Editor’s Critique ‘Disprespectful, Hurtful, and Demeaning’: NPR’s CEO

‘An open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR,’ Uri Berliner had written. ‘And now, predictably, we don’t have an audience that reflects America.’

The National Public Radio (NPR) new headquarters at 1111 North Capitol St, NE, Washington, D.C., on Sept. 17, 2013. Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

After a longtime National Public Radio editor wrote a bombshell critique of the network, NPR’s new CEO defended the news organization, calling the editor’s criticism “disrespectful, hurtful, and demeaning.”

This past week, Uri Berliner, the senior business editor for NPR, wrote an article for The Free Press in which he admitted that NPR has become radically progressive, with journalists as activists telling people what to think instead of letting the “evidence lead the way.”

Katherine Maher, NPR’s new CEO, pushed back.

“NPR’s service to this aspirational mission was called in question this week, in two distinct ways,” she said. “The first was a critique of the quality of our editorial process and the integrity of our journalists. The second was a criticism of our people on the basis of who we are.

“Asking a question about whether we’re living up to our mission should always be fair game: After all, journalism is nothing if not hard questions.

“Questioning whether our people are serving our mission with integrity, based on little more than the recognition of their identity, is profoundly disrespectful, hurtful, and demeaning.”

Mr. Berliner cited NPR’s promotion of the Russian collusion conspiracy hoax against President Trump, its turning a blind eye to the Hunter Biden laptop report, its refusal to acknowledge the Wuhan lab leak theory as the likely source of COVID-19, and its emphasis on “bizarre” stories about systematic racism.

In his piece, Mr. Berliner identified himself as a longtime liberal, saying he was “Sarah Lawrence–educated, was raised by a lesbian peace activist mother, I drive a Subaru, and Spotify says my listening habits are most similar to people in Berkeley. I fit the NPR mold. I’ll cop to that.”

“An open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR, and now, predictably, we don’t have an audience that reflects America,” he wrote. “That wouldn’t be a problem for an openly polemical news outlet serving a niche audience. But for NPR, which purports to consider all things, it’s devastating both for its journalism and its business model.”

NPR has embraced diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) ideology that assumes white people are racist, which meant staff were required to take unconscious bias training sessions, he said.

However, in its striving to become diverse, it lost its “viewpoint diversity,” calling its “unspoken consensus” on stories about “transphobia,” climate change, and the demonizing of Republicans “an assembly line.”

NPR began to avoid language that it perceived as “racially problematic” and “alarmingly divisive,” he said, citing as an example a story about bird names being racist.

NPR’s biased coverage increased with the election of former President Donald Trump when it published stories that painted him and his supporters in a negative light while ignoring stories such as the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop scandal because it feared the story would have helped President Trump’s campaign, Mr. Berliner wrote.

‘Hard to Be Mad’ about Looting

According to a report from the New York Post, Ms. Maher has a history of progressive, anti-Trump rants on X, one of which she deleted before landing her position at NPR.

However, a post where she stated that “Donald Trump is a racist” in 2018 was saved on Archive Today.

Other posts are still available, such as one in which she defends looting in 2020.

“I mean, sure, looting is counterproductive,” she wrote. “But it’s hard to be mad about protests not prioritizing the private property of a system of oppression founded on treating people’s ancestors as private property.”

She also stated in 2020 that for white people to be silent is to be complicit in racism.

“If you are white, today is the day to start a conversation in your community,” she said.

After Mr. Berliner’s article, NPR Chief News Executive Edith Chapin wrote, “We’re proud to stand behind the exceptional work that our desks and shows do to cover a wide range of challenging stories.

“We believe that inclusion—among our staff, with our sourcing, and in our overall coverage—is critical to telling the nuanced stories of this country and our world.”

NPR’s ‘Groupthink’

Mr. Berliner told News Nation that he’s not surprised by NPR’s response to his criticism.

“I will say I’ve had a lot of support from colleagues, many of them unexpected who say they agree with me,” he said. “Some of them say this confidentially.”

Mr. Berliner called himself a “lifer,” having worked at NPR for over 25 years.

When he started, it was a place where curiosity thrived; however, it evolved into “groupthink that’s really clustered around very selective, progressive views that don’t allow enough air, enough spaciousness to consider all kinds of perspectives,” he said.

In response to a question over whether Mr. Berliner is worried that his criticism will open him up to being canceled, he said he’s not worried because he believes “people want open dialogue.”

“Most people are not locked into ideologies,” he said. “I think many people are just sick of it and it’s one of the reasons people distrust so much of the media whether it’s legacy media, whether it’s conservative media, you know what you’re getting.

“It’s all predigested and spit out to you. You know what the take is going to be and I think it’s ultimately unsatisfying and for a vast part of this nation, they don’t want it.”

The Epoch Times contacted NPR for comment.