Comment by palmfacehn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by palmfacehn | Hacker News Reader

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I doubt it is about ads as much as it is about politics. From NPR's editorial stance, Trump is an a priori bad. Therefore, all coverage needs to be framed to justify their starting premise.

It isn't so different from the previous administration's regulatory uncertainty around drilling permits. The allegedly pro-biz anti-regulation Republicans like gov regulation here, while the pro-regulation Democrats don't like it. If anything, it lays bare the hypocrisy of both sides. NPR is just along for the ride to once again tell us, "Trump bad".

The problem with these partisan sources is that even if there were a deeper rationalization for killing the project with regulations, such as a valid national security situation, we wouldn't expect NPR to cover it. Looking elsewhere I didn't find much.

>"The bureau is seeking to protect U.S. national security and prevent "interference with reasonable uses of the exclusive economic zone, the high seas, and the territorial seas," Giacona said.

Will you extend your “biased messenger analysis” to reuters as well? https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/us-orders-orsted-ha.... The only difference is they didn’t have an attempt to contact the relevant government org for comment.

There are multiple sources indicating this administrations stance on wind power. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jul/28/are-trum... for instance. It would seem the foreign production source (China) is probably the only related to US security. The other statements about price or environmental impact have no particular basis in data or direct US security impact.

This analysis of using foreign sourcing as a reason to kill energy projects roughly lines up with portions of the official press release: https://www.doi.gov/pressreleases/department-interior-curbs-... Although they amend that with statements about land use and environmental impact.

From a strictly personal analysis, it’s hard though to frame the current administrations aggregate actions as anything but an attempt to cripple wind and solar based industries, which have far less environmental impact and carbon footprint than any other industry except maybe nuclear. But nuclear struggles due to buy in costs and public perception.

Perhaps you've misread my comment.

I found the same Reuters story and quoted it above. If NPR were a bit less partisan, I wouldn't feel the need to look further afield to find the rationale. The omitted specifics around "national security" suggested that perhaps there was more to the story. From there I looked towards Reuters. If NPR's editorial stance were different, perhaps I wouldn't have needed a second opinion.

>>The problem with these partisan sources is that even if there were a deeper rationalization for killing the project with regulations, such as a valid national security situation, we wouldn't expect NPR to cover it. Looking elsewhere I didn't find much.

Personally, I would like to see wind farms compete on a laissez-faire basis. Regulatory uncertainty is an added cost for everyone. Similarly, I didn't like the previous administration's ideological war on oil and gas. However, from NPR's editorial perspective, there weren't enough regulatory hurdles.

https://www.npr.org/2021/07/13/1015581092/biden-promised-to-...

so you went from what you thought was a more biased source (npr) to what you thought was a less biased source (reuters) and it turned out to be the same report? 'we claim it's a matter of national security on the totally-solid basis of we say so' etc?

> The omitted specifics around "national security" suggested that perhaps there was more to the story

there were and still are no specifics provided by the administration on how this is a matter of national security to the point of halting the project, only implausible pretexts which are insufficient by default until convincingly proven otherwise.

given the 'national security because we said so but with more words' pretext, we see there was and is indeed no more to the story than that.

Exactly. If there were a compelling rationale, we would expect NPR to downplay it.

If red hatted wolves were devouring NPR radio hosts, their cries for help wouldn't be sufficient. We would need external verification. Additionally, their editorial support for wolf attacks against opposing partisans would be hypocritical.

> If there were a compelling rationale, [I] would expect NPR to downplay it.

Exactly – Given your editorial stance, I expect that you would expect that, and yet the evidence here shows that you were wrong to: There was no compelling rationale for this action, thus NPR could not have reported one, thus they did not report one.

You've taken a long road to observe something I acknowledge in my original comment, while sidestepping the point.

How am I sidestepping the point? The point is that, upon reviewing the evidence, NPR is not as biased as you personally described, and that your claims here[0] are thus unfounded.

The problem here isn't with any bias on NPR's part, but with your personal claim of NPR bias, given that it is contradicted by the evidence we see here. Indeed, a position of 'evidence against my claim only proves my point harder' is nonsensical, and may itself be underlied by bias.

0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45010316

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