Inskeep badly misrepresents what Berliner said about party registration among NPR's DC staff (87 Dem, 0 GOP among those who declared a party). Inskeep claims, falsely, that Berliner claimed that his NPR colleagues were "unanimously" Democrats. He never said that.

Inskeep makes a big deal about Berliner's objection to the use of "Latinx" as forced usage that is unpopular among Hispanics. Inskeep's quickie search on npr.org revealed that the term had only been used 7 times in the past 90 days, so no biggie right? Berliner is giving a skewed picture. The problem is that Berliner lodged his complaint on March 10, 2022, or almost two years before Inskeep's search window. If you open the window, what you find is that NPR used the term 955 times.

Maybe Inskeep isn't the best arbiter to evaluate Berliner's 25-year experience at NPR.

But even if Berliner's critique is exaggerated or mistaken, NPR still looks terrible here. Rather than take on the critique or engage in a debate about journalistic ethics, it suspended the employee without pay (in a pretextual and quite cowardly way, it must be added).

But that was 20 years ago (20! ugh)

I didn't read all of Inskeep's rebuttal, I confess - he seemed very insistent on rebutting minutia such as "well, actually I'm an independent, we don't have DEI purity meetings, and we absolutely discuss articles". I'm concerned with the bigger picture than individual scores.

(for what it's worth I like Steve Inskeep, Terry Gross, etc)

I'll concede that there likely isn't some sinister cabal trying to turn NPR into a far left groupthink. But there is *something*, something that seems to have laser focused NPR on a specific range of topics - race, climate, gender - in an overwhelming majority of their think pieces over the past few years. Moco's quip that your average session is about transgender climate refugee justice feels both funny and true.

Wither Click and Clack, Wait Wait Don't Tell me, etc?

Maybe some of it depends on the state-level public broadcasting? Oregon Public Broadcasting has been pretty egregious - they hired a politics reporter who became responsible for getting a business trashed because she (falsely) called them out on twitter for some thing or another.

I will say that what Berliner leaves out is that there is a distinct dearth of reliable conservative voices to bring in in the first place. Now, if I ran the world I'd bring in the Charlie Sykes/Jonah Goldbergs of the world, but they don't technically speak for the GOP. If they brought in a Genuine GOP Person, they'd likely either be a crank like MTG or a person who snaps to the party line like Mace.

It's always been a politically tinged, frequently unfunny, news-cum-entertainment bit.

Hell, your chances of making it through The Splendid Table (now far less splendid without Lynne Rossetto Kasper) these days without a weird progressive sidebar is way lower than it should be for a cooking show.

Car Talk was reduced to reruns at most years ago: Tom Magliozzi died in 2014.

The great weekend shows of yesterday are all gone: My Word (and its shorter-lived younger sibling, My Music), its far-less-funny American imitator Says You, and Prairie Home Companion (which became awkwardly, bitterly political in its later years as well). The NPR affiliate here even dropped the Metropolitan Opera matinee. They don't even carry it on the digital-only band.

The hosts were just as liberal as the Wait Wait lineup (Peter Sagal and the panelists) but they spent their time actually asking quiz questions and doing the games!

The people on Wait Wait spend more than 75% of the show sniffing their own rhetorical farts.

Unfortunately, they canceled Ask Me Another in 2021. The Sunday Puzzle feature with Will Shortz is still good but the news coverage around it is such shit (the comment below mocking such stories as "Is Pickleball hurting black trans women?" is hyperbolic but only slightly) that I rarely listen to it anymore. I catch it every now in then in my podcast feed as a short 5-6 minute brainteaser.

Yes, it was better.

I honestly thought it was just sort of dad jokes about politics, but maybe it's not as funny if it's not in accord with one's political leanings? I'm not sure.

For non-NPR humor:

My problem is that I am positive Greg Gutfield is just not funny, but it's not because his politics are different than mine.

I did not care for Jon Stewart's The Problem, but I think his return to the Daily Show has been great because 1. he has better writers and 2. He's willing to skewer the shit out of both parties for the most part.

I'm ok with Oliver, but I think he partially broke in 2020 and tends to go off on off tangents like "don't watch cop shows, they're unrealistic" and "here's why court packing is good".

I think Maher is sort of a jackass but I think he can be funny when he's not being a total dick. He seems to hit both parties.

What do you find funny in terms of that area of comedy?

Hasn't yet recovered from the Void, but I've been giving him a chance again lately.

I had to look up Greg Gutfield. It's a small sample, but I suspect you are right that he is not funny. I have no idea what his politics are apart from seeing that he appears on Fox News. My general impression---I don't watch cable news of any flavor---is that many, if not all, of the people on Fox are neither humorous nor serious.

And Wait, Wait does feature dad jokes about politics, but in my experience they're jokes told by a rather crass New York secular liberal dad. It's not the kind of thing I can reliably keep on in the car with my kids.

I honestly couldn't name you one person doing current-events humor who I find funny these days. I will grant you that Bill Maher and Jon Stewart have the rhetorical skills to be funny, but while I have heard them land jokes, I have never found them reliably amusing. I don't regularly consume any media put out primarily for its value as humor, and certainly not anything contemporary. So I don't think I have anyone responsive.

But man, they were gods in the Boston scene in the day.

Forgot to mention Tiny Desk concerts are the beans, too, but they never were part of my commute. It was usually 30-45 minutes of either Fresh Air, All Things Considered, or BBC.

that's stamina right there. Good for you.

My parents insisted on listening to them on the way home from church every Sunday when I was growing up. Even as a 9 year old I had no idea what the appeal was.