Analysis

NPR Accuses Daily Wire Of Tricking Readers Because We’re Conservative. That’s A Lie. But NPR Is Lying To Its Own Readers.

   DailyWire.com
The headquarters for National Public Radio, or NPR, are seen in Washington, DC, September 17, 2013. The USD 201 million building, which opened in 2013, serves as the headquarters of the media organization that creates and distributes news, information and music programming to 975 independent radio stations throughout the US, reaching 26 million listeners each week.
SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images

In a hit-piece published Monday, publicly-funded NPR accused The Daily Wire of tricking Americans who engage with our news stories, asserting that readers or those who engage with our content might not know we’re conservative, even though, as NPR admits in the piece, Daily Wire openly discloses bias on its “About” page.

The claim by NPR is, of course, intentionally misleading, not to mention glaringly ironic.

Not only does The Daily Wire disclose that we have a general point-of-view on our website, but we also add a disclosure statement on every single news piece published at the site emphasizing that we have a conservative bias. Our podcasts hosts, too, are all openly conservative. Here’s what our disclosure on every article looks like (also see it at the end of this piece):

NPR, which is, in part, funded indirectly by our tax dollars, is clearly a left-leaning entity. Does NPR disclose its bias? Of course not — not anywhere. Nor has the site complained about left-leaning sites and outlets which claim to be objective refusing to disclose their bias to consumers.

Here’s the language from the NPR hit-piece:

Publicly the site does not purport to be a traditional news source. On its ‘About’ page, the site declares, “The Daily Wire does not claim to be without bias,” and goes on to say, “We’re opinionated, we’re noisy, and we’re having a good time.”

It’s not clear that the millions of people engaging with the site’s news stories every month recognize that. The Daily Wire’s content looks no different in Facebook’s newsfeed than an article from a local newspaper, making it potentially difficult to distinguish between more and less reliable or biased information sources.

Notably, NPR claims we are not a “traditional news source,” suggesting this is because we are biased, unlike legacy media, which would include outlets like The New York Times, the Washington Post, and NPR. Except, these media sites have an overtly left-wing slant. Therefore, it seems, a news site that reports from a conservative rather than liberal point-of-view is not “traditional.” The language, obviously strategic, again works to undermine the credibility of any news outlets that do not stay in line with the liberal narrative.

The glaringly biased hit-piece has already promoted backlash online — from honest reporters on both sides of the aisle.

Lachlan Markay of Axios, formerly of The Daily Beast, noted that NPR unfairly attempts to inextricably tie The Daily Wire with “misinformation” with a “totally untenable and frankly absurd” “standard.”

“I mean you’re literally attacking the journalism business model that predominated *at the time the First Amendment was written*,” Markey emphasized.

Markay was referring to the following excerpt from the NPR piece:

The articles The Daily Wire publishes don’t normally include falsehoods (with some exceptions), and the site said it is committed to “truthful, accurate and ethical reporting.”

But as Settle explains, by only covering specific stories that bolster the conservative agenda (such as negative stories about socialist countries and polarizing stories about race and sexuality issues) and only including certain facts, readers still come away from The Daily Wire’s content with the impression that Republican politicians can do little wrong and cancel culture is among the nation’s greatest threats.

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