Do they watch 60 Minutes because it's on CBS, or because of what it is? If the show changes, what makes you think they'll stay?
People believe what they want to believe. The way people use TV news has changed in the last 20 years.
How has that affected NPR? Let's stop and talk about that:
Perhaps the biggest success Bari Weiss had at Free Press was the Uri Berliner article. But who did it change? NPR? Did NPR listeners or stations rise up and demand NPR News change its product to respond to the Berliner article? Or did it just give ammunition to the haters who didn't listen who wanted to kill federal funding? I think it was the latter.
News has no power in and of itself. It's the audience that gives it that power. So in the face of opposition, motivated by Uri Berliner and Bari Weiss, NPR's audience continued to support their stations, and the stations continued to support NPR. There was no groundswell from the public to change NPR News. If the article really changed minds, the stations that sit on NPR's board of directors would have insisted the NPR News change it's focus, and start adding more coverage of Hunter Biden's laptop. They have that power. That didn't happen. Instead, the party in power used that power to defund something they didn't like anyway. But it didn't change what NPR does. And it didn't diminish their audience. That's an important distinction.
