map the changing US Hispanic Population, and in the process, the team may have changed infographics for the better. In the width of a browser,...

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17. April 19, 2011 11:33 AM

    James O’Keefe’s Bizarre (and brilliant?) Landrieu Dance

    By Joel Meares

    Say what you will about James O’Keefe, the videographer and self-described journalist famous for his ACORN and NPR stings, but after today, you can’t deny the man has a pretty wicked sense of humor and a moderate-to-above-average sense of rhythm. Overnight at Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government website a music video for the song “Landrieu Dance” appeared, posted by its...

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18. March 21, 2011 04:43 PM

    Juan Williams’ Weak Call to Defund NPR

    Ex-employee's latest attack proves toothless

    By Joel Meares

    In a disingenuous column published in The Hill today, onetime NPR news analyst Juan Williams argues that his former employer should be defunded. “Even after they fired me, called me a bigot and publicly advised me to only share my thoughts with a psychiatrist,” he writes today, “I did not call for defunding NPR. I am a journalist, and NPR...

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19. June 30, 2011 10:06 AM

    Kling’s Warning

    Q&A with outgoing Minnesota Public Radio CEO Bill Kling

    By Joel Meares

    In 1967, in exchange for free grad-school tuition, Bill Kling agreed to help Minnesota’s St. John’s University start a radio station. Today that effort’s descendant, Minnesota Public Radio, operates a forty-four-station network heard by more than nine hundred thousand people each week—the largest audience of any regional public radio network. After forty-four years as MPR’s first and only CEO, Kling...

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20. July 10, 2012 06:06 PM

    Manufactured quotes

    News organizations fail to disclose “regular Joe” businessmen's lobbying ties

    By Ryan Chittum

    Two weeks ago The New York Times wheeled out that old chestnut of Great Recession-era economic reporting: Companies can't find workers, despite high unemployment. This one was mercifully buried inside Business Day, but it got 1,200 words all the same, including this top: After the latest, disappointing unemployment figures, policy makers and economists continue to debate how American companies might...

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