After much back and forth, National Public Radio finally clarified its editorial stance on when it is and isn’t appropriate to call a lie a lie. Wrote NPR’s Richard Gonzales (1/25/17):
Now many listeners want to know why [NPR correspondent Mary Louise] Kelly didn’t just call the president a liar.
On Morning Edition, Kelly explains why. She says she went to the Oxford English Dictionary seeking the definition of “lie.”
“A false statement made with intent to deceive,” Kelly says. “Intent being the key word there. Without the ability to peer into Donald Trump’s head, I can’t tell you what his intent was. I can tell you what he said and how that squares, or doesn’t, with facts.”
This is a definition of “lying” that renders the very concept meaningless. As The Intercept’s Sam Biddle noted, “By this definition, you could literally never say someone is lying unless you’re talking about yourself.” So unless an NPR reporter can prove Trump’s state of mind beyond a reasonable doubt, they have to be intent-agnostic about the falsehood—even if the lie in question, that millions of people voted illegally, has been shown to be false dozens of times, including directly to Trump’s press secretary.
Further clarification by NPR seemed to imply the issue was also about not wanting to appear partisan or anti-Trump. Which is likely the primary motivator, as Gonzales’ recounting of his boss’s views suggests:
NPR’s senior vice president for news, Michael Oreskes, says NPR has decided not to use the word “lie” and that Kelly got it right by avoiding that word.
“Our job as journalists is to report, to find facts and establish their authenticity and share them with everybody,” says Oreskes. “It’s really important that people understand that these aren’t our opinions…. These are things we’ve established through our journalism, through our reporting…and I think the minute you start branding things with a word like ‘lie,’ you push people away from you.”
NPR is notorious for bending over backwards to avoid the appearance of a liberal bias, even refusing to carry an opera program in 2011 after its host participated in an Occupy protest. But, in the age of Trump and his unprecedentedly loose relationship with reality, the network’s strict adherence to “both sides” journalism does a great disservice to their listeners—to say nothing of the truth.
Federal funding, according to NPR’s own website, is “essential” to its ability to operate, comprising roughly 6 percent–10 percent of its total revenue, depending on how one parses it. Given Trump’s capricious, vengeful disposition; his already overtly hostile relationship with noncompliant government agencies; and the Republican Party’s existing hatred of publicly funded media, the stir that would be caused by using the L-word may be seen as too great a risk.
This, however, isn’t the first time that NPR’s playing semantic games has provided cover for right-wing forces. For years, NPR obscured reality on the issue of US torture, routinely using the word for other regimes but never for their own (FAIR.org, 5/6/09, 12/14/14). Then–NPR ombud Alicia Shepard (6/21/09), after much fretting, provided an excuse similar to the one given for declining to label Trump’s lies:
It’s a no-win case for journalists. If journalists use the words “harsh interrogation techniques,” they can be seen as siding with the White House and the language that some US officials, particularly in the Bush administration, prefer. If journalists use the word “torture,” then they can be accused of siding with those who are particularly and visibly still angry at the previous administration.
Note the criteria of “can be accused” of taking sides. The issue is not tethered to objective reality; it is tethered to political considerations, namely what the listener will or will not see as side-taking. Or, more to the point, what NPR’s major corporate, foundation and government donors see as side-taking.
While there are certainly grey areas, the claim that millions voted illegally in the 2016 presidential election is objectively false. And the fact that Trump has repeated it over and over again, despite being corrected over and over again, indicates he is acting in bad faith. One does not need to “peer into Donald Trump’s head” to infer he is lying; one simply needs to acknowledge the most baseline standards of reality.
That, NPR has announced, is something it is unwilling to do.
Can we call this a “lie”?
http://www.npr.org/about-npr/178659563/our-mission-and-vision
The other day the NPR reported called another Trump lie “an overstatement”. Forgotten what it was because there’s just too much dung from that heap flying at us every day.
Maybe they could use the verbiage from “Yes, Prime Minister” instead:
“The precise correlation between the information communicated and the facts, as they can be determined and demonstrated presently, is such as to cause epistemological problems, of sufficient magnitude as to lay upon the logical and semantic resources of the English language a heavier burden than they can reasonably be expected to bear.”
I used to be a regular listener to NPR. That was before 2008. One day in the early Fall of 2008 I listened to an NPR piece that was obviously contrived. The NPR host of the program didn’t even challenge the obvious lies. I realized then that part of NPR’s mission was to peddle falsehoods and propaganda. It has only gotten worse since then. Now I never tune in to NPR.
me too.
Me three. For me it was around 2011 when they ran a story promoting fracking. Nope. Sorry. No can do. Bye bye, NPR.
Others may not wish to go this far, but I choose to withhold support from my local NPR station precisely because the ‘news’ they uncritically channel from NPR is like stenography for our nation’s massive concentrations of wealth and power.
NPR pretends to be neutral, but I believe the record shows it is essentially pwned by the 0.01% donor class. This means, among other things, NPR marches us off to war in lockstep with the powers that be, time after time.
The cost to society of NPR’s pandering is unacceptably high.
NPR’s willfully deaf-blind stance on Trump’s lies, spotlighted in today’s post by Adam Johnson, underscores my point.
And there are other examples. They range from early Dem-primary news coverage that largely excluded Sanders, to breathless Russia-Russia-Russia nonsense from embittered Clinton acolytes seeking to blame anyone but themselves and their candidate — uncritically reported by NPR.
Given NPR’s persistent pattern of faux neutrality — and its ludicrous self-justification in the face of stark reality — I myself choose to not be complicit. I would rather donate to FAIR than to NPR.
I wish it were otherwise.
NPR–National Pharma Radio. I stopped supporting them more than a decade ago when it became clear that Merck sponsorship affected objectivity.
NPR’s integrity has been compromised for at least two decades in service to the corporate agenda and the Pentagon. They should at least be honest about it and stop touting their “independent journalism”.
Objection your honor, my client has already told the court that he thought he was doing a satire when you caught him on tape saying “I am saying what I am saying on purpose while realizing that it is not true” just before he made the statement which in retrospect turned out not to have been entirely accurate.
And as we know, my client really thought the crack had been placed in his pocket unknown to him by his friend who he doesn’t know too well.
Another fine example of the “Republicans'” Reverse-Midas-Crap Touch …
“Kenneth Y. Tomlinson- Chairman, Corporation For Public Broadcasting
As reported by the New York Times, Washington Post, & Source Watch:
Mr. Tomlinson resigned from the board of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting a day after the agency’s inspector general delivered a report critical of his leadership.
The CPB’s inspector general had been investigating Tomlinson’s practice of using agency money to hire consultants and lobbyists without notifying the agency’s board. Tomlinson last year hired a little-known Indiana consultant to study the political leanings of guests on such programs as “Now With Bill Moyers” and “The Diane Rehm Show” on National Public Radio. He also hired lobbyists to defeat legislation that would have changed how CPB’s board is structured.
State Department investigators have found that Tomlinson. who also is head of the agency overseeing most government broadcasts to foreign countries has used his office to run a “horse racing operation” and that he improperly put a friend on the payroll.
The report said that the Tomlinson had repeatedly used government employees to perform personal errands and that he billed the government for more days of work than the rules permit.”
LINK: http://warcriminalswatch.org/index.php/news/40-recent-news/243-2-11-09-complete-bush-appointee-resignation-scorecard
That has irked me for quite some time. NPR is in denial as well. Time to be honest about Trump’s continuous lying to anyone and everyone. Trump is taking us down a very dangerous road where nothing can be believed and we will suffer serious consequences on the global stage. NPR, GET A CLUE!!!
Kelly’s position is fairly silly. Intent is an important element of almost all criminal prosecutions; the general rule is that a person can be inferred to have intended the reasonably foreseeable consequences of his acts. Trump made statements that he has been clearly informed are false under circumstances where it is reasonably foreseeable that some people would believe them. His intent to deceive is clear, not just on the balance of probabilties, but beyond a reasonable doubt. If presidential lying was a criminal offence, there is no doubt that there is enough evidence to convict Trump.
Less important than calling him a liar is saying he’s “mistaken” or “misinformed” or “presenting false information” etc. Whether his “falsehoods” are intentional or not doesn’t really matter. What matters is that the public learn to be critical and/or question everything he says. And extend that out to ALL politicians.