No. of Recommendations: 9
In another thread, I pointed out a few of the errors Uri Berliner made in his article criticizing the people who work with him at NPR. For those unfamiliar with Steve Inskeep, he has been the host of Morning Edition since 2004 and previously appeared on All Things Considered. Inskeep said he was disappointed by Berliner's article, not for its criticism of NPR but for its many factual errors. And he has receipts.
The errors are so numerous that his defenders—and he has some!—have taken to admitting them, then adding words to the effect of: I hope this doesn’t obscure his “larger point”!
If Uri’s “larger point” is that journalists should seek wider perspectives, and not just write stories that confirm their prior opinions, his article is useful as an example of what to avoid.
This article needed a better editor. I don’t know who, if anyone, edited Uri’s story, but they let him publish an article that discredited itself.Inskeep goes on to discuss what Berliner got right and what he got wrong but how, in the end, Berliner's calls for “viewpoint diversity” ring hollow: how his own
"failure to vet the story may explain why the errors and omissions all go in one direction, toward confirming the writer’s pre-existing opinions."steveinskeep.substack.com - How my npr colleague failed at viewpoint 