Bleeping political stories

We will never stop agonizing over the best approach to covering politics [View this email online]( [NPR Public Editor by Poynter's Kelly McBride]( There are so many debates over whether journalism makes citizens more or less prepared to truly understand what’s going on in Washington. We respond to two audience letters today; the first addresses the philosophy that underpins political news, and the second asks for the thinking behind a specific decision to bleep a racial epithet on the NPR Politics Podcast. As a news provider that serves the entire country, NPR’s political coverage could not be more significant to its core mission. Read on to see the questions NPR listeners and readers have, and what we discovered as we looked for answers. 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](. Do we need a new approach to covering politics? Louise Lazur writes: Did anyone catch Margaret Sullivan's [column in [The] Washington Post]( about media's coverage of politics? I recommend it and wonder what your thoughts are. Thank you. Yes I did read that, and I have a different take. Where Sullivan urges her fellow journalists to refocus the lens through which they cover politics and policy, I believe the solution is less about replacing one form of journalism with another, and more about changing the mix of what we offer to the public. Sullivan argues that rather than framing certain stories, like the recent disagreement over which Republicans would sit on the committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection, as a contest or a sport, journalists should, “Toss out the insidious ‘inside-politics’ frame and replace it with a ‘pro-democracy’ frame.” The politics-as-sport approach leads to a false equivalency, Sullivan asserts, suggesting that Republicans are not playing fair. While I agree with much of what Sullivan argues, including that news consumers need more context and that disingenuous politicians manipulate daily political journalism, I don’t believe it’s possible to simply replace blow-by-blow daily political reporting with deeper, more contextual stories. Rather than seeing those two different approaches to political journalism as mutually exclusive, I prefer to think of them as different offerings to be served up at different times. Indeed, NPR offers both. We see the blow-by-blow developments in [web updates]( in the [two-way interviews]( with political reporters on the daily news shows and in the [NPR Politics Podcast](. But you see stories that dig into the deeper context of political content across NPR’s portfolio, particularly in other podcasts like [Throughline]( and [Code Switch](. And content like this is more frequently migrating to the larger broadcast audience, either as stories that are repackaged for All Things Considered or Morning Edition, or as member stations opt to [broadcast]( the entire show on their airwaves. I like this approach of having a stable of nimble journalists and journalism products, some geared toward daily reporting, others focused on in-depth analysis and some that might do both. The danger of forcing it, of going too far past what happened on any given day and stating what it means, is that journalists will get it wrong. For every event, whether it’s 9/11 or Jan. 6, it takes weeks and months of reporting to determine what the consequences are for democracy. Political developments are even harder to contextualize. Daily reporting requires simply describing what happened, and that doesn’t automatically equate to slipping into a false equivalency. Although it certainly can when the reporting is vague or poorly edited. So what do I think? We need both. Citizens need journalists to be vigilant in reporting daily developments and to avoid manipulations by disingenuous actors that would lead us to false equivalencies. But we also need to add more of Sullivan’s suggested approach to the mix, though by its very nature, deeper, more contextual stories will take longer to produce and therefore be more rare than daily observations. — Kelly McBride To bleep or not to bleep Sarah Williams writes: I'm a regular listener to several NPR podcasts, and my comment is for a few of them. I provided [the link for the politics podcast]( for an example. In general, I absolutely support bleeping racial epithets. But in the coverage of the testimony of the police officers protecting the Capitol, one of the officers spoke a lot about being called a BLEEP, and how upsetting that was. I think in times like this, where the word is the topic of the reporting, it would be good to either leave it in, or make sure it's clear which word it was. I suspect in visual news it would have been more obvious, but on the podcast I could tell it was a racial epithet, but not what race it was being attacked. I think greater clarity is more important in this situation. In this particular example you shared, we believe the NPR Politics Podcast makes it clear what the bleeped word is. During the episode, White House Correspondent Ayesha Rascoe said: “So we had two of the officers, Harry Dunn, who is Black, Aquilino Gonell, who is originally from Dominican Republic, but an American citizen. They talked about how they were attacked verbally in racial terms and very, very foul language. And Harry Dunn, in particular, talked about how he was cursed out and called the N-word over and over.” Then, immediately following this, the clip of Dunn describing how he was verbally attacked is played, with the slurs bleeped. By saying what word Dunn said he was called, and then quickly playing a clip of him speaking about it, we think NPR employed a generally good setup to understand what word Dunn was saying, while still bleeping the offensive language. We reached out to NPR Managing Editor for Enterprise and Planning Gerry Holmes to learn a bit more about how NPR makes the decision to censor offensive language. Here’s what he said: “The bar is very high for offensive language as we consider the strongest way to tell our stories for our audiences. We look at each case or request for allowing offensive language to be included and when we deem it absolutely critical, we’ll warn our audiences about the use so they can decide and know that language that may be offensive is included.” — Kayla Randall 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. FDA approval [A health care worker fills a syringe with the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.]( Mary Altaffer/AP THE CORONAVIRUS CRISIS [Why Pfizer's FDA Approval Matters And What It Means For Vaccine Mandates]( This week, the news that the FDA approved the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine was everywhere. NPR was there to guide readers with [this explainer]( by reporter Deepa Shivaram, and it was a helpful piece to have on hand. [Last week]( NPR Director of Digital News Saeed Ahmed told us that part of providing service to readers is “anticipating their obvious next question and answering it.” This digital story lived up to that, and answered the questions from its headline, “Why Pfizer’s FDA Approval Matters And What It Means For Vaccine Mandates,” and more. — Kayla Randall Afghanistan explained Twenty years ago, the United States invaded Afghanistan to oust the Taliban, which had sheltered Osama Bin Laden. The occupation lasted so long and changed focus so many times that many news consumers (me) lost track of the details. NPR’s coverage of the hasty military withdrawal and the disastrous consequences has been a perfect balance of emotion and context, inspiring us to care and providing just the right dose of history and context. There are way too many stories to name them all. But here are just a few that we found educational and moving: - A Martínez’s [interview on Monday, Aug. 16]( with retired CENTCOM Commander Gen. Joseph Votel was a chance to ask if the U.S. was ignoring the obvious. - You won't be able to turn away from [this story]( about an Army interpreter caught in maddening red tape for more than a decade, even while his American supporters frantically try to help. - [This story]( about where the Taliban gets their money (opium), and [this story]( about the Taliban’s newly acquired weapons, courtesy of the Afghan army and the United States, offer a deeper understanding of the Taliban in 2021. We could go on and on. But the point is that by zooming out for a broad perspective and then zooming in tight for human stories, it’s easy to stay up to speed and to keep caring about Afghanistan. — Kelly McBride The Office of the Public Editor is a team. Researchers Amaris Castillo and Kayla Randall make this newsletter possible. Illustrations are by Carlos Carmonamedina. We are still reading all of your messages on [Facebook]( [Twitter]( and [from our inbox](. As always, keep them coming. Kelly McBride NPR Public Editor Chair, [Craig Newmark Center for Ethics & Leadership at the Poynter Institute]( Kelly McBride, Public Editor Kayla Randall, NPR Amaris Castillo, 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. 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