Culture Friday: The myth of neutrality

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Friday the 19th of April, 2024.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

Time now for Culture Friday. Joining us is John Stonestreet. He’s president of the Colson center, and he's host of the Breakpoint Podcast. John, good morning.

JOHN STONESTREET: Good morning.

EICHER: Well, John, I'm always fascinated by media stories because they reveal so much. So you had to know that I would be asking you today about Uri Berliner, formerly of National Public Radio. It was about a week and a half ago that he published an essay at Barry Weiss’s The Free Press. It was titled, “I’ve been at NPR for 25 years. Here's How We Lost America’s Trust.” Great headline and he absolutely delivers. The resulting fallout seemed totally predictable. First, a warning, then a suspension, by Wednesday we had a resignation, and on his way out the door Berliner called NPR a great American institution. He said he did not support calls to defund NPR. If you don’t know, NPR does receive taxpayer funding. He said he respects his colleagues, said he wishes that the network would thrive and do important journalism, BUT…

But his last words took us right back to the beginning, I will quote now: “I cannot work in a newsroom where I am disparaged by a new CEO, whose divisive views confirm the very problems at NPR that I cite in my Free Press essay.”

So let me try to pinpoint what I think is the one big problem, John, and that's the inability of the newsroom to be fair. And as Berliner said, the root of that problem at NPR, like I would suggest the problem at a lot of places, the root of the problem goes back to 2016 and the election of Donald Trump. So your thoughts?

STONESTREET: Well, I guess it’s so interesting, when you kind of see really the lack of self awareness on the left, or the old idea that there is neutrality still, in mainstream media outlets. I mean Barry Weiss, of course, realized that at the New York Times herself, but awful late still, right. I mean, in other words, was it really up in the air? NPR, it’s just more interesting. I think there really is a way that those on the left that are in the world of media and journalism think that being on the left is the same as being neutral, and being on the right is the only place that has kind of ideological constraints or ideological baggage.

Probably at NPR it’s not just if you’re on the left you’re neutral, but if you use a calm, quiet, boring voice, you’re also neutral no matter what it is that you, you say, but they’re not. And they haven’t been for a long time. So I guess that awareness is what’s so surprising to many of us, or the lack thereof.

EICHER: Well, sure, John. But you know, Myrna and I were talking about this before you came on, and WORLD puts its point of view, proudly upfront: Christian and conservative. But we still try to be fair in our news reporting, and I expect the same thing from other professional journalists. I mean, we cannot even imagine saying, as an NPR reporter said to Berliner about not covering the Hunter Biden laptop story at NPR—this is in his essay again, quoting here:

“one of NPR’s best and most fair-minded journalists said it was good that we weren’t following the laptop story, because it could help Trump.”

Direct quote. We don't talk that way. We don’t think that way. We don’t act that way, trying to help or hurt candidates. It's terrible, and it’s unprofessional. So today, and yes, I cooked this idea up this very morning, John, I have to say, “Ich bin ein Berliner!” Bravo to him.

STONESTREET: Well, look, I do think that there really is a lack of self-awareness of ideological constraint. And I think, you know, that’s something that’s been part of WORLD’s DNA from the very beginning is an acknowledgment. But you know, there’s also the presumption that because someone admits a bias upfront, then therefore they, they cannot be truthful. But that’s not true, because some biases are true, and some biases are not. I’m thinking of, you know, the book that was written several years ago In Praise of Prejudice. There are certain things you should not prejudice against, like, for example, other races of people, but to prejudice things that are good and true and beautiful over things that are not, that just acts as if there is a moral flow to the universe. And there’s good evidence that there’s a moral flow and a moral nature to things. So to start with a bias that there is indeed moral absolutes is a better bias to start with than the president of NPR who starts with the fact that there aren’t and completely is unaware of the fact that she’s stating an absolute as she’s trying to argue for relativism. It’s a self-defeating perspective. And there really is a lack of self-awareness, I think, in these entities. So I’m not as surprised when I hear these things kind of come to light, especially if I were I would have been surprised back with Barry Weiss. NPR, you know, I, I know they've got the smooth kind of quiet and calm, silky voices, but the fact that they’re bringing a set of ideas to how they tell stories, what stories they tell, who they feature as so-called experts. And I listen to NPR a lot because I think it’s, you know, at least a place to go and hear another side of almost every issue.

BROWN: Well, John, you mentioned free speech. I want to go back to that for a little bit. The University of Southern California has pulled the plug on its valedictorian's commencement speech. The valedictorian is pro-Palestinian and has written about the complete abolishment of the State of Israel on social media. USC says her speaking poses a security risk for the event, which draws 60,000+ people. Pro-Israel groups are praising the move. Free speech advocates are not happy. Is this a free speech violation?

STONESTREET: Well, I don’t know that I can answer that. But I can answer this, that free speech is something that should be protected, but all freedoms have limits. You know, if the valedictorian’s plan was to stand up and yell “fire!” in a crowded theater, then the administrators would be right to shut it down, because it actually posed a direct risk based on speech that was knowingly not true. If this speaker was coming from the perspective that Israel is acting wrongly in its retaliation against Hamas, if they believe that the State of Israel was illegitimate, and they plan to speak about these things, and just because of those viewpoints, the administration pulled the invitation, then yeah, that is a violation of free speech for an institution like the University of Southern California, as much as I would disagree with each and every one of those positions. However, if the substance of the speech is her calling for the eradication of the State of Israel, calling for genocide, and death to the USA, which we saw in chants on university campuses, then at that point, we’re talking about actual cause for harm and violence. And so you have to be able to make these distinctions. It’s not always super clear, and that’s why I just don’t know.

Like, I mean, if you know, on a college campus where there are different viewpoints, it’s legitimate to have those who think that Israel’s in the right and Israel’s in the wrong in how they do it. But if you have people celebrating publicly and out loud on an institutional platform the massacre that happened on October 7, and calling in an ongoing way for not only death to Israel, but death to America, that’s where you’ve crossed the limits that that speech has. Some of that should be obvious and isn’t always obvious.

So I would be more curious if they have clear reason to pull the plug on this valedictorian’s commencement speech. But the excuse they’re using is it might incite violence. That’s bogus, because their job then is to protect that speech. Now, that doesn’t mean she can say whatever they want about, you know, genocide or anything like that. But that's this new thing. Now we’re measuring freedoms and comparing freedoms. And that’s a very, very difficult thing to do. And honestly, government officials tend to use it as an excuse.

EICHER: Well, John, let me follow up with the other side of this. Columbia University's president this week stepped into the same Capitol Hill hearing room that two other Ivy League presidents stepped into and out of in December, and they ended up having to resign from their jobs. Congresswoman Elise Stefanik really exposed Ivy League tolerance of anti-semitism on campus, and they paid a price – they paid the highest price, losing their jobs.

So Columbia's president came in at a much different attitude much more humble, less ivory tower and out of touch, but to hear some Jewish students at Columbia tell that Columbia is way too tolerant of anti-semitism. The president in her appearance before the committee the other day did say, although she said it much better than Harvard's and Penn's ex-presidents, but she did talk about this idea of balancing free speech and Jewish students’ well-being. And my question goes beyond Columbia on this question of balancing. Is anti-semitism free speech and and how do you draw these lines?

STONESTREET: Well, I think we’re back to the same problem as in the first question is, is that there's such a thing as viewpoint neutrality, as if there’s such a thing as, you know, truly being open to all views, which is exactly what college campuses claim and can never really pull off. And that’s why when what you see is when campuses actually say we want honest and open debate. And this, by the way, includes an awful lot of evangelical colleges too, it ends up being just one viewpoint is allowed and the other one’s, you know, not tolerated.

This has taken over evangelical publishing houses. I mean, look, I get four or five review copies of books a week. And I can tell you, almost upfront, when a book comes what publishing house it’s from without ever looking at it, because if it is all to the left on certain issues, like First Amendment, Second Amendment things, on women’s reproductive rights, so to speak, and whether we should what it means to actually be-pro life is a pretty squishy thing. And maybe Christians have to limit their own speech and why we should be affirming and this or that, or the other. The blind spots are unbelievable.

And of course, we have them too. I don’t want to pretend like we’re, you know, we’re somehow, you know, in an innocent, you know, sort of place. I think it’s much better to admit that there is a truth, and that you bring a lens that either corresponds to that truth or doesn’t correspond to that truth to your work. And that’s especially true if you’re an educator, this is especially true if you’re a journalist, it’s especially true if you’re trying to be an administrator over an educational place that deals with ideas, like all these Ivy League schools.

Yeah, look, I’m not gonna play it down. They’ve got a very, very difficult job. These are very, very international places, and the international conflict between the West and the rest is bad enough. The international conflict that Samuel Huntington predicted in The Clash of Civilizations, which everyone still says it's not a good prediction, and I’m like he got everything right, which is the clash between Islam and the rest, and the civilizational battles that exist across these national but also international lines, which we’re seeing in full effect with Israel and all of its neighbors. It’s very hard to kind of claim, “Well, we're going to let all views come to bear,” when the wrong views in these contexts where these students are used to, can cost you your life, or cost you your future in some way.

I think that the future of higher education is the institutions that are willing to make a claim and willing to educate according to that claim. And the ones that really have a future are the ones that recognize that there is such a thing as truth, and they teach alongside that. I think they’re just going to be better off.

BROWN: John Stonestreet is president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint Podcast. Thanks so much, John.

STONESTREET: Thank you both.

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