An incomplete transformation of an NPR executive.

An NPR executive has retired and decided to sample the real America outside the Beltway of Washington DC. He discovered that the real America is much different from the one depicted by the Media (including NPR). Yet, he rejects the criticism of this state of affairs.

"We should all be worried that more than 65 percent of voters think there is a lot of fake news in the mainstream media and that our major media institutions are seen as creating, not combating, our growing partisan divide.

Some of this loss of reputation stems from effective demagoguery from the right and the left, as well as from our demagogue-in-chief, but the attacks wouldn’t be so successful if our media institutions hadn’t failed us as well.

None of this justifies the attacks from President Trump, which are terribly inappropriate coming from the head of government. At the same time, the media should acknowledge its own failings in reflecting only their part of America. You can’t cover America from the Acela corridor, and the media need to get out and be part of the conversations that take place in churches and community centers and town halls.

I did that, and loved it, though I regret waiting until well after I left NPR to do so. I am skeptical that many will do so, since the current situation in an odd way works for Trump, who gets to rile his base, and for the media, which has grown an audience on the back of Washington dysfunction. In the end, they are both short-term winners. It is the public that is the long-term loser.

Ken Stern is the president of Palisades Media Ventures and the former CEO of National Public Radio. His book “Republican Like Me: How I Left the Liberal Bubble and Learned to Love the Right” (Harper) is out Tuesday.

 

Mr Stern is wrong on two counts:

 

1. The Media no longer covers the news but makes it. And even the Author admits the Media bias. Media mavens believe that no other point of view but theirs exists, or if it does, it is not legitimate. Such a state of affairs can not be tolerated and will not be tolerated. Mr Trump is doing a great service to the Country in pointing this out;

 

2. This state of affairs has not started by the election of Donald Trump, but it forced the Media bias into the open.