Sandra’s Reviews > The Sound of Exclusion: NPR and the Latinx Public > Status Update

“Through our lived experiences, we gain particular kinds of insight and develop a particular set of biases. As we become inculcated into our professions, we acquire yet another set of biases, which predetermined which experiences will be collected and how they will be reported.”

“NPR’s unquestioning belief in journalistic objectivity refuses to acknowledge what social anthropologists have already begun to confront: professionals who broker in ‘truth’ are inclined to cling to a myth of detachment, which obscures their role in perpetuating social inequalities.”

We must acknowledge that there are certain kind of ideological work at play when the journalists present people’s lives [as chapters in stories]. People are complicated, fractious, and inconsistent. There are rehearsals and setbacks… But to create cohesive coherence out of incoherent the writer, must smooth out the rough edges they must simplify and typify.“

“There was a reoccurring trope that kept emerging during my interviews with public radio practitioners. Editors, producers, correspondent, and host consistently referred to people as characters in a story… This way of speaking about actual people with actual lives experiences has always struck me as curious…”

“Despite the promise of linguistic diversity, NPR’s architects chose as its standard a way of speaking that is not overtly associated any particular social group, but more broadly with the leveled dialects of the Northern Midwest… this notion of a reality key universal and socially unmarked standard makes privileged ways of speaking seem mainstream, while marginalizing nonstandard dialects and speakers…”