NPR story on RFK Jr. was too soft

Doing journalism about public health will be exponentially more difficult under the administration of President-elect Donald Trump, who is stacking his health-related political nominations with people who spread false information and reject commonly accepted science under the guise of skepticism.

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As a symptom of this, public radio listeners and readers have peppered the Public Editor inbox with questions and complaints about an NPR story that reviewed the beliefs of Trump's choice for secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

NPR audience members were frustrated that the story made Kennedy, who has a history of promoting health-related conspiracy theories, sound credible and rational. These audience members are well-informed. They are aware that Republicans are threatening to zero out government funding for public media. They want to know if NPR is going soft, maybe without even realizing it, in an effort to deflect further scrutiny.

I don't see evidence of that. But I am struggling to discern NPR's strategy for covering public health in the Trump era. The editors who lead that coverage declined to discuss their approach, although they did answer some questions about the story that garnered multiple complaints.

Since we couldn't talk at length to the leaders at NPR about their goals for covering health, we contacted several experts in public health communication. They coach other medical professionals on the best techniques of communicating to a skeptical public advice on vaccines, which Kennedy has frequently excoriated. We found that their guidance applies equally to journalists who play an important role in educating the public.

Read on to see why so many audience members critiqued an NPR story about RFK Jr. and how NPR could reframe public health stories in the future.

We also highlight a Planet Money deep dive into a story of immigrant labor and deportation that has modern-day implications.

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Illustration by Carlos Carmonamedina

Profile of RFK Jr. irks many readers

This 1,300-word story ran on NPR's website on Nov. 15, the day after Trump announced that he planned to nominate Kennedy to run the Department of Health and Human Services.

NPR journalists set out to provide readers with an overview of Kennedy's ideology. Carmel Wroth, one of two senior health editors who worked on the story, answered our questions via email. "Our task was to explain the Make America Healthy Again movement's focus on chronic disease, its publicly articulated goals — and how experts in public health who study chronic disease were reacting to these ideas," she said.

The intention of the story, as well as the structure of the text, is important here. The piece is presented to the audience as a broad explanatory story. It did take a long time — seven paragraphs — to offer the slightest nod to RFK Jr.'s many shortcomings as the potential HHS secretary. Readers had to get through a full 25% of the story before they reached a short list highlighting the irresponsible misinformation Kennedy has propagated over the years.

The first source quoted is a supportive adviser to both Kennedy and Trump. The second source quoted is a professor who works in public health who brings a more sober view, saying he fears that if Kennedy assumes the helm of HHS, "thousands of children may die of measles and many other infectious diseases."

The NPR story does not ignore Kennedy's flaws. But it does take a decidedly measured approach, almost as if the writers were saying, "Let's give this guy a chance." Is that a failure to live up to NPR's standards of accuracy and completeness? No. The story contains enough of Kennedy's background to convey that he has serious flaws as the person nominated to lead government health policy. But it's not helpful either, an overly soft approach to a pointedly controversial nomination. Readers who skim or just read the top will walk away with a false sense of Kennedy.

There's a body of solid reporting on the harm Kennedy's misinformation has caused, as well as a catalog of fact checks on his past statements.

The story was intended to be an overview, not an in-depth review. Wroth, an editor on the story, said, "Our story focused on statements Kennedy made during his NPR interview, including a mandate from Trump to 'end the chronic disease epidemic.' NPR will continue to cover numerous angles on Kennedy — this was a first look at his focus on chronic diseases and to introduce NPR audiences to one of his advisers who is shaping this policy."

And NPR managing editor for standards and practices Tony Cavin, who reviewed the story after it was published, said, "This is complicated, but our job is to explain the issues, and I think this piece does that well. RFK Jr. is not that different from many others on the right whose distrust of government and institutions doesn't, by definition, make those institutions good actors."

We asked NPR health editors how they will cover public health, given the pending appointments of RFK Jr. and others who openly challenge so much accepted science, whether it's vaccines or fluoridated water or the virus that causes AIDS. It's a significant challenge that reporters across America must confront. With public support for childhood vaccines declining, journalists who cover public health must figure out how to convey solid science to people with diverse views.

When editors at NPR didn't want to answer that question, we turned to public health experts who face similar challenges. They must communicate solid scientific information to people who express a wide range of beliefs.

"There's a breakdown of trust," Dr. Kristin Oliver from Mount Sinai Health System told us. "And so there's not one single communication strategy that's going to dig us out of that hole." As a pediatrician and an immunization expert, she frequently discusses how Americans got to this particular moment of distrust and how experts can move forward.

Rather than categorizing people as vaccine hesitant or vaccine skeptics, she encouraged more specificity and nuance. People have different views about different vaccines and those views change frequently, she said.

"What can we do to depoliticize immunizations?" she asked, noting that politicization doesn't dominate other aspects of public health. "We don't break down colon cancer screening rates or mammography intention by political party."

While it's interesting and unique that opinions about vaccines vary widely by political party, it's not always useful. Instead, she encouraged journalists to air a wide range of vaccine opinions and then address concerns with research and science.

"What you are mostly doing is listening and making sure people are heard, and then asking if there's a specific question they are concerned about … as opposed to data dumping, which is what I and lots of other doctors are very prone to do," she said. "I think part of it is making sure we're not talking down to people … not shaming people for decisions that they have or have not made."

Oliver added that if journalists would also tell stories about what is working in public health, they would provide the public with a more complete narrative. For example, she said, the HPV vaccine is significantly reducing rates of cervical cancer. While there were many news stories about the controversies over that vaccine when it first became available, it's since been widely adopted. And there have been very few follow-up stories.

We reached out to Dr. Daniel Park after he tweeted out this same NPR story that garnered so many complaints. He's an epidemiologist and senior researcher at the George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health. He thought NPR's story was balanced.

"It was pretty focused on more of the nutrition aspect, but I think it did a nice job of contextualizing it within some of the other claims he's made that are a bit more misinformation," Park said.

Covering Kennedy is going to be a challenge for the press. Not only does he have many unorthodox views and unsupported theories, he has attracted a significant following of Americans who are skeptical of the pharmaceutical industry, the food production industry and the agricultural industry. Many of those people are in NPR's current audience, right alongside news consumers who find Kennedy's views and actions irresponsible and dangerous.

Park recalled that Kennedy was one of former President Barack Obama's candidates for leading the Environmental Protection Agency. "Just saying flatly everything he says is a lie is also not necessarily true."

It would be helpful if NPR's health and science editors would articulate a strategy for covering public health. What are the top priorities? What should audience members expect? NPR's health news section, branded as Shots, offers some clues in its five section headings: Your Health, Treatments & Tests, Health Inc., Policy-ish and Public Health.

From those headings, we can discern an emphasis on helping people manage their own health care, along with the bills. There's a clear intention to cover the medical industry and public health. And there's also a substantial focus on mental health.

The range of individual stories that show up in Shots is among the most interesting and unique coverage that NPR produces. From delaying the onset of dementia to covering the potential impacts on the Affordable Care Act, the health news that NPR routinely produces is both thoughtful and useful.

In the "about" section of Shots, available on each page, is this promise: "Shots is the online channel for health stories from the NPR Science Desk. We report on news that can make a difference for your health and show how policy shapes our health choices. Look to Shots for the latest on research and medical treatments, as well as the business side of health."

But is there a central focused strategy that audience members can count on, or do reporters simply cover interesting health stories that fit into these categories?

At the moment, missing from the Shots promise is any explicit declaration about holding private industry and public health officials accountable for their power over the well-being of the country. Given the pending political appointments, that should be a crucial pillar of NPR's health coverage.

A revised strategy may be coming soon. I'm told that the newsroom is preparing to realign its reporting resources to better cover the pressing news of the day. Editors simply aren't ready to discuss it yet.

When NPR's new priorities are finalized, I hope they delineate and prioritize at least two types of health coverage: 1) Covering the experience of Americans who are skeptical of the medical industry, while providing scientifically backed information; and 2) Holding accountable politicians and appointed officials who are promising to make things better but have a history of making things worse.

The people poised to step in and run our government health systems are vowing to challenge accepted science and change the way public health advice is delivered. Before the policy changes begin, journalists could be gathering questions from their audience and explaining how they plan to ensure the delivery of scientifically sound news. — Kelly McBride with research by Amaris Castillo and Nicole Slaughter Graham

Illustration by Carlos Carmonamedina /

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The history of an American crackdown on immigration

A deep dive into the history of the transcontinental railroad and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 examines a relevant topic — immigration — through the lens of the past. The two-part series, which originally appeared in the Planet Money newsletter, tells the story of how the railroad was built, and by whom. Part 1 chronicles the struggles faced by railroad executives in finding the necessary labor to build the tracks. Ultimately, they relied on the labor of skilled Chinese immigrants, a group that faced much racism and improper treatment at the time.

Part 2 examines how anti-Chinese rhetoric seeped into politics and led to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which barred most Chinese from immigrating for 10 years. The act fueled even more anti-Chinese racism that in many cases led to violence and citizen-led purges of Chinese immigrants from their homes and businesses as well as more strict legislation against Chinese immigrants. Mass deportation of Chinese immigrants also led to financial hardship for many, especially white people and white-owned businesses that relied on immigrants as workers, customers and tenants. This in-depth reporting provides a window into history and deftly covers a topic of current interest and its consequences at just the right time. — Nicole Slaughter Graham

The Office of the Public Editor is a team. Reporters Amaris Castillo and Nicole Slaughter Graham and copy editor Merrill Perlman make this newsletter possible. Illustrations are by Carlos Carmonamedina. We are still reading all of your messages on Facebook, Instagram, Threads and from our inbox. As always, keep them coming.

Kelly McBride
NPR Public Editor
Chair, Craig Newmark Center for Ethics & Leadership at the Poynter Institute

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