Medium Is Worse Than NPR
A Manifesto
I like the idea of the manifesto, but I don’t like the idea of writing one. I’m lazy. In my fantasies, the actual content is sort of irrelevant. All I know is that it would include words like “zeitgeist”, “ethos”, and “logos”, and would inspire Elon Musk to tweet something like, “Did you see what that Knittel guy said about modern art in his latest manifesto? I’m not sure what he meant by ‘ubiquitous matrix of fakery’, but I’m abandoning my business interests to go meditate in a secluded cave until I’ve figured it out. I won’t quit till I catch the zeitgeist!”
Being a man of modest intelligence, I’m still not entirely sure what a manifesto is. To me, it sounds like a brand of pasta sauce that a beleaguered husband would chronically forget to buy at the grocery store — much to his wife’s dismay — one with a beaming, portly Italian chef spinning dough on its label. “Honey, you forgot to get the Manifesto again! Mamma Mia!”
In reality, I’ve never been a manifesto guy. It feels like a call to action, and I’m not too action oriented these days. Protests aren’t my thing, no matter what the specific nucleating event is. I’d much rather pick dead skin out of my ears with a pen cap and watch the chaos from a distance.
My contribution would amount to little more than a text to the leader of the activists, something he could read to the crowd from a megaphone before the action began: “Okay everybody, listen up! Knittel has just sent us a message. He wrote, “Best of luck, gang. Be safe! And would someone kindly bring me a jar of Manifesto after the protest. I’m making rotini twists and I’m just about out. Thanks.””
About four weeks ago, Uri Berliner, senior business editor at NPR, published a piece in The Free Press, outlining in remorseless detail all the corruption, rigid liberal bias, and unethical practices there.
It’s hardly surprising to anyone who’s been paying attention, but it’s an absolute must-read. Here’s the link:
Berliner is a highly credentialed, award-winning editor. He’d been at NPR for 25 years, resigning shortly after publishing his essay.
Here’s how he describes himself to open the piece: “I’m Sarah Lawrence–educated, was raised by a lesbian peace activist mother, I drive a Subaru, and Spotify says my listening habits are most similar to people in Berkeley. I fit the NPR mold. I’ll cop to that.”
In other words, he’s deeply and profoundly annoying. But more importantly, no one can mistake his essay for a conservative hit piece.
It’s all reminiscent of what was uncovered in the Twitter Files, minus all the government collusion…which, just as a reminder, is that brand of fascism woke leftists have conveniently discarded in favor of the ones they’ve largely made up, which are deliberately nebulous and designed to mean whatever they want them to mean in the moment when it’s politically advantageous, i.e. to slur anyone they imagine are racist, bigoted, homophobic, transphobic…and all those other obnoxious words ending in “ist” and “phobic” that those frothy-mouthed lunatics are so fond of screeching at sane people who merely disagree with them.
Moving on…
Berliner writes, “There’s an unspoken consensus about the stories we should pursue and how they should be framed. It’s frictionless — one story after another about instances of supposed racism, transphobia, signs of the climate apocalypse, Israel doing something bad, and the dire threat of Republican policies. It’s almost like an assembly line.”
Sound familiar Mediumites? Well, here’s some more hints…
“The mindset prevails in choices about language. In a document called NPR Transgender Coverage Guidance — disseminated by news management — we’re asked to avoid the term “biological sex”. The mindset animates bizarre stories — on how The Beatles and bird names are racially problematic, and others that are alarmingly divisive; justifying looting, with claims that fears about crime are racist; and suggesting that Asian Americans who oppose affirmative action have been manipulated by white conservatives.”
Berliner notes that back in 2011, 26 percent of listeners described themselves as conservative, 23 percent as middle of the road, and 37 percent as liberal.
But by 2023, only 11 percent identified as very or somewhat conservative, 21 percent as middle of the road, and 67 percent of listeners said they were very or somewhat liberal. “We weren’t just losing conservatives,” Berliner writes, “we were also losing moderates and traditional liberals.”
“Concerned by the lack of viewpoint diversity, I looked at voter registration for our newsroom. In D.C., where NPR is headquartered and many of us live, I found 87 registered Democrats working in editorial positions and zero Republicans. None…”
Wait…none???
“…So on May 3, 2021, I presented the findings at an all-hands editorial staff meeting. When I suggested we had a diversity problem with a score of 87 Democrats and zero Republicans, the response wasn’t hostile. It was worse. It was met with profound indifference. I got a few messages from surprised, curious colleagues. But the messages were of the “oh wow, that’s weird” variety, as if the lopsided tally was a random anomaly rather than a critical failure of our diversity North Star.”
“An open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR,” Berliner laments. “And now, predictably, we don’t have an audience that reflects America. And this, I believe, is the most damaging development at NPR: the absence of viewpoint diversity.”
Medium is worse than NPR because it’s never had an open-minded spirit, far as I can tell. It’s never desired viewpoint diversity…not on any hot button political topics anyway. Not if you’re a conservative, or even slightly right of center, or heterodox like myself.
But Mike, NPR is a publicly funded radio broadcast company, and Medium is a privately owned writing platform. Apples and oranges, no?
No.
Fundamentally, they’re both tentacles of the same “Censorship Industrial Complex”, as award-winning journalist Michael Shellenberger calls it.
Speaking of Shellenberger, he offers this tweet when describing the extreme partisanship of what was formerly Twitter:
“As context, it’s important to understand that Twitter’s staff & senior execs were overwhelmingly progressive. In 2018, 2020, and 2022, 96%, 98%, & 99% of Twitter staff’s political donations went to Democrats.”
Are we seeing a trend yet?
What’s especially disturbing is that both Berliner and Shellenberger could just as easily have been describing YouTube, Facebook, CNN, MSNBC, and to a slightly lesser degree maybe but similarly slanted, NBC, ABC, and CBS.
Oh…and Medium!
So, are there any conservatives on the Medium staff? Even one?
I recently asked Medium CEO Tony Stubblebine about this in a short exchange we had recently. He didn’t answer the question. Perhaps it’s unfair to speculate as to why he didn’t answer — perhaps he’s just too busy — but I suspect it’s a topic he’s about as eager to engage with as Joe Biden is with a teleprompter.
The exchange began when I noticed a comment Tony left in response to a member who was concerned about partisanship on Medium. Here it is:
“…as a platform we can have values that are disconnected from partisanship. I’d say that these values exist first and that it’s then political parties that align to be closer or farther away from them. So if something looks partisan, that’s the fault of the parties, not of ours. We are a private company and we can build around whatever value system we want. That’s a strength of American capitalism..values that are independent of partisanship. We are a private company and we can build around whatever value system we want.”
When confronted with accusations of partisanship, Stubblebine’s strategy is as follows: he offers up Medium’s values and expects us to believe they’re untainted by Medium’s politics, and then he blames your politics when you point out that they are.
Or he just ignores you…
Our little exchange is further evidence of this. He highlights what he wants us to believe are two of the most fundamental values driving Medium: anti-hate and pro-science. But he conveniently avoids elaborating, even when pressed…
Here’s the exchange:
One can’t help but make the connection between what Berliner describes at NPR — being asked to avoid using the term “biological sex” — and what happened with the member I described here, the one who was reported for writing, “Biologically speaking, there are only two sexes”, and later emailed by Medium staff with the warning that his language had violated a “hate speech” rule.
Of course this is the risk involved when we sacrifice free speech at the alter of “hate speech”; the question invariably becomes: who defines “hate speech”?
Stubblebine would have you believe the phrase exists independently of Medium bias, and only emerges from hyperspace when he summons it, where it’s bestowed upon him by an omniscient, socially conscious God (he/him), who then blesses him with a divine knowing that remains elusive to the rest of us.
It’s meaning is purely objective according to Tony. And yet, the prophet refuses to define it.
Why?
Well, he refuses to define it because if he did it would reveal his subjectivism, i.e. his politics…which he’s currently pretending aren’t relevant.
When far left ideologues are pressed to define “hate speech", we tend to see this brand of doublespeak, which is almost unfailingly married to some form of gaslighting …along with the trademark lack of transparency of course.
That’s how a certain set of “values” can quickly evolve into authoritarian cudgels. And this is a serious problem currently, seeing as though — with the exception of X — nearly all our social media and legacy media share identical values, which are clearly leftist values. And leftists have this annoying habit of describing any values that differ from their own as “hate speech”, and censoring and “deplatforming” them as a result.
The routine kinda goes like this: woke leftists dogmatically insist on one narrative — theirs — will take any and all authoritarian measures to spread it and suppress opposition, and when the mission is accomplished will offer unironic boasts about “saving democracy” from the evil “fascists”.
It’s worth noting that when my friend asked for clarification, the staff remained implacable and mysterious and distant, much like ‘Big Brother’ in 1984. Much easier to assume a mystical moral high ground and force the underlings to wordlessly accept decisions than to be bothered with that pesky intellectual honesty. The ends always justify the means with woke leftists, so if dishonesty and deception are required they won’t hesitate to deploy them. But in order to maintain their precious moral high ground, they’re forced to remain coy about it all.
Conservativephobic? I think so. And I also think I’ve invented a useful new word, unwieldy as it is.
Of course none of this is even worth uttering, ultimately. Medium as ideologically addled hellscape should be painfully obvious to all; if the 8 trillion Trump bashing articles aren’t enough of a clue, I’ve got a non-binary bridge named Pat I’d like to sell to you.
Another member shared with me an incident where she was reported for writing “J.K. Rowling is not a Holocaust denier”, and received the same treatment from Medium staff the other member did.
And I’ve experienced this same brand of fuckery myself, shortly after taking issue with a member here who’d shat all over his home state, their values, religion, and way of life. But his biggest gripe was their strong belief that grown men shouldn’t be working out their sexual fetishes in the company of five year olds. “Bigots!” he wrote. “They just want to read the kids stories! What’s wrong with that?”
He reported me, and I received the same wrist slap from staff as the others.
I have no problem whatsoever with anyone shitting on anything or anyone else— for the record — so long as those getting shat on can shit back. And this is the crux of the issue, ain’t it?
If Medium is as non-partisan as Mr. Stubblebine says, it would be quite easy for him to demonstrate that. Simply tell us how many conservatives are on the staff. That’ll do it. Pretty easy stuff.
I’m guessing zero.
We’ll likely never find out, but I’ll still extend the invitation to Tony to join me in the comments for some Q & A. We’ll set up a table, break bread, eat some rotini twists, and mumble words like “zeitgeist” and “ethos” during awkward pauses. Perhaps he’ll prove me wrong, and I’ll be forced to eat some crow. Meanwhile, I’ll practice my apology in anticipation of that, something worded appropriately for Medium staff, something they’d appreciate. I don’t know how it’ll go yet exactly, but it’ll surely involve words like “harm”, “violence”, and “trauma”, and will certainly include some vague promise to educate myself and do better in the future. Oh I know the script readers! Don’t you worry! Now pass the Manifesto and let’s dig in…
