Favorable to Trump? Pronouncing ‘emu’? Cause of California blackouts?

If you’ve ever heard something you didn’t like on NPR, you’re in good company. We’ve responded to several complaints with helpful advice and explanations. [View this email online]( [NPR Public Editor by Poynter's Kelly McBride]( Sometimes you hear things you don’t want to hear on NPR. Maybe that happens a lot of the time. Part of being a good news consumer and a good citizen is hearing stories, sounds, and viewpoints that challenge you. This week’s newsletter addresses several concerns from NPR audience members who heard things or read things that offended or concerned or disturbed them. It’s no surprise to anyone that politics stories are most likely to provoke ire. In addition to that, this week’s letters reminded us that radio listeners who are driving a vehicle get startled by traffic sounds, and people get frustrated when short stories connect dots without showing the evidence. And some people get angry at the way you pronounce “emu.” If there’s a theme to these responses, it’s that NPR expects audience members to do some work, too. You’re not going to get all the nuanced details of a complex story like climate change in one short news piece, but you will get that information over time. The introductions to stories often contain critical items, and if your attention is divided, you may miss something. From the Inbox Here are a few quotes from the Public Editor's inbox that resonated with us. You can share your questions and concerns with us through the [NPR Contact page](. Too much Trump [President Trump speaks at the RNC]( Jessica Koscielniak/Pool/Getty Images Phillip Thum writes: Kelly, third time is the charm. I am turning off NPR after 50 years of listening, no more donations from this guy. TOO MANY PRO TRUMP, ANTI BIDEN SHOWS. Looks like you're getting a few other emails filling up your inbox from old customers. Bluntly ............ Trump is a traitor, his own political party confirms it… You, NPR, are not representing the public interest, [by] running shows chipping at Biden's failures and Trump's successes if it were not for covid. Denigrating Trump's opponent is supporting Trump and his re-election. YOU ARE SUPPORTING A TRAITOR. A CRIMINAL IN POWER THAT WILL DO ANYTHING TO REMAIN IN POWER. Yours is the worst kind of journalism. The hidden corrupt kind. You are not alone in your frustration at NPR’s coverage of the presidential election. But I completely disagree with you that NPR is traitorous by providing critical coverage of Biden or favorable coverage of Trump. In fact, I find NPR’s coverage of both candidates to be in-depth, comprehensive and fair. Also voluminous, which is what you as a voter should expect from a national public media newsroom. Even if we set aside the argument about whether the words you use to describe Trump are accurate, NPR’s job is to help the American voters closely examine both candidates. By giving voters a lot of information about Trump and Biden, NPR is supplying the facts and context they need to ultimately decide the next president. The newsroom has provided plenty of critical coverage of President Trump, including extensive [coverage]( of his [impeachment]( his [failures]( in the [face of COVID-19]( and the numerous [investigations]( into his [activities](. After 50 years as a member of NPR's audience, you certainly recognize that it is your civic duty to be widely informed about the political forces shaping our world. While you (and most people) have already decided who you’re voting for, aren’t you curious about what your fellow citizens see in the other candidate? This week of the Republican National Convention is the time where you are most likely to see coverage that seems favorable to Trump, because it’s the week that his political party makes its case. Last week was the same for Biden. But come on, Phillip, you’ve been with NPR since its birth. You've watched NPR grow into a Fourth Estate powerhouse, a critical part of the checks and balances that help democracy function. NPR’s job is to document, inform and enlighten. The newsroom helps you understand the big picture, including how the Republican and Democratic parties work, who is influencing their platforms and where their candidates have experienced success and failure. NPR would be failing in its duty to inform if it only provided you with news about the president that you found palatable. — Kelly McBride Cause of the California black outs Judith Carson writes: [Nathan Rott's piece]( was, at the very least, misleading and inaccurate (and, I believe, intentionally so). The California Independent System Operator specifically and explicitly placed part of the blame for the rolling blackouts on a shortage of electricity supply that occurred because of cloudy and windless conditions along with nightfall which made it impossible for the state's mandated solar and wind electricity generating facilities to produce electricity. In reporting the story Nathan Rott (with the blessing of his NPR editors) attempted to pin the electricity shortage on "climate change." Rott's failure to accurately report the explicit CAISO announcement was a deliberate falsification. This is a great example of a complicated national news story. Jennifer Ludden, who edits stories on energy and environment for NPR, told us that Rott wrote this article late on a Friday. While reporters and editors on the energy and climate-change team worked over the weekend to find out more details about the blackouts, Friday’s story was “quick and newsy,” Ludden said. It was rooted in available public information and holds up as accurate, even as more information became available. Rott was reporting what was known at the time about the blackouts. He told us that power companies often do not provide many details about outages in order to keep markets from moving. More details were fully reported when they became [available the following week](. Rott points out that on that night (Aug. 14), the utility made no public comments about the cause of the blackouts. However, earlier in the day, when officials alerted the public to the possibility of electricity shortages, they mentioned “tighter energy supplies” due to cloud cover and lack of wind. In that same announcement, they mentioned multiple times that demand was increasing because of high heat, Rott wrote in an email. NPR did additional reporting on the issue. Correspondent Lauren Sommer [explained]( how the reliance on energy grid issues in California led to blackouts, specifically addressing how cloud cover and nightfall impact energy and wind electricity generation. Then, Rott teamed up with KQED’s Kevin Stark to provide [a second report]( on the impact of fires on the energy grid, the future of blackouts and rising temperatures, and how scientists connect today’s weather to climate change. — Meredith Roaten Road rage on the radio Cliff Sees writes: I'm a trucker. This morning (8.18) as I was driving through traffic, I heard some strange sounds. I thought it was warnings from my truck. It was your bumper music. Then a few moments later, there was a story about the first new movie in theaters since the pandemic began, a movie about road rage. You [played audio from the movie of car horns.]( Since I'm sure that most of your listeners are in their cars, you should be more conscientious about the sounds you broadcast. Don't do sirens, don't do car crashes, don't do car horns, and don't do unusual noises that could sound like parts of the vehicle falling off. Please. Morning Edition co-host David Greene introduced the story by saying this is the first new movie since the start of the coronavirus pandemic that will open in theaters. “Hollywood is watching closely. Here’s NPR’s Mandalit del Barco,” Greene added. If you missed that, then it may have felt disconcerting to suddenly hear that long car honk in the beginning of the story about Unhinged, the new thriller starring Russell Crowe. It’s likely that other listeners have had similar experiences, hearing this or other dramatic sounds coming from their radio. Because the film’s plot begins with an act of road rage, it’s appropriate to have a snippet of that heated exchange between Crowe’s character and the woman played by actress Caren Pistorius. We reached out to del Barco, who said she intentionally kept the clip short and quickly added her own voice describing what you heard as “an audacious road rage movie.” “I’m sorry the car honk frightened you. It was not my intent,” she said in an email. “I used a few seconds of audio from the movie to give our audience a taste and feel for this film. I apologize that it confused you while you yourself were in traffic.” She also thanked you for being such a careful listener. For added measure, we reached out to two radio experts for their thoughts. “My response to that particular listener would be to say, ‘Dear listener, respectfully, the piece is about road rage, and part of road rage is the honking horn,’ ” said Jeanine Howard Cherry, who recently retired as a journalism instructor at Western Kentucky University. She added that in radio journalism, reporters should be conscientious about sounds like police and firefighter sirens and tire squeals. "I can understand that argument because it is digital audio. It sounds real,” she said. “But you also achieved what you were hoping to do, and that’s to grab the attention of the audience, and you were successful with that.” Longtime radio journalist Lisa Meyer told us because there was an introduction beforehand, she doesn’t see a problem with the story. If there’s a particular concern about a sound, Meyer noted that a caveat could be added: something like “this piece includes realistic sounds.” “I think that there’s a shared burden. I think that there’s a burden on the listener to be an alert listener, but I also think that there’s a burden on the newsroom to make sure that the piece is identified properly and that there’s some kind of separation — which in this case, they did,” Meyer said. — Amaris Castillo Interrupting during interviews Lauren Kaija writes: Hi, I’d like to raise a concern about Steve Inskeep, specifically related to his interview style. This morning he interviewed [a senator from Oklahoma](. I’ve noticed this in multiple interviews on NPR (not positive if they were all him) but he was consistently and rudely cutting the senator off before he was finished speaking. Not due to time constraints but because it seems like something the senator said was either controversial or Inskeep didn’t agree or didn’t want listeners to hear it for some reason. I lean liberally but I value everyone’s opinion and viewpoint and I was just cringing listening to how he treated this senator who was just trying to explain what he knew. Very short and impersonal and targeted/biased questions. When interviewing a public official, a broadcast journalist must balance his obligation to be courteous and respectful to that individual with his obligation to inform the audience with clear and factual information. The audience comes first. In this case, Inskeep wanted to hear the plans of Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., for the congressional hearing where Postmaster General Louis DeJoy was to appear. I applaud Inskeep’s efforts to challenge the narrative that mail-in ballots are not secure. In fact, a few weeks ago I [criticized Inskeep for his deference to U.S. Attorney General William Barr]( on the same issue. In this interview, Inskeep interrupts Lankford three times. Each one is appropriate. Here’s a breakdown of each interruption. The first time, Lankford starts to suggest that mail-in ballots are not secure because not every state requires mail-in ballots be notarized, like Oklahoma does. Without getting into the weeds, Inskeep stops him and points out that every state has several layers of security. Inskeep redirects Lankford, asking why he is challenging the security of a system that experts agree is largely secure. Lankford interrupts back, clarifying that he is specifically concerned about states that mail ballots to all registered voters. (There are five of these states.) Inskeep interrupts a second time, pointing out that those five states have security measures in place. And Lankford interrupts back, pointing out that notarizing ballots is a gold standard. Then Lankford points out that the USPS sent out a warning advising election officials to allow for appropriate time when sending out mail-in ballots or other deadline-oriented communication. In an attempt to distance DeJoy from Trump, Lankford says DeJoy wasn't really selected by the president at all, he was selected by the board of governors, who were unanimously "appointed by the senate." Inskeep sets the record straight and offers a quick civics lesson with a final interruption, "Wait, wait, wait, appointed by the president – right? – and confirmed by the Senate. Is that right?" I agree the interview was not completely satisfying. Many live interviews are not because the subject has an agenda as is not answering questions, but instead is trying to slip in his own talking points. You can hear that clearly in this 7-minute exchange. But live interviews bring immediacy to the issue. The congressional hearing was happening in a few hours. In order for the audience to hear from a member of the committee, the interview had to be live. — Kelly McBride Spotlight on The Public Editor spends a lot of time examining moments where NPR fell short. Yet we also learn a lot about NPR by looking at work that we find to be compelling and excellent journalism. Here we share a line or two about the pieces where NPR shines. Remembering ‘Papu’ Courtesy of Martha Escutia and Marina Jimenez STORY CORPS [Remembering Grandfather 'Papu,' A Former Bracero Worker With 'A Twinkle In His Eye']( Last week, Morning Edition featured a moving StoryCorps conversation between cousins Martha Escutia and Marina Jimenez as they discussed their late grandfather, Ricardo “Papu” Ovilla. The Mexico native was dark-skinned with a twinkle in his eye, and incredibly strong for his size, they said. He loved to make them laugh. Ovilla came to the United States as part of the controversial Bracero program, which brought millions of Mexican guest workers into the country to address a workforce shortage stemming from World War II. He picked sugar beets and laid down railroad tracks in Oregon. In Montana, he was denied food because he was Mexican. Hearing this story told through the voices of Ovilla’s granddaughters is a glimpse into a forgotten chapter of American history. The most poignant part of the interview is when the cousins recall how their Papu, even after becoming a U.S. citizen, would carry his American passport in his shirt pocket. He feared being deported. “I told him, ‘Don’t do that. You can’t be walking around to the supermarket with your passport,’ ” Escutia recalled. “And he told me he would carry the passport because he was afraid that people are not going to believe that ‘Me, a dark-skinned man, is a U.S. citizen.’ You know, what can you say to that?” This tribute is both sweet and sad. It makes you wonder what kind of traumas the elders in your own family are still nursing from their past. — Amaris Castillo College + Coronavirus Elissa Nadworny/NPR The Coronavirus Crisis [Move In, Move Out: For In-Person College, Everything Rests On The First Few Weeks]( Not many people are taking road trips right now, but NPR’s education team started a project that will take you on a journey. Education correspondent Elissa Nadworny is following college students moving into dorms and hoping against hope that they can have a normal semester. The first few weeks are crucial for officials making the final call on students’ stays on campus, Nadworny says in one of her [latest missives from the road.]( The audio and visual snatches of normal moments nestled in between unfamiliar new practices make this project a treat for those of us still at home. The dads telling jokes, moms fretting over furniture and the chatter of friends reuniting take listeners to the scene, like every good audio story should do. But the story also firmly reminded the audience of the fear and anxiety behind these picturesque scenes. Most campuses, including the University of Georgia, require masks unless students are in their dorms or eating, but there are schools doing in-person classes and officials trying to insulate students from areas of the country where cases are still going up. This quote haunted me. In just a few words, a student excited about her return to campus put in perspective what’s at stake for students during this annual ritual turned bad dream. “It's really good that we were able to get on campus so they can see what tactics are working, what's not, even though we have to be, like, the sacrificial lambs,” UGA student Jannah Mohammad told NPR. — Meredith Roaten NOT All Things Considered Image Credit/Source [Low Tide - From Conch Public Radio]( Take a break from the news and listen to this new NPR parody, Low Tide from [Conch Public Radio](. Completely fictional, the “radio show” Low Tide mimics the tone and cadence of NPR radio hosts and reporters documenting ridiculous stories that sound like they could have been broadcast over public radio airwaves. (Almost. There are descriptions and words you would not hear on NPR.) Plus, in the first two episodes, you will hear introductions from actual NPR hosts, Ask Me Another’s Ophira Eisenberg and Planet Money’s Richard Smith. If you enjoy NPR-adjacent comedy, NPR politics reporter Danielle Kurtzleben made her own “[report]( and “[Balcony Edition]( that she shared on Twitter. — Meredith Roaten Behind the Scenes This is how the news gets made. We want your ideas for how we can do it better. International controversy over how to pronounce ‘emu’ By Meredith Roaten An NPR broadcast tech didn’t know what he was walking into when he set out to tell a story about a missing flightless bird in his area. Broadcast veteran Stu Rushfield started reporting on friends [who lost the emu from their farm in Maryland](. What was already a strange story took an even stranger turn when Rushfield realized that telling his radio story wouldn’t be simple. Rushfield started polling his colleagues on how to pronounce the word “emu” and eventually took the issue to the Research, Archives & Data team. The decision came down: both ee-moo and ee-mew are acceptable, even though the Oxford English Dictionary favors ee-mew. Rushfield went with the more common American pronunciation, sparking outrage in the emu’s native country. Australian journalists had Rushfield’s phone ringing off the hook to set the record straight, and even New Zealand got in on the action. The Guardian called [the public outcry]( against Rushfield’s ee-moo pronunciation an Australian “emu war” and prompting Rushfield to change his Twitter [username]( to titles like “nemesis of Australia” and “pending peace accord with Australia.” Rushfield said reporting this story was a welcome break from working behind the scenes in the studio, and he hopes to do more audio stories in the future. Here’s how Rushfield works from NPR headquarters during a pandemic. [Broadcast tech Stu Rushfield sits at his control board] What is your day-to-day life like working in a pandemic? It's been kind of normal as far as coming into work and doing my job is concerned. The biggest change that just hits you like a baseball bat is the fact that the building is so empty and so quiet and almost eerie. Since I work on the weekends, I know what it's like working on the weekends, and I also have worked holidays. So I know what it's like being here on a holiday when it's super quiet. At the beginning it was crazy weird, and now I feel like it's gotten almost normal. I think about how strange it is going to be and how distracting it is going to be when everybody eventually comes back. What do you miss about headquarters in normal times? I really miss having people around. I miss having hosts in the building, because there's just this camaraderie that develops between engineers and directors and hosts. It really is fun and really special and really kind of makes doing what we do enjoyable, because it is such a cohesive little triangle of people there. Plus, you know, there's just something about having the whole staff in the building together that makes it fun. I've become known for bringing in baked goods that my wife makes for everybody. We haven't been able to do that during the pandemic, because you can’t really bring a big loaf of bread and share it together because of germs. Recently she made some cinnamon buns and she individually wrapped them. So I came in with a giant bag of cinnamon buns, walked around, and people would reach in and grab their own cinnamon bun. Are there any upsides to working in a pandemic? Traffic got to be so incredibly light for such such a long time and my gas mileage I was getting on my commute shot up dramatically. And the other thing is, since I'm always around other people being in the studio or whatever I'm doing on a given day, I really enjoy just having some quiet time to myself during my lunch break. What challenges do you face running Weekend Edition and other live shows that you work on? Even on a good day, engineering a live show is a challenge. But then you add in the factors of multiple hosts being in multiple locations at the same time, and reporters not being in the building, reporters all having to connect remotely. I was doing Morning Edition for a good chunk of the summer. We'd have both hosts from home and Morning Edition is crazy anyway, so we would have up to 11 different remote guests in a given day. There are hoops that you have to jump through to figure out, given the limited resources on the console, how you’re going to juggle this many people. We have segments where one host is supposed to introduce a piece. We've been chatting with them down the talkback line and then suddenly it's time to go to them. We open their line and there is nothing but silence. The other hosts have to be really great about making sure they have the next script up in front of them, even if they're not planning on reading it. They just jump in and usually it's a pretty seamless thing. You have worked at NPR for 25 years, but this emu story is your first audio story. Why now? When I was growing up and going to university, my goal was to be a sports play-by-play broadcaster. The way things turned out, when I was graduating college the only offers I could get on the air were teeny-tiny towns in the middle of nowhere. I got an engineering job offer and from that point forward, it was really hard to think about going back to doing on-air stuff. I've had several different story ideas over the years that I actually started working on, but I just never really pushed myself to actually do it. I was talking to [NPR host] Scott Simon about this story. And he said, “Do it.” And I was like, you know what? All right, I'll do it. What surprised you about working on this story? Here’s a deep, dark little secret, especially from an audio engineer. I was on vacation the week that this happened. I had no equipment with me at home whatsoever. I recorded that entire thing just on my little Android phone. I didn't know how it was going to come out. I did the interview with her and then something was weird on my phone and I wasn't able to find the files. I had to redo the interview with her the same day. I was so worried that it was going to sound like garbage being recorded on my phone. I was paranoid because I'm an engineer and I'm supposed to be all about quality and stuff. But it turned out OK. How are you dealing with the fame and the “animosity” from Australia and New Zealand? One of the cool things about being at NPR is you never know who is listening to or paying attention to your work. This just blew up like crazy. I've had so many people follow me on Twitter and so many people are commenting and talking back and forth on Twitter about all this. I mean, people across the world who I never would have spoken to in a million years. What we do at NPR really can bring people together, even if they disagree. I'll be honest, being in the studio for day after day, hour after hour, week after week, month after month. It really can get depressing when you are just in there all the time, hearing one bit of bad news after another. It’s different from when you're at home listening to the radio, and you can say, “Oh, I can't listen to this anymore. Click, I'll turn it off.” When you're in the studio, you're in the studio. You can’t really escape it. Honestly, it can get depressing, so any time we have stories that can make somebody smile, I think we're bringing joy to somebody even for a few minutes. It's a huge accomplishment. The Office of the Public Editor is a team. Researchers Amaris Castillo and Meredith Roaten make this newsletter possible. We are still reading all of your messages on [Facebook]( [Twitter]( and [from our inbox](. As always, keep them coming. Meredith Roaten, NPR Amaris Castillo, Poynter Institute for Media Studies Kelly McBride NPR Public Editor Chair, [Craig Newmark Center for Ethics & Leadership at the Poynter Institute]( The Public Editor stands as a source of independent accountability. Created by NPR's board of directors, the Public Editor serves as a bridge between the newsroom and the audience, striving to both listen to the audience's concerns and explain the newsroom's work and ambitions. The office ensures NPR remains steadfast in its mission to present fair, accurate and comprehensive information in service of democracy. [Read more]( from the NPR Public Editor, [contact us]( or follow us on [Twitter](. You received this message because you're subscribed to Public Editor emails. This email was sent by National Public Radio, Inc., 1111 North Capitol Street NE, Washington, DC 20002 [Unsubscribe]( | [Privacy Policy](