On this last day of 2024, I’m taking a look back before we plunge ahead into the new year. Media Nation’s 10 most viewed posts for the year range from my takedown of an intellectually dishonest critique of NPR, to CBS News’ reprimand of an on-air host for being too confrontational with a guest, to news that The Boston Globe is seeking to acquire Boston magazine. So let’s get right to it.
1. Fish in a barrel: Berliner’s case against NPR is based on false and out-of-context facts (April 11). Uri Berliner, a top editor at NPR, created a stir when he accused his employer of liberal bias in a long essay for The Free Press. The problem was that his examples didn’t hold up to scrutiny. To name just one: Berliner wrote that NPR failed to confess its sins after special counsel Robert Mueller found “no credible evidence” that Donald Trump had colluded with Russia, which isn’t even remotely what Mueller reported. There was a lot more disingenuousness where that came from. Berliner ended up resigning his post at NPR and going to work for — yes, The Free Press.
2. Less news, more happy talk: Why CBS News’ reprimand of Tony Dokoupil is so ridiculous (Oct. 8). Journalist and author Ta-Nehisi Coates popped up on the CBS morning newscast to promote latest book, “The Message,” and faced an unexpectedly tough grilling over his anti-Israeli views from co-host Tony Dokoupil. Among other things, Dokoupil told Coates that his book woudn’t be out of place “in the backpack of an extremist.” Coates gave as good as he got, and he probably sold a few more books than he otherwise would have. Nevertheless, CBS News management called Dokoupil on the carpet — probably because his attempt to commit journalism contradicted the light banter that defines the morning-news format.
3. A riveting Boston Globe story about a medical disaster with ties to the local news crisis (Jan. 29). A Globe report about the death of a new mother at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital had something in common with the same forces that have hollowed out much of the local-news business. The mother’s death may have been caused by the hospital’s lacking a basic piece of equipment that had been repossessed because its corporate owner, Steward Health Care, wasn’t paying its bills. Steward, in turn, had been pillaged by a private-equity firm, Cerberus Capital Management, which is the same outfit that helped the notorious newsroom-gutting hedge fund Alden Global Capital acquire Tribune Publishing’s nine major-market daily newspapers in 2021.
4. Boston 25 is shrinking. You won’t be surprised to learn that private equity is to blame (July 15). Sticking with our private-equity theme, The Boston Globe reported that Boston 25, at one time a leader in the city’s television news firmament, was being gutted — and that many of the cuts coincided with the station’s acquisition by Apollo Global Management in 2019. Anonymous sources told the Globe that there had been an exodus of employees who cited “issues with the quality of the station’s content, overwhelming workloads, pay cuts, layoffs, and uncertainty over whether its private equity owners will keep the lights on.”
5. Exclusive: Boston Globe Media is looking to buy Boston magazine (Dec. 6). About a month ago I learned that Boston Globe Media was seeking to acquire Boston magazine, a glossy monthly that encompasses content ranging from fluffy lifestyle features to investigative reporting. No timetable was given, and there’s no guarantee that the deal will come to pass. Still, I think it’s likely to happen sometime within the next few months.
6. Arc was supposed to be a key to The Washington Post’s future. It became a problem instead (Sept. 25). Back when I was reporting for my 2018 book “The Return of the Moguls,” I was told that the Post’s propriety content-management system, Arc, was poised to become a money-maker through licensing deals with other news organizations. Instead, it tanked, as media reporter Brian Stelter wrote earlier this year for The Atlantic. How bad was it? Stelter was told that Arc accounted for most of the Post’s losses in 2022 and ’23. That was hardly the biggest or most damaging news the Post made in 2024; the paper lost some 250,000 paid subscribers when billionaire owner Jeff Bezos killed an endorsement of Kamala Harris. But the Arc fiasco was emblematic of a news organization at which it seems that nothing has gone right since the glory years of the anti-Trump #Resistance.
7. Globe columnist is called out for facilitating an assisted suicide he was writing about (Jan. 26). The Globe columnist in question, Kevin Cullen, was the subject of an extraordinary editor’s note that revealed he helped facilitate the physician-assisted suicide of a terminally ill woman he was reporting on by signing a legally required letter stating that she was of sound mind. The Globe’s executive editor, Nancy Barnes, wrote, “It is a violation of Globe standards for a reporter to insert themselves into a story they are covering.” But she did not cancel the article, concluding that Cullen’s lapse “did not meaningfully impact the outcome of this story.”
8. The Globe portrays GBH News as an operation beset by turmoil and toxicity (Feb. 8). GBH News, the local-news operation at public-media giant GBH, was portrayed as riven over a working environment that some employees found disrespectful, including “inappropriate comments about employees’ race, age, and gender by referring to ‘old white men’ when discussing newsroom diversity.” Several months later, general manager Pam Johnston left and the operation canceled all three of its remaining local public-affairs television programs, “Greater Boston,” “Talking Politics” and “Basic Black.” Then again, it was a tough year for public media in Boston and around the country, and both GBH News and WBUR Radio announced cuts. (Note: I was a paid contributor to GBH News from 1998 to 2022.)
9. Big changes at GBH: “Morning Edition” co-hosts move to new roles, and “Basic Black“ will return (Oct. 12). Under the leadership of broadcast veteran Dan Lothian, who now runs both GBH News and GBH’s international radio program, “The World,” the station announced several key changes. The most important: “Morning Edition” co-hosts Paris Alston and Jeremy Siegel were moved to new roles, with Alston slated to host a revived “Basic Black” starting sometime in 2025; it’s believed that new-old program will be digital-only, although details have not yet been announced.
10. Tracing back the roots of an odd story about a missing congresswoman (Dec. 24). This one had all the hallmarks of a fake-news story: A partisan right-wing website reported that Kay Granger, a Dallas-area congresswoman, had not been seen for six months and was living in a facility for people with dementia issues. Texas’ strong political press had not reported any such thing. Granger had, in fact, turned up in Washington only a month earlier at an event commemorating her retirement. But except for a minor nuance or two, The Dallas Express, a partisan outlet, got the story right — and broke it under the collective noses of The Dallas Morning News, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and The Texas Tribune, among others.
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Dan, I could not disagree more on the NPR/Berliner story. The bottom line is that NPR is essentially the national radio network of the Democratic Party, yet our tax dollars pay for it.
The extreme left-wing tilt at NPR is undeniable.
Conservative voices are practically nonexistent.
If the Democratic Party likes NPR so much, they should fund it themselves.
Leave the taxpayers out of it.
David, the bottom line is that Berliner’s critique is based on incorrect facts. It’s also incorrect to claim that NPR is funded by taxpayers. See this.
Now, more than ever, a program like Beat the Press needs to be revived. Media coverage of the recent presidential election is just one example of something that ought to be scrutinized, but I could give numerous examples of local issues that never got the attention or coverage they warranted or were covered in a very superficial manner. You are providing an important service with Media Nation. Perhaps you should be doing a webcast or podcast in 2025.