In the age of supposed Fake News, we as citizens have a duty to hold our press accountable. Whether it is political reporting or lifestyle journalism, the truth matters, and there is no fact too small to go unchecked. So it’s troubling, then, that for a decade, one of America’s most respected press outlets may have been deceiving the public. Since 2008, National Public Radio has hosted an ongoing live music series called Tiny Desk Concerts, which features artists from all genres of music, performing selections of songs behind a cluttered office desk in NPR’s Washington, DC, headquarters. Now in its tenth year, the popular series has amassed over 700 performances, from T-Pain to Wilco to Adele, and has racked up over 80 million views on YouTube. But after reviewing hours of footage, speaking with sources close to the desk, and analyzing photos, one thing is becoming clear: The “tiny desk” in NPR’s celebrated Tiny Desk Concert series is not actually that tiny at all.

Many people who have been behind the Tiny Desk speak of its misleading name. Alex Luciano of the band Diet Cig, who performed a Tiny Desk Concert in 2017, tells Noisey that she and her bandmate Noah Bowman often talk privately about “how the desk is not small at all.” Luciano remembers the desk’s size as being fairly average. "It seemed just like a regular L-shaped desk,” she says. “But it was more structurally sound than we expected.” In fact, the desk is large enough that Luciano, who is 5’ 3”, had enough room to stand on it during the band’s performance.

“Yeah, actually, the desk was extremely average in size,” says country artist Sturgill Simpson, though he did note that the seat provided for his 2014 Tiny Desk performance was on the smaller side. “I do remember thinking at one point while I was playing that they should’ve named it Tiny Stool Concert.”

"Yeah, actually, the desk was extremely average in size." — Sturgill Simpson

To analyze the Tiny Desk’s relative physical stature, it should first be determined what constitutes “tiny” in terms of desk sizes. The office equipment retailer Office Depot lists three categories of desks for sale on their website. The “Large” section includes desks over 60 inches in width, “Medium” desks range between 30 and 60 inches in width, and “Small” includes everything from 30 inches and under. One desk in the “Small” category was a mere 16 and 3/10 inches wide. So it would stand to reason that any desk that would comparatively be considered “tiny” would need to measure under 30 inches. Yet photos of NPR's Tiny Desk tell a different story.