If the numbers Berliner revealed about audience losses are correct, the impact is surely being most felt at the local station level. If fewer people are tuning in, fundraising will suffer and cuts are inevitable.
For instance, Boston has two NPR stations, WGBH and WBUR, and both are in trouble. This article talks about declining numbers of live listeners and resistance to digital transformation, but never mentions the issues brought up by Berliner.
Even if "every news outlet and broadcast media outlet losing audience rapidly", the criticism wasn't about NPR losing audience in general, but about NPR losing audience from a particular side predominantly.
It needs to be repeated that broadcast media is experiencing a bloodbath right now across all areas of the political spectrum. And according to publicly available data, the downwards trend is far more extreme for right-leaning publications[1]. So, pandering to right-leaning audiences is not the winning market strategy at the moment either. It's a lose-lose situation.
Can NPR go too woke? Sure, anything is possible. And maybe they have on radio–I wouldn't know. It certainly doesn't seem to be that way from their website though.
That article needs to be interpreted with caution.
Firstly, as they say themselves, their data is misleading because it's comparing with Feb 2020 which was the start of the COVID crisis. Of course news outlets are going to have less traffic in Feb 2024 vs Feb 2020. And although they start by saying there's a bloodbath specifically in right-wing publications, later they admit their dataset yields huge drops also for left-wing publications as well e.g. Slate and The Washington Post are both down ~40%.
Secondly, when they do a quick reality check by asking the owners of one of the sites whether the number for his site is true (a 90% drop!), he tells them it's "laughably inaccurate", feedback they then just ignore rather than trying to work out why there's disagreement.
And although the authors assert that the drop is worse on the right, they don't really show that with data.
They also point out that (assuming they effect they're talking about really does exist) it's probably driven by Facebook and Google manipulating their news feeds to suppress conservative news, not an actual drop in organic demand.
So I think the article can't lead to many conclusions about market strategy other than don't trust Facebook or Google, which everyone on the right knew already.
ok, i think we should be skeptical of this piece of data and require this much rigor before we believe the assertion, but then let’s also require the same from the other direction. we don’t have academic peer reviewed papers on why npr is losing listeners either.
either we allow speculation and trust individual anecdotes or we don’t.
all i see is that yes, media across all political spectrums are seeing downturns. the rest of the speculation is just copium by people who believe they know more than insiders who have decades of experience and institutional knowledge.
>we don’t have academic peer reviewed papers on why npr is losing listeners either.
No, but we don't need any for the main complaint of the "veteran editor": not that NPR loses listeners period, but that it specifically loses listeners from one side of the political spectrum much more.
So it's not about "why listeners leave?" as much as "why the listenership got as skewed?". For the latter question, "because there has been an increased liberal and Dem partisan and viewpoint bias" can both be factually verified, and seems like an adequate answer.
Also, whether the reason for the convervative sites readership drop is Facebook cutting news links in general, or views being banned/not promoted from Facebook and co for "fact checking" reasons or plainly for not aligning with the narrative, I don't think the same mechanism wouldn't explain NPR's case. The editor making the criticism wasn't focused specifically on the website, and I doubt it depended as much on Facebook in the first place.
I don't need a peer reviewed paper to observe a drop in traffic reported by Comscore. That can be taken at face value in the absence of any opposing data in this industry. Editors at The Atlantic are well aware of the state of the marketplace and are very analytical. I used to work there. Beyond that, the conclusion just makes sense when considering the demographics. Why would a population of people who are less trusting of the media consume more media than another population that is more trusting? You can make your own judgment calls of course, but nothing presented here is a convincing rebuttal to people in the know.
KUOW in Seattle seems to be in trouble too. Their sponsors have been getting increasingly cringeworthy. Just last week I heard a long sponsor message from Christian Science. They seem to scraping deeper into the bottom of the barrel and sponsor message seem to be increasing in quantity.
Are you sure it was from Christian Science and not the Christian Science Monitor which has been a long-time sponsor (and if I recall occasional reporting partner) of NPR.
Not mad, disappointed. It just seems embarrassing for them that they're struggling so hard to live up to their value of being "listener supported" that they have to accept sponsors like this to survive.
It sounds to me like you are disappointed that the liberal bubble isn’t as thick as it could be. That even accepting supporting money from the bad people is compromising.
It seems that you are implying that the sponsors of NPR get a say in their programming and reporting? Seems like that is the thing I would be upset about, not that the “wrong people” are supplying the money.
It’s NPR, and clearly an atheistic listener there. Are you surprised at this complaint? Christianity is largely anti-science and works against many of the purposes NPR espouses like climate, public health, science and tech, major topics all over NPR. It’s not a stretch to accept this complaint as valid to many left wing rationalist NPR listeners.
The Christian Science Monitor has long had top quality journalism, and sections on religion. What is their relationship with Christian Science (and what is that? is there a unified institution?)?
Christian Science is a church founded by Mary Baker Eddy in 1879. They're most famous for believing in faith healing, which is part of a larger collection of beliefs with a "mind/faith over matter" flavor. They have churches throughout New England. In practice, they tend to be pretty mellow in that old-school "New England religious movement" sort of way.
The Christian Science Monitor is a well-respected newspaper associated with the church. The few times I've read a paper copy, there was usually one editorial with a religious theme. Their religion did not otherwise color their reporting.
I am not the least bit suprised that the Christian Science church might support NPR. Demographically, Christian Science members probably have very high overlap with NPR listeners. And they are, after all, a church which is best known for being associated with a newspaper. I would not be the least bit surprised if they donate to NPR mostly because they want to support public radio.
Christian Science Monitor has been my favorite news source for a long time despite not really being religious. It's so objective and fair even on the most contentious of topics, and really tries to understand the human experience.
They were founded by the same woman, Mary Baker Eddy, like a century ago, but today they just have one specifically-cited Christian Science article in each print.
It seems they may have the same owner still, but seems like they very much have editorial independence, judging by the things I read.
There is, main HQ over in Boston. Both orgs were founded by the same people.
I believe the Monitor offices are right next to the main Christian Science complex/are in it.
I definitely listen to KUOW a lot less than I used to. The main reason is that a few years ago they had a lineup on Saturdays that kept me listening most of the day. It included:
• A Prairie Home Companion [1]
• The Vinyl Cafe [2]
• Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me! [3]
• Says You! [4]
• The Swing Years and Beyond [5]
Those I'm sure were on Saturday. I know I'm missing 4 other programs from Saturday. I remember the following programs as being on weekends at the time, but can't remember which were Saturday and which were Sunday.
I was a long time listener and donor to KUOW. My intention was to support local radio, hopefully get some more community pieces, and so on ... and that matched the donation drive pitches.
When they decided to use their cash to empire build and buy a Jazz station for $8M, I completely gave up and could no longer even stomach listening. I like Jazz, but it hardly needs the help. It seemed like an utter betrayal.
I understand your position. I only want to add that jazz most definitely needs help it is not a financially successful genre for radio. That being said i bet you they bought it on the hopes of getting more revenue and programming and not to save jazz.
But Seattle (and Boston) are very blue areas, the issues that Berliner is suggesting wouldn't seem to apply to those areas, they would seem more likely to apply to the hinterlands. The Boston situation probably implies that they just need to combine the two stations into one.
Mostly because the issues he mentions are not related to the actual reason people are dropping, the reason is _there is a lot of competition for everyone's attention_. Last time I turned on the radio i was a teenager, maybe 20 years ago, with the internet and podcasts there's very little reason to tune in, i have car play in the car and both pocketcasts and spotify, why would I ever tune in?
I listen to a lot of NPR podcasts and contribute to WHYY monthly but I don't think i ever tuned into WHYY, i don't even know the frequency they use :P
Reality is that all media is pretty much toast unless you're some big name like the NYT and this is really sad because i really love the NPR podcasts, but not sure how they can survive long term without the local radios.
The goal wasn’t really to make a profit so no, definitely not like the NYT. And that might be the demise, had they done something like NPR one much sooner with direct subscriptions it might have been easier to make it work.
I hope they survive though, hard to find content with the same quality and consistency elsewhere.
I'm probably in the minority here, but I'm trying to get away from digital media. I've got a pretty cool shortwave radio, and am always looking for interesting things to listen to. But, our local NPR station is insufferable at least half the time, so much so that I don't even bother trying it most days. As an aside, we are almost always listening to the NPR classical music station. It's absolutely beautiful, and a gift to listeners everywhere. I just wish they'd give up their jazz Fridays and opera Sundays.
NPR has always been a very particular neoliberal bent as well, with equal skepticism for leftists as for the right. The both-sidesism and he-said she-said reporting, and the general third-way-ness of it all has always been fucking intolerable for half of the blue party too.
There probably is no org more emblematic of the backslide of journalism into “reporting facts, not taking perspectives” than NPR. They are simply craven, they have no perspective or spine, they stand for nothing, and that makes them instinctually repulsive. Like they literally are the journalists in movies who will happily say whatever their masters want this week. It’s disgusting, you might as well be VOA for all the perspective you’re getting.
Swapping Diane Rehm for JJ Johnson or whatever is emblematic of that change for example. Diane Rehm never let a guest gish-gallop unopposed etc, JJ just went into sputter mode and was like “I don’t think all of that is true but-“ and gets run over again on his own show etc. It’s just bad in an aggressively “it’s your right to feel that way but…” kinda milquetoast way. They stand for nothing and have no position or perspective. And I know that’s the new school of journalism today but jesus christ it’s pathetic to see in action.
I think your response is terrifying. I think you are actually the problem.. and people like you of course. You want a news organization (who should be reporting the facts in a method completely devoid of emotion) to decide to sway their content either to the left or to the right? That is terrifying quite frankly because it's exactly what has happened. NPR is almost perfect like it is, if they would just stop overemphasizing "woke terminology" into every story they publish. Otherwise the stories are fine it's just annoying as hell.
I think if they really are losing a lot of listeners (for whatever reason), it must be mostly from exactly those blue areas, because that's where they have a lot of listeners. You can't lose listeners in places you don't already have them!
Just to be clear, when it comes to radio audience, the audience is 100% local stations. NPR does not own any radio spectrum. The structure is that local stations have complete editorial control of their programming so long as it adheres to the principles of the NPR mission and in exchange they get access to the network of content produced by NPR and local affiliates. Bigger affiliates like the ones in Boston produce a lot of local content or even sell back to the national network, while smaller ones are mostly running NPR content. They are also all running their own budgets and revenue operations.
Is this really a business model issue? I understood that NPR’s funding primarily comes from corporate sponsors, not listeners or the government. If that’s true, there is less incentive to preserve local affiliates. Consolidation is inevitable, I would imagine.
That's not exactly true. For one, all the local affiliates have their own budgets, their own expenses, revenues and staff. Up until this year, NPR was specifically prohibited from collecting donations from listeners. If you had gone to npr.org and clicked "donate" it would force you to donate to your local affiliate. Affiliates do not give NPR a cut of their donations. Instead they pay (on a sliding scale I think) for the rights to content produced by NPR. If you look at the sources of revenue for any given affiliate, it will probably be mostly donation from listeners. So taken as a whole, public radio is very much paid for by listeners.
Their actual problem would then seem to be this rather complex explanation to a simple question (ie. Where does your money come from / what are your conflicts of interest). Any time I've considered donating, I remember all the "this segment brought to you by ..." and figure they don't need me (and I don't need them).
Donations go straight to the local affiliate who probably did not get any corporate sponsorship and very much need listener support. And besides just saying "corporate sponsor" is not an actual indication of them buying coverage. It doesn't really track that corporations bribed them into being too liberal.
It is kind of comical that NPR made racial and gender diversity their main priority…and still have a listener base that’s much whiter than the country as a whole.
No conflict there if you're used to their New England shows like Car Talk and Wait Wait (* pretending Chicago is New England for the moment). They were always woke, as in constantly making identity jokes about ethnic white people like Jews and Italians.
No, it's the same thing the article is complaining about now - constantly talking about different identity groups. Those are comedy shows so they present things through comedy.
Also, the panelists only ever talk about their own identity group. Non-woke would be talking about other people's.
I assume the lost is entirety into the cloud of podcasts.
I don't listen to any radio programs anymore and part of that is work from home. But I do listen to NPR programming via podcasts.
Their business model seems to not survive the move to work from home.
It's got nothing to do with politics. It's entirely the same technologies disrupting all media. We have simply stopped wholesale media consumption for the modern network.
As an aside, I always wondered why conservative radio always dominated liberal radio. Nearly every conservative pundit has a national show and is syndicated far and wide on AM/FM radio stations. Liberal shows you can't find with a search light. Remember Air America? It lasted two years before a host of scandals and a bankruptcy put it into the "where are they now?" bin as it limped along for another 4 years before shuttering.
But I digress.
Just curious why conservatives still love radio after so many decades and liberals have almost nothing comparable to listen to locally or nationally.
There is a podcast miniseries called The Divided Dial[0] that answers the question of why conservative radio dominates in America, but very briefly, based on my understanding of their reporting:
1. The elimination of the Fairness Doctrine meant that radio stations no longer had a legal obligation to provide a fair reflection of differing viewpoints on matters of public importance;
2. The elimination of national ownership caps in the 1996 Telecommunications Act enabled a rapid and extreme consolidation of radio stations;
3. These new national radio conglomerates slashed costs by vertically integrating production, creating fewer shows, and rebroadcasting them to all their owned stations;
4. The concept of “format purity” spilled over from music radio into talk radio, causing commercial talk stations to switch from showcasing a variety of opinions to airing one political perspective all day;
5. The conservative talk radio format was perceived as less risky by radio executives, and so that was the format that commercial talk radio switched to.
Air America may have eventually succeeded despite its many other flaws—except they owned no radio stations of their own, so there was no place for them to go in this hyper-consolidated, format-pure commercial market.
I'm libertarian with blue tribe sympathies. Whenever I try listening to NPR, I literally fall asleep. It's just something about the combination of cadence, intonation, and premium mediocre presentation of ideas that just paralyzes me. I'm powerless to stop it. Meanwhile I can listen to reactionary [0] talk radio just fine, and sometimes do just for cringe entertainment value. The bellowing of indignant righteousness is stimulating regardless of whether one agrees with the ideas. I don't know that this explains the overall popularity per se, but take it as one data point.
[0] it's a grave mistake to refer to the current Republican party as conservatives. If anything, actual conservatism these days means supporting the Democratic party - respect for American institutions, the rule of law, strong foreign policy, gradual change, etc. The Democrats are even checking the box of fiscal conservatism compared with the past two decades of ZIRP.
I think all the yelling, fear mongering, hate for "the other" on the MAGA based shows just hits your brain different, they will push your buttons whether you enjoy it or it makes you angry at the ignorance, and that can be enjoyable in odd ways. NPR tries to be more reserved and academic, you won't find the cussin' and spittin' that you find on AM talk radio.
Every party has its more anarchistic advocacy points and I can't say when the scales tipped in the abstract. But for my own judgement it was when the longstanding issue of police escaping the rule of law finally got attention, and then the Republican party staked out its position in support of the lawlessness.
> That was back when Democrats talked about class a lot more than they did about race.
Democrats took on race as an issue in the early 1960s, leading the Republican's 'Southern Strategy'. White blue collar workers only shifted to the GOP in the last 10 years, I think, especially for Trump.
> Democrats took on race as an issue in the early 1960s,
That’s a weird way of framing a law that got only 60-40 support among democrats in Congress but 80-20 among republicans.
But it was more of a “Mad Men/Lucky Strikes” situation: https://youtu.be/8Nvf4BteCR4?si=snxZFKB1HmaljUmR. Once both parties supported the civil rights act, the had to campaign on different issues. Democrats turned to a more academic and activist view on race, focused on using government to undo the effects of past discrimination. Legal equality having been achieved, republicans turned to social and religious conservatism.
The more important piece of the puzzle is economics. In the 1950s, Ohio had a median income 57% higher than North Carolina. Illinois was 75% higher than Georgia. That gap started to close dramatically in the 1970s and 1980s, opening the door to republicans coming into the south on a pro-business and deregulation platform. It’s not a coincidence that nearly all of Toyota’s manufacturing facilities in the US except one are in what are now low regulation red states.
That's a weird and extremely sanitized view of what happened. A more accurate explanation is that the Democratic party was a coalition of (mainly) Northern progressives who supported integration, and Southern "Dixiecrats" who were opposed. Following the Act's passage, the Southern coalition switched en masse to the Republican party. Many of these voters continued to oppose racial (and "legal") equality for many years, and in some cases are still do. Even as recently as last year, Alabama had a Congressional map struck down by the US Supreme Court for violations of the Voting Rights Act -- and the Alabama legislature then proceeded to ignore the decision and write a new map with exactly the same deficiencies [1].
> Following the Act's passage, the Southern coalition switched en masse to the Republican party.
Except the switch didn’t happen until decades later. Virtually no Dixiecrat switched parties. And Carter won every southern state except Virginia in 1976. He did better in Alabama than in New York. Reagan and George H. W. Bush muddy the analysis because they won everywhere, including deep blue states. But Reagan did better in wealthier, more educated southern metro areas in the south than in presumably more racist rural areas. Clinton won a number of southern states in the 1990s. Republicans didn’t win a majority of southern congressional seats until 1994.
Apart from it making no sense to say Dixiecrats protested Democratic support for the civil rights act by switching to the party that not only supported it more, but supported all the previous civil rights acts, that narrative ignores the actual issues that mattered to voters in the 1980s and 1990s. Abortion, foreign policy (patriotism), and economic policy became defining issues during that time. And on all those fronts, ”new south” voters were more aligned with the Republican position.
Put differently, democrats support for segregation was keeping southern democrats in the party. It was preventing what would otherwise be ideological sorting of a voting bloc that was already more religious conservative, patriotic, and was benefiting economically from deregulation as industry moved from northern states to southern states.
> Many of these voters continued to oppose racial (and "legal") equality for many years, and in some cases are still do.
Nobody opposes legal equality. Many republicans oppose what we now call “equity”—taking race into account to produce racially even results. If you look at “racial resentment” tests, for example, the fundamental difference in attitudes that appears is that liberals have a special sympathy toward black people, while conservatives have equally unsympathetic attitudes towards everyone: https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/renos/files/carneyenos.pdf.
Your Alabama example illustrates the point. Alabama is trying to draw a map favorable to republicans for the same reason Maryland draws a map favorable to democrats: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/mary.... Alabama isn’t trying to disadvantage black voters, just as Maryland isn’t trying to disadvantage white voters.
Possibly that's true now. It was quite different in the South 50 and 60 years ago. (I grew up mostly in the South during that time period: my USAF dad was stationed at different places there.) And as a South Asian, you likely would not have counted as "white" — maybe legally you would have been, but as a practical matter an awful lot of people would have treated you and your family as "colored."
> And as a South Asian, you likely would not have counted as "white" — maybe legally you would have been, but as a practical matter an awful lot of people would have treated you and your family as "colored."
If you think I’m the least bit phased by that: I had to defend my interracial marriage at a Bangladeshi wedding last year, in Canada. (And by that I mean I deflected about there not being any Bangladeshi girls in Chicago because we don’t make a scene about stuff like that.)
I have never met a white Republican remotely as racist as Indians, Bangladeshis, Arabs, Vietnamese, and Chinese people I’ve encountered.
It’s not a spectrum. Woke people are like Bangladeshis—they categorize individuals based on race/ethnicity. In 2024, unlike maybe when you grew up, the only people calling me “colored” are woke white people.
White republicans are, for the most part, non-racist. Once you establish points of commonality with them, they do not care or comment on what you look like.
>White republicans are, for the most part, non-racist. Once you establish points of commonality with them, they do not care or comment on what you look like.
What happens before you "establish those points of commonality"? Do they just unleash a constant stream of racial epithets at you?
Look, the reason you think Bangladeshis are racist and White Republicans are not is because other Bangladeshis are comfortable speaking freely about ethnicity/race in front of you, whereas White (and other) people are not.
I'm a Black man in an overwhelmingly White Republican part of the South and I have overheard disparaging comments very casually made (e.g. about the number of Indians who frequent our local Costco) when people thought it was "safe". I've also had a White Republican friend confide in me how absolutely racist the area we live in is, including some choice comments made by people we know in common.
And, surprise: I'd never directly experienced it, as they somehow elected not to share their racist attitudes with me, or speak of race at all in my presence. Indeed, they just "accepted" me.
>Woke people [...] categorize individuals based on race/ethnicity.
No. They just honestly acknowledge the undeniable reality that other people (and systems) do.
So, the reason you find their speaking the truth racist is because you're in absolute denial that anyone else is.
> What happens before you "establish those points of commonality"? Do they just unleash a constant stream of racial epithets at you?
They do not. But establishing commonality is a predicate to relating to people. Anywhere you are in the world, you must make efforts to relate to people on their own terms. If you walk into a village in Bangladesh, you need to figure out how to relate to them. Nobody owes you acceptance. The onus is on you to show you belong.
> Look, the reason you think Bangladeshis are racist and White Republicans are not is because other Bangladeshis are comfortable speaking freely about ethnicity/race in front of you, whereas White (and other) people are not.
Which is a good thing! Liberal whites are way too comfortable talking about race.
> I'm a Black man in an overwhelmingly White Republican part of the South and I have overheard disparaging comments very casually made (e.g. about the number of Indians who frequent our local Costco) when people thought it was "safe". I've also had a White Republican friend confide in me how absolutely racist the area we live in is, including some choice comments made by people we know in common.
But do they treat you differently as an individual based on race? I think that’s the fundamental difference between how liberals and conservatives view race. To me, the only thing that matters is that you treat me as an individual without regard for race. And in my experience that’s true of white conservatives. I don’t care if people have abstract notions about people from Muslim countries if they’re able to treat me as an individual. And quite ironically, white conservatives are much better at that than white liberals.
I absolutely condemn anyone that would treat an individual differently based on race. And that’s why I think white liberals are wrong and must be defeated. But I do not think that people perceiving conflict between groups is equivalent to racism.
You seem to have a worldview that says simply speaking of race is racist, even if people are speaking up to address racial injustice. You then preclude that possibility by saying that there's no longer such a thing as racial injustice.
OTOH, if someone holds deeply racist beliefs, it's somehow not racist unless they direct racist words or behaviors explicitly and overtly at you personally.
In your world, racist ideas stay contained as long as they're never uttered in a personal interaction. They never influence networks, opportunities or systems. And, there's no legacy from centuries of codified racism with which to contend.
No. As long as we never mention race aloud in a personal interaction, then everything is OK.
> I absolutely condemn anyone that would treat an individual differently based on race. And that’s why I think white liberals are wrong and must be defeated.
The implication of your "absolute condemn[ation]" is that (supposedly) it's categorically impermissible to try to remedy generational impacts of past race-based adverse treatment. That sounds more than a little like "I'm alright, Jack" (which loosely translates from Brit-speak as, "I got mine, pull up the ladder").
> I don’t care if people have abstract notions about people from Muslim countries if they’re able to treat me as an individual. And quite ironically, white conservatives are much better at that than white liberals.
I'm really curious what has caused you to feel that way.
> the only people calling me “colored” are woke white people.
We can be confident that when "woke white people" use the term "colored" today, their intent is very different than it generally was in the South of the 50s and 60s — and in not a few places today as well.
I don't care what's inside people's heads. In terms of outward effect, both forms of racism erect a social barrier that shouldn't be there. I haven't encountered any 1960s-type racists; maybe they would be worse than the condescending/paternalistic woke variety. But what we have now is certainly worse than what I experienced growing up in a red House district in a red state in the 1990s.
BTW, the "woke white Republicans" bit was a joke ... as indicated by the typed smiley-face, a widespread (albeit perhaps-dated) typographic convention.
It's clearly not true: Acts of hate and discrimination are at highs; White nationalism and Christian nationalism are at multi-generational highs, with advocates in the White House and Congress. Leading news organizations promote replacement theory; laws openly discriminate against immigrants, liberals, and LGBTQ+ people.
Much of that is not done by and otherwise not uncommon in the Republican party.
Quite the opposite. The only thing at “multi-generational highs” is non-white support for the supposedly “racist” GOP candidate: https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/27/politics/minority-voters-bide.... (Obviously all these folks aren’t listening to enough NPR.)
Discrimination is at such historic lows that democrats have literally had to redefine terms like “racism” and “white supremacy.” In the 1990s that meant wearing a klan hood. Now it means opposing violent rioting. In terms of substantive policy, Donald Trump is literally to the left of where Bill Clinton was just a couple of decades ago. Possibly to the left of where Obama was when he was campaigning in 2008.
Because there is no meaningful opposition to legal equality, democrats have had to switch to policing thoughts and speech about race and gender and trying to socialize children into thinking about race and gender in certain ways. Look at how they react to Trump: they fixate on his lack of manners, not any particular policy. There’s no sweeping civil rights bill they support that he opposes. They don’t want to increase immigration, or give amnesty to illegal immigrants, or defund the police, or grant reparations, etc. (At least they won’t admit that publicly.) They simply don’t like how Trump talks about immigrants, crime, etc.
There's a nihilism that says it all doesn't matter: truth (we are 'post-truth'), justice, freedom, and human rights (we worship power), etc. The nihilism is a pretty dumb idea, transparently so. A large bunch of people advocating for it won't make it better - plenty of history already shows that.
The truth is much easier - easier to think about, much easier to support, easier to work with. I hope you'll consider joining us on the bright side - it's a much more fulfilling life and people desparately need you.
The truth is that discrimination is at historic lows, which is why non-white voters are increasingly seeing through efforts to paint the country as racist. For half a decade of white liberals screeching about racism—through all of the megaphones of media they control—the allegedly racist Trump has increased his support among non-whites year after year. The proof of the pudding is in the eating.
The “post-truth” idea is that of a “racist” country is what’s being peddled by white people on NPR. It’s bigger, more significant, and more fundamental than Trump’s “big lie” about the election.
I don’t know about the bright side, but I’m on the right side. I grew up in, from my perception, a society where racial classifications didn’t matter. Instead of trying to extend that to everyone, white liberals are now trying to reimpose racial categories on my kids. They’re fighting for the legal right to discriminate against Asians. All out of some warped sense that it’s 1963 again. Like soldiers coming out of their trenches not knowing the war has ended.
I’m not optimistic. They command so much power in our institutions that I think when all is said and done, they will have poisoned a generation of kids into seeing race and racism where it doesn’t exist.
The assertion I was responding to stated that republicans opposed legal equality. Obviously it’s true in the years immediately after segregation ended the democrats who supported it continued to support it.
There is no question that: 1) segregationists defected from the Dem party en masse circa the 1960s; 2) the defection was an immediate and direct reaction to Democratic actions on segregation on the national level; 3) the South flipped from D to R in the aftermath. The GP's one-liner is truer than your detailed rebuttal.
The defection was a messy period between 1948-1980. Following desegregation of the armed forces in 1948, the "States Rights Democratic Party" candidate for president carried 4 states against the Democrats and Republicans on a segregationist platform. In the next 10 elections Southern states defected several times from the mainline Democratic party candidates for segregation-friendly candidates -- sometimes to Republicans (Goldwater) but also to other third-party candidates (George Wallace, "American Independence Party") or to blue-dog Dems who weren't even running (eg Byrd).
By 1980 the South was solidly red; sometimes the only red states on the map. (At the national level. The transition was slower at state level and curious artifacts still remain today.)
To recap: Solid blue south from 1880-1948. Clear defection in 1848-1980. Solid red south from 1980-present. The defection was clearly led by segregationists leaving the Democratic party.
It's true that segregation lost support over time, and that Republicans drew lines to avoid becoming the party of segregation per se, and that other things were happening. In 1968 former Democrat George Wallace won the South with a brand-new third party, but he had had verbally moderated from "segregation now, segregation forever" in 1963 to leading his 1968 platform with "As this great nation searched vainly for leadership while beset by riots, minority group rebellions, domestic disorders..." [1] Wallace tried to run as Goldwater's Republican VP, but was rejected as too racist for the Republican party. Wallace's platform wasn't just race dog-whistles; it also listed student protests, war, taxes, etc.
Still, for the most part, the parent comment marshals technical truths to obscure the historical arc. It's true that segregationists wouldn't defect to the candidate that supports civil rights more; by 1980 this does not describe Republican candidates. It's true that most segregationists not change their local party affiliation; they did start voting against national Democratic candidates, and eventually for Republican candidates. Carter and Clinton are irrelevant to this historical arc.
By 1980, Republicans had lured white Southerners from the Democratic party (for president). They did so with a platform and candidates that reflected Southern racial attitudes, which were not segregationist by 1980. (The Democrats won the South with a segregationist platform from 1880-1948.) People can argue about the centrality of Republican appeals to the South across various axes, but there is a flawless historical record about the centrality of desegregation in ending the Democratic solid south, and it's not an accident that the Republicans are the modern party of "Total And Complete Shutdown Of Muslim [Immigration]" etc. Racial politics are a thing in the world, a thing in the US, and a thing in the D/R divide in every era.
Democrats of the time, when making the decision, knew they would lose the South. They did and the Republicans pursued what was/is called the "Southern Strategy", appealing to the former Dems.
> That’s a weird way of framing
It's not weird; it's conventional political history retold over and over.
> Democrats of the time, when making the decision, knew they would lose the South.
But they didn’t—the 1976 map looked like the “solid south” with Carter winning every southern state except Virginia. In 1980, Reagan won Alabama like he did New York. But Carter won most of the rural parts of the state: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_United_States_presidentia.... Carter did better in Alabama in 1980 than he did in New York.
> That’s a weird way of framing
It's not weird; it's conventional political history retold over and over.
Told by who to who? It’s a self-serving narrative told by liberals to liberals that doesn’t work timing-wise and ignores the much more important effect of economic changes.
Dems didn't "know" they'd be losing the South, but LBJ certainly feared it. He, of course, was the one who pushed the Civil Rights Act through the Southern-dominated Senate; Bill Moyers recounted that: "When he [LBJ] signed the act he was euphoric, but late that very night I found him in a melancholy mood as he lay in bed reading the bulldog edition of the Washington Post with headlines celebrating the day. I asked him what was troubling him. "I think we just delivered the South to the Republican party for a long time to come," he said." [0]
Long-term changes in voting patterns don't happen in one election, and they're a multi-variate phenomenon. In 1976, Carter was the incumbent, a Southerner himself, and a beneficiary of the Watergate fallout and the Nixon pardon. Reportedly, his own pollster "Patrick Caddell stated that televisions ads by the Carter campaign in the south 'were blatant-waving the bloody rebel flag'. To avoid being viewed as a liberal in the south Carter campaigned with [George] Wallace and voice[d] opposition to welfare and support for balanced budgets and national defense. He also campaigned with segregationist senators James Eastland and John C. Stennis." [1]
Before that, in 1964, Goldwater opposed the Civil Rights Act, and in that year's presidential race, he carried the Deep South, less Florida with its New York retirees, plus his home state of Arizona — and that was it. Previously, the South had been solidly Democratic since Reconstruction (except for war-hero Ike).
In 1968, "segregation forever" third-party candidate George Wallace carried most of the Deep South.
The 1972 election pitted the supposed peacenik Democratic candidate George McGovern against incumbent Nixon.
In 1980, Reagan famously announced his support for "states' rights" and excoriated "welfare queens," both of which of course were dog whistles to Southern segregationists. [2]
> In 1980, Reagan famously announced his support for "states' rights" and excoriated "welfare queens," both of which of course were dog whistles to Southern segregationists
I’m going to start with this point first because it’s the problem with the whole line of thinking. Democrats use the notion of “dog whistling” to brand Republican policies racist based on the premise that republicans are racist. But their support for that latter assertion is that republicans support supposedly racist policies. The reasoning is completely circular (and unfalsifiable).
Republicans opposed the creation of the welfare state in the 1930s when pro-segregation democrats introduced welfare programs. They likewise opposed the expansion of federal government at the expense of the states by vicious racists like Woodrow Wilson. So what are we to infer from Republicans’ continued support of the same policies before and after democrats abandoned their support for segregation?
To circle back to your first point, why would LBJ fear losing the south? Why would southern racist democrats switch to the party that had supported the civil rights act even more strongly? That’s like Muslims switching to the GOP because they’re mad at Biden for his support of Israel.
> based on the premise that republicans are racist
They offer plenty of evidence, and so do the Republicans themselves, some of whom openly embrace white nationalism, Christian nationalism, replacement theory, etc. Openly defying convention and saying racist things is commonplace and cliche. Going back further, someone in this thread even quoted the interview about school busing.
> Why would southern racist democrats switch to the party that had supported the civil rights act even more strongly?
Because the GOP — having had their electoral asses whipped for decades, looking for a way back into power, and with the John Birch Society and Liberty Lobby crowd (backed by ultra-rich folks wanting tax cuts) looking for a seat at the party's table — started espousing "conservative" positions and dog-whistling to the racists.
In essence, the GOP said, "OK, southerners, we get it that YOU don't like what we've been offering for years, and WE don't like that we keep losing elections, so we'll start offering what YOU like."
Once again: Life isn't a snapshot or freeze-frame, it's a movie. The Dems used to be the party of racism and the GOP the party of freedom and equal opportunity; over time, the parties switched roles.
To me it seemed like the Democrats changed, not the blue collar workers.
A lot of it is race, Democrats started essentially calling all White people racist, i.e. blaming all white people for generational racism. Tons of people who were not racist did not appreciate that - personally I believe it's why Hillary lost, her "basket of deplorables" comment lost her a lot voters.
At this point, to me the Democrats seem more racist than the Republicans. All you hear from the latter is oldschool liberal egalitarianism, whatever the sincerity; the former are obsessed about race and make everyone else obsessed by proxy with, for example, how they cast white guys as the antagonists in every piece of media.
Lee Atwater has this to say about Republican politics of 1980s:
"All that you need to do to keep the South is for Reagan to run in place on the issues that he's campaigned on since 1964, and that's fiscal conservatism, balancing the budget, cut taxes, you know, the whole cluster. ... You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger". By 1968, you can't say "nigger" — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now, you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this", is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigger, nigger". So, any way you look at it, race is coming on the back-burner."
I would say that the present state of the Republican party is very much in line with that, except that race didn't ever truly come onto the back-burner; somehow they're still talking about "those people" all the time.
So, Republicans are the party of white people who are proud that they are white (and annoyed that they can't show their pride openly anymore), while Democrats are the party of white people who feel guilty about it (and annoy everyone else by trying to make everyone aware of how badly they feel about it).
"blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that"
He's "not" saying that, and then he goes and says that.
He's point being that Republicans are most concerned with economic things, but because he things a better economic policy hurts blacks, therefor Republican are racist?
Or, maybe, they just want a better economic policy, and they don't view everything through the lens of race? (i.e. color blind) While Democrats in contrast do view every decision through that lens.
> somehow they're still talking about "those people" all the time.
And "they" being Democrats or Republicans? Because I see Democrats talking about race far more than Republicans.
Your last sentence tells me you view everything through the lens of race, but not everyone does that.
Republicans talk about race all the time, they're just careful to always refer to it by proxy - terms like "young urban males" etc. And Atwater's point is that many Republicans are concerned about those economic things because they are a proxy for race, and they wouldn't really pursue them otherwise.
And no, I don't view everything through the lens of race, and I think that American progressives often end up looking very silly when they try to shoehorn it everywhere. At the same time, it's very obvious from just looking at the American political discourse that racially driven thinking is very pervasive there even when it's not openly mentioned.
I've also heard plenty of explicit racial talk from Republicans - it just happens in environments where they don't need to check themselves. One of my hobbies is guns; my gun collection is well into the double digits, and includes plenty of stuff that'd be referred to as "weapons of war" in your typical progressive publication. Consequently, I spend a fair bit of time in the associated community, which, of course, leans very heavily to the right. And because of my guns, they often automatically assume that I am politically of the same mind as them, and talk to me and around me without the usual checks. What I can tell you I've heard the word "nigger" thrown around quite a bit in those circles, today - but it is okay, you see, because "it just means bad people, so it's not really racist". Some other choice wording includes "those animals" referring to Hispanic immigrants, or "those things" referring to trans folk.
> Republicans. All you hear from the latter is oldschool liberal egalitarianism
That seems very hard to reconcile with Donald Trump, overwhelmingly popular party leader, as well as many, many other Republicans who express hatred to contempt and create legalized discrimination against many groups, LGBTQ+ people and immigrants for example.
The rich Republicans figured out the con in the 70's. Lure more non-rich people into your flock and you can eventually take control of Congress with a bloc you'd never be able to build with your own ilk. Then keep them sated by never delivering on promised reforms while blaming the other side.
Those days of drawing distinctions and flaunting moral superiority are over. It’s all one uni party. Time to stop fighting each other.
Much of the same criticisms can be leveled at leading democrats. What they once championed they no longer do and have radically shifted multiple core positions.
The “uni parties” are covered in filth and it benefits them for us to be at each other throats like it was some sports ball game.
That's simply not true. The party platforms couldn't be much more diametrically opposed than they are these days. I would say almost all criticism can be laid on Republicans who have dropped all pretence of compassion for those who are poor or that don't share their values 100% and it has only intensified with MAGA.
“For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin.” Chuck Schumer, 2016.
I often see people blame Reagan for things he didn't do. For example Airline Deregulation has been making the rounds recently, blaming Reagan, that happened in 1978, Carter-D, several years before Regan became president. Did he deregulate a lot? Sure, but not everything. I am of no appreciation for Reagan (I identify as an Eisenhower/Rockefeller Centrist-Republican), but I like to put blame where blame is due.
There is no one true liberal narrative. There are somewhere in the range of 1 to 3 true conservative narratives.
Politics in the US is represented with two parties: the right, and the tent. No one person can represent everyone in the tent. Anyone can represent the right.
I always figured that liberal radio, e.g. Air America, struggled and failed because that point of view had too much competition from other media, e.g. newspapers and television. Back before internet, conservatives only had radio to hear what they considered their point of view taken seriously and the other side derided whereas liberals had lots of other options to hear their points of view taken seriously while the other side was painted as rubes.
Right-wing radio is heavily subsidized by right-wing institutions funded by the billionaires we all know about. It is happy to repeat lies, without shame, at length until they are believed. No non-subsidized radio station can compete, so all AM talk radio is openly right-wing, and is all there is on the dial in most rural settings.
IME a lot of millenials and younger that are "progressive" are too left for what can be considered "acceptable content" on corporate platforms. Tiktok has pretty good content in this area, but I think a lot of it boils down to the biases of liberal broadcast media owners not keeping up with the kind of content people want to hear. Anything further left than liberalism is considered a "national security issue" so you don't get any interesting viewpoints. Even breadtube is pretty milk toast. I'll just stick to my hip hop and punk jams tyvm.
Conservatives are easier to herd. They may argue with what the Republican party is doing at any given moment, but ultimately they will fall in line.
Centralized messaging is simply a better fit for the conservative worldview than it is for those on the liberal/left-leaning side of the spectrum. (Which in reality occupies a bigger tent than the GOP ever pitched.)
For instance, Boston has two NPR stations, WGBH and WBUR, and both are in trouble. This article talks about declining numbers of live listeners and resistance to digital transformation, but never mentions the issues brought up by Berliner.
https://www.boston.com/news/the-boston-globe/2024/04/11/two-...