An insider at NPR describes the woke-shrinkage effect that has left even daily listeners like Les UDs wondering why so much of the language coming from the station smacks of a re-education camp.
In a document called NPR Transgender Coverage Guidance—disseminated by news management—we’re asked to avoid the term biological sex. (The editorial guidance was prepared with the help of a former staffer of the National Center for Transgender Equality.) The mindset animates bizarre stories—on how The Beatles and bird names are racially problematic, and others that are alarmingly divisive; justifying looting, with claims that fears about crime are racist; and suggesting that Asian Americans who oppose affirmative action have been manipulated by white conservatives.
UD still gives NPR money. But she can’t stand the ideology-lecture feel of the place (not all the time; some of the time); she hates it that more and more of its stories/points of view make it sound like Chesa Boudin.
She gets that NPR has always leaned left. Les UDs do too. But Uri Berliner is right that lately it has tilted way the hell over.