Some excerpts that I liked (keep in mind, these are out of context, which is largely focused on why we should keep a very close eye out):
> Companies are most interested in getting their name before NPR's audience. They are, in other words, more interested in you than they are in NPR's journalism.
> The staff that sells sponsorships does not contact the newsroom to ask for coverage favor for a corporate client. To do so is a firing offense.
> Companies and marketers almost universally know not to ask journalists for coverage favors in return for sponsorship and advertising. To do so would be an insult—like asking a professional journalist to be a prostitute. It would invite distrust and negative coverage. It also would undermine the independence that attracted NPR's coveted audience in the first place.
> "Rote disclosures of every connection to a sponsor would not only clutter our programs, and be rendered meaningless in the process, but would also require producers to have an awareness of our corporate supporters that could actually be counter-productive and erode our firewall."
There's no need for anything so obvious as a request from the sposorship sales staff to the newsroom, or corporate sponsors asking journalists for favors. It could be an unspoken, unwritten understanding, subtle enough that the newsroom staff and journalists might honestly deny it exists. Just knowing that Amazon is a major sponsor of your employer (and hence, your job) is going to affect how you write about them, whether or not any overt favors have been requested.
I mean this with all due respect, but highlighting NPR's own defense of their editorial practices is hardly convincing.
NPR routinely runs editorial pieces that were pitched to them by corporate sponsors or their fronts like think tanks. They likewise have have discussion panels featuring these groups' talking heads. Listen to a few episodes of Marketplace if you want the most obvious corporate propaganda imaginable. Their impartiality is laughable.
It's a distinction without any real difference. You could make the same argument about Planet Money, an NPR show, that went out of the way to provide cover for the banks during the financial crisis, had their host attack Elizabeth Warren in an interview, all while taking money from the same industry. Adam Davidson (the host who attacked Warren) of course then also went on to collect all kinds of "speaking fees" from financial institutions.
It's a distinction with a difference. And no, I could not make the same argument about Planet Money, since that show is produced by NPR.
If you say "American public radio", do you also include Democracy Now? Do you include shows produced by other local stations, including the ones that do not get distributed? NPR is not the totality of "American public radio".
Understanding the structure of public broadcasting in the USA is critical to understand why it works the way that it does. NPR is a distinct organization, even from CPB (Corporation for Public Broadcasting), even if its sensibilities are echoed in other public radio organizations (like MPR/APM).
As for your points about Adam Davidson, I don't find that shameproject.com page particularly persuasive. It's clear that Davidson's worldview does not align with that of the people/person who wrote the page/manages the site. I don't find this particularly remarkable or even particularly interesting. Davidson's worldview doesn't really line up with my own either. But there's a bunch of stuff on that page (the quotes in particular) which lack context, and a lot of other stuff that consists mostly of deeply subjective assessments and assignment of motive to Davidson without much evidence.
Not taking money from the people you’re covering is the barest minimum of journalistic ethics. Regardless, of whether you or I agree with anything else on that site, Adam Davidson, or whoever else, failing to meet that basic standard should be patently disqualifying. The fact that he was the host of a flagship, economic reporting show, even more so.
There are many other reasons I find it hard to take NPR’s claims of impartiality seriously, but this one is so glaringly wrong that it speaks for itself.
I don't accept anyone's claims of impartiality. This notion of objective journalism is a US disease, and it needs to be stamped out as rapidly and as widely as possible. I view NPR as an excellent source of reporting on "people's lives as they experience them" and "the political status quo". I would never dream of considering NPR to be how I found out about ideas and practices outside of the political status quo - that's just not what they (or any other mainstream media) does.
If you read something like the Financial Times, it’s actually far less propagandistic than most “business news.” It mostly just reports the raw, unfiltered reality of Capitalist exchange. There are actually quite a few Marxists who like the paper for this reason.
When contrasted with something like Marketplace, which ceaselessly and glibly spins the darker realities of our economy to somehow be “upbeat” or “positive,” the difference becomes more obvious. And this is an editorial and ideological choice made by NPR, pursuing this framing.
