From: Eva Rodriguez, Vice President and Executive Editor, NPR
Re: Monthly Content Review
August 2024 session
This cohort met for the last time August 30 to review NPR’s coverage from the Biden-Trump debate on June 27 through Biden’s July 21 decision to step out of the 2024 presidential campaign.
The Cohort:
Amina Khan, Editor, Science Desk
Ariana Lee, Producer II, Embedded/ESU
Carrie Kahn, South America Correspondent, International Desk
Jason DeRose, Religion & Belief Correspondent, National Desk
Jerome Socolovsky, Audio Journalism Trainer, Training Team
Leila Fadel, Host, Morning Edition
Linah Mohammad, Producer I, All Things Considered
Matthew Schuerman, Editor III, Weekend Edition
*Nikki Birch, Lead Video Producer, Music/Visuals
Stephen Fowler, Reporter, Washington Desk
*Unable to attend
Note: DME Jim Kane joined at my request to take notes to allow me to focus entirely on the conversation.
The Content:
NPR aired or published 2,232 pieces of content (not including Newscast) in July 2024.
· By category: 1,617 were news -- produced pieces or two-ways with NPR/Member station reporters or outside experts/newsmakers; 219 were categorized as culture and 63 as music. (333 pieces were uncategorized.)
· By platform: Broadcast shows hosted 1.231 of these pieces, owned and operated digital platforms were vehicles for 748 stories and podcasts accounted for 246. (Content posted exclusively on third-party platforms such as Instagram and YouTube were not discoverable in this data scrape.)
· Topic of focus: In July, NPR produced 43 broadcast, digital and podcast pieces that touched on the Biden-Trump debate and its aftermath.
The discussion, generally: One of the major political developments over the summer was President Biden’s July 21 decision to drop out of the 2024 presidential race. Questions about Biden’s fitness to serve another four years had popped up throughout the year, but they spiked after the president’s June 27 debate with former President Trump. We received significant reader and listener feedback – roughly 1,700 comments/letters -- during this period that criticized our reporting on the anxiety within the Democratic Party if Biden were to stay in the race. The comments and criticism were consistently framed as, “Why is NPR pushing a storyline that only serves to hurt the president politically and boost Trump? Why aren’t you focused more on pointing out Trump’s failings?” (These comments were deemed to be human generated and not produced by bots or an orchestrated write-in campaign.)
We analyzed NPR’s arc of coverage from debate night to Biden’s campaign exit. We began by discussing the language used in reporting on the debate. The first NPR piece after the debate referred to the president’s performance as “shaky” – a much tamer description than used by many other leading news organizations. One member of the cohort pointed out that NPR has a track record of using more restrained or muffled language when describing events. She noted that after Trump surged to national political prominence in 2016 it took NPR a much longer time than other outlets to label as a deliberate misrepresentation or “lie” a repeated assertion by Trump that was demonstrably false. Others wondered whether we served our audiences well when we “pulled punches” in this way. But how do we convey as much information and context to our audiences without characterizing a speech or event or veering inappropriately into opinion? Because of deadline pressures, on-air two-ways – in which a reporter is interviewed by a host – are often the most efficient ways to get information on-air, compared to the additional time it takes to deliver a produced piece narrated by a reporter that includes a variety of voices. But these two-ways also often force the reporter to delve into subjective descriptions so that listeners understand what has happened. There was quick consensus that “tape and copy” pieces that use more clips of the subjects in question would allow listeners to hear key moments for themselves while also benefitting from – and having the freedom and foundation to agree or disagree with – the context and analysis a reporter offers.
Within days of the debate, NPR went from calling Biden’s debate performance “shaky” to referring to it as “disastrous.” Some in the cohort believed we could have been far stronger in our initial description but there was also acknowledgment that it was not entirely clear in the immediate aftermath how Biden’s political allies and the electorate would digest the president’s performance. The need for stronger language became evident when Biden’s “shaky” debate began to have “disastrous” consequences in the form of questions from political allies about the wisdom of Biden remaining in the race. Some Democratic allies even called for Biden to withdraw.
We also examined our run of coverage in light of listener/reader criticism that NPR was either pushing an agenda to hurt Biden or should pull back on coverage that was hurting Biden and focus more on documenting what these audience members believed was more dangerous or disturbing behavior or language from Trump.
The 43 NPR pieces produced during the three-week period between debate/Biden exit reflected the increasingly vocal and expanding concern within Democratic circles and the electorate at large about Biden’s physical and cognitive abilities. The pieces also uniformly included defenders of the president, explaining that he had simply had a bad night. But the majority of pieces also noted through outside voices and experts that Biden’s debate performance served to confirm long-held fears of many that the president had grown increasingly frail in mind and body. In other words, that the poor debate performance was not a “one off.” NPR polling and interviews with a variety of sources in and out of official political circles confirmed that the president’s age and health were top concerns.
During this period, candidate Trump was virtually silent on the question of Biden’s fitness. Trump’s proxies were also relatively restrained. The focus of coverage changed dramatically on July 13 with the assassination attempt on Trump, followed days later by the Republican National Convention.
The takeaways:
1. NPR produced accurate and comprehensive coverage of the questions raised by politicos and citizens about President Biden’s health, age and cognitive abilities. Had former President Trump had a terrible debate performance, preceded by questions about his fitness and followed by murmurs and then public pronouncements from Republicans and other allies urging him to drop out of the race, NPR would have covered those developments with the same consistency and rigor.
2. The critiques and criticisms from some of the NPR listeners and readers suggest that NPR should pick sides and somehow shield certain officials from damaging coverage. In this case, the criticism focused on our coverage of an incumbent, “liberal” Democratic president and an arc of reporting that reflected the concerns from political allies and voters at large – coverage that some of those who wrote in believed we should have pared back on because it hurt Biden’s standing. NPR cannot and does not choose sides. At the heart of NPR’s public service mission is the effort to provide facts and context that are useful to listeners and readers so that they’re more empowered to make up their own minds. As journalists, it is not our job to shield or cheerlead or criticize to advance a political or ideological agenda.
3. We should strive to provide listeners of our news magazines and those who come to NPR.org or the NPR app with as much audio, video and direct quotes from the subjects of stories as possible so that they can hear or see for themselves what has transpired or what has been said. The context or analysis provided by reporters and outside experts is that much more valuable when listeners and readers also have the “raw material” to assess for themselves.
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