Media top headlines July 29
In media news today, the CDC gets hit by liberal media outlets for 'confusing message' on wearing masks, WaPo's Max Boot gets ripped for tweeting Saudi Arabia is 'more progressive' than the U.S. for vaccine mandate, and NBC's Tokyo Olympics coverage spurs 'advertiser anxiety' as viewers continue to drop
Scholar and activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali blasted NPR and the media at large for their trend toward activist journalism in an interview with Fox News Thursday, calling it "nonsense."
NPR announced Thursday that reporters could participate in activities that advocate for "freedom and dignity of human beings" on social media and in real life.
"I think stop calling it journalism," Ali told Fox News when she heard about the report. "If you want to engage in activism, go ahead. But to call it journalism, it's a joke. It's not journalism. It's not reporting, it's not analyzing, it's not investigative reporting because for all of those activities, you require an open mind, you require a kind of philosophy that you follow the facts to where they lead and then you have to have that disposition of honest, impartial reporting. That's not what activism is about."
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"It's just such a shame that NPR is doing that with taxpayer money," she said. "That's entertainment, it's activism. It's something else, but it's not journalism."
The Media Research Center's Dan Gainor was just as outraged, agreeing that the outlet being taxpayer funded makes their announcement all that worse.
"It’s not news that NPR is leftist, but that they won’t even try to hide it anymore is astonishing," Gainor said in a statement to Fox News. "This is a taxpayer-funded ‘news’ organization. Why do we give it a penny?"
"The question journalists used to ask themselves was: ‘Are you an activist or a journalist?’" he continued. "At NPR, we know the answer. And they’re sure as hell not journalists."
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More media critics took to Twitter to blast NPR's "ethics policy," most agreeing that NPR's approved protests would be leftist in nature.
"Can't wait to see how the studiously non-partisan and steadfastly non-ideological NPR interprets which protests count as ‘advocating for the freedom and dignity of human beings’ and which ones don't," journalist Glenn Greenwald reacted.
More mainstream journalists like CNN's Jim Acosta and PBS' Yamiche Alcindor have been less stealthy about partisan agendas in their reporting, often pushing the boundaries when it comes to editorialized news coverage.
Surveys on Americans' trust in U.S. institutions placed the media near the bottom. Neither Ali nor Gainor were surprised by the outcome.
"The woke young journalists have completely taken over the field and are destroying what little remains of major media credibility," Gainor said. "The New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, CNN, are all like watching one of those clown cars in the circus. Every single journalist that climbs out of the car is in makeup and clown shoes. This is what journalism has become and it’s why media trust is in the toilet."
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"The media is a source of trouble," Ali said, before noting that more and more people are seeking out alternative news sources such as podcasts.
"Some of the leading media corporations, they've decided what sells is divisiveness, and hatred and sensationalism, and that's how they make their money, and I think that the general public is seeing that," Ali said. "And that's why poll after poll after poll shows there is very, very low trust in media, because it's not media anymore, really."
Fox News' Andrew Murray contributed to this report.
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