Accountability requires listening.
NPR welcomes feedback from listeners and readers.
They can be words of praise that help us understand what the audience appreciates and whether we are fulfilling our obligation to serve the public. Sometimes they are as encouraging as the comment from one All Things Considered listener about a June 2011 report by Howard Berkes on the latest news in the investigation into West Virginia’s Upper Big Branch mine tragedy.
“That coal mine disaster is one of those stories that usually comes and goes in American journalism,” wrote Tom Blackburn of Florida. “In the near future, those stories may even stop coming, since none of the victims were rich and famous, and some of the malefactors are. But Mr. Berkes stuck with it, got to know the real people involved, probably knows more about it by this point than the officials he interviews and is doing a wonderful job of being both a reporter and a mensch.”
But we can learn from criticism as well.
October 18, 2011
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