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This is one of the reasons I stopped listening to NPR in the first place. During the Trump administration they kept letting Trump's mouthpieces say whatever they wanted for like 15 min, and then give like 3 min to the opposition to explain how everything they said was a bold face lie. There just wasn't any push back from the actual journalist.
That and they canceled Ask Me Another, which is pretty much the only thing I would ever give them money for.
IDK, I feel a lot of their programming, especially recently, has been pretty stern that there's conspiracy theories with no basis in reality. I recall them having pushed back on lies by conservative interviewees as well.
They finally changed (or learned) after January 6th. I distinctly remember yelling at my radio that they were allowing Trump's lackeys to repeatedly spew lies, and for the sake of "balance" those lies went essentially unchecked, and they'd hand the interview off to a Democrat who was baited with a leading question about "what you think about the claim that Democrats are running a child prostitution ring in the basement of a pizza restaurant", or something else equally ludicrous. The first time they stopped presenting those lies with "you decide" ambivalence was the Big Lie, which is the first time they started fact-checking in real time.
So yeah, recently they've started figuring out how to push back against obvious bullshit, but during the Trump presidency their coverage was absolutely horrendous, and they were played like a fiddle by Republicans who knew damn well NPR journalists had to take every salacious claim they made at face value, which essentially rewarded them for being as insane as possible and consistently working the Overton window in their favor.
A side note here is that there's a VERY strong difference between American and British journalism, in that Americans put a premium on decorum, and Brits put a premium on counterpoints. Sometimes they can be so direct and probing that it comes off as quite rude, and we can be so polite and courteous that we lay out the red carpet for liars. NPR has traditionally specialized in the "politely ask more questions and eventually you will get to truth" style of journalism, and they're only now starting to lean into a slightly more confrontational style of "no, that's wrong" argumentation. They're not particularly good at it, mind you, but they're kinda getting there.
The challenge is that in this current Trumpworld political climate is that news organizations that push back or argue in the slightest would never get additional interviews. Similar to how game publishers stop sending review copies to publications who haven't reviewed their previous works in a positive light.
We appear to be in an era of "no news except positive news or else" rather than "all press is good press"
But what is the value of having those interviews? Platforming somebody who is just going to tell flat out lies, and not calling them out, doesn’t inform the viewer of anything other than that watching that news outlet is a waste of time.
I agree. It's the current state of our society. Nobody likes to be challenged or have their feels hurt, which leads to avoidance of the challenge. It's a catch-22. There's little value in a non challenging interview. There's no value in an interview that doesn't occur at all.