A scathing op-ed from NPR veteran and current senior business editor Uri Berliner published in The Free Press on Tuesday has intensified debates over whether the publicly funded news organization has adopted a partisan lean in recent years.
In the piece, Berliner details a culture shift at the organization, in which “An open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR, and now, predictably, we don’t have an audience that reflects America.”
Berliner argued that NPR is plagued with an “absence of viewpoint diversity,” which he considers to be a result of leadership’s emphasis on promoting diversity and inclusion on the basis of race and sexual orientation. He also claims that he found “87 registered Democrats working in editorial positions and zero Republicans.”
NPR editor-in-chief Edith Chapin defended the organization in response to the piece, saying she the leadership team “strongly disagree with Uri’s assessment of the quality of our journalism.”
While Chapin backed the “exceptional work that our desks and shows do to cover a wide range of challenging stories,” she added that “None of our work is above scrutiny or critique. We must have vigorous discussions in the newsroom about how we serve the public as a whole.”
According to NPR media reporter David Folkenflik, several journalists inside the organization question how they can proceed with Berliner as a colleague, with concerns about whether he can be a trusted member of NPR in the aftermath of the op-ed. Additionally, Berliner did not seek NPR’s approval to publish the piece, nor did he seek comment from the organization ahead of time; though he does say in his piece that he sought to raise his concerns with leadership on several occasions.
Meanwhile, outside of the organization, debates regarding the content of Berliner’s piece have sprouted up across social media, with many coming to the defense of the storied NPR institution.
NPR editor complains abt NPR’s lack of “viewpoint diversity,” then reduces millions of listeners to a cliche: “Berliner writes that as a Subaru-driving, Sarah Lawrence Collg graduate ‘raised by a lesbian peace activist mother,’ he fits mold of an NPR fan.” https://t.co/WOXShKvYGu
— Paul Farhi (@farhip) April 10, 2024
This is quite a read from a longtime NPR editor. I disagree with pretty much all of it. The network, like all news orgs, has its faults. But most of this is just arguing for more conservative-friendly coverage and lamenting progressive internal policieshttps://t.co/VxflKU4ohi
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Some argued that the shift that occurred in political coverage across the media industry was forced on institutions due to the changing nature of the Republican Party since the election of Donald Trump in 2016.
This essay has it backwards: you can't blame NPR for conservatives not listening. You have to ask why conservatives have gone down conspiracy holes (climate change, 2020 election, vaccines) & how on earth mainstream media is supposed to cater to them now?https://t.co/OU1p8QyK8H
— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) April 10, 2024
Is it possible — just *possible* — that the highly educated who overindex in NPR's audience might have shifted their ideological identity between 2011 and 2023?
Did anything happen between those years that might cause some sort of shift in college-educated people? https://t.co/k5V7F5EQ2O
— Joshua Benton (@jbenton) April 9, 2024
The core premise of Uri Berliner’s NPR piece in @TheFP is that NPR lost centrist and conservative listeners because it changed its journalism and went woke.
What it doesn’t examine is the change that happened among conservatives in the same time frame.https://t.co/6mklvatwcM pic.twitter.com/ccpEQwACgh
— Ben Goggin (@BenjaminGoggin) April 10, 2024
Yep. I wondered if NPR actually misreported *any* of those stories. Hindsight is always easy—we know more now than we did then. But at the time? You can only report what you know/can verify at the time. Journalists aren’t fortune tellers.
— Paul Farhi (@farhip) April 10, 2024
.@davidfolkenflik is so good, especially when reporting on NPR itself.
Also Berliner didn't seek comment from NPR, relied totally on straw men for his arguments, did not engage basic counterfactuals. And ~calls his coworkers affirmative action hires.
— Clara Jeffery (@ClaraJeffery) April 10, 2024
Some came to Berliner’s defense, including former NPR vice president for news Jeffrey Dvorkin who vouched for the changes to the organization.
I know Uri. He’s not wrong. https://t.co/9hc8XrNwNi
— Jeffrey Dvorkin (@jdvorkin) April 9, 2024
This amply documented indictment of the bias at NPR could apply with equal force to countless other news organizations. https://t.co/zN4IaF0ycZ
— Brit Hume (@brithume) April 9, 2024
This is really a must-read piece from NPR senior editor Uri Berliner discussing how NPR morphed from a liberal newsroom with some bias to an organization dominated by activists set on telling readers what to think and refusing to account for mistakes.https://t.co/I5a10uf9v0
— AG (@AGHamilton29) April 9, 2024
Wait wait so you're telling me that NPR's mission to become more diverse made it more hom*ogenous and brittle and narrow? Who could have possibly foreseen this.
— Sam Haselby (@samhaselby) April 9, 2024
The post NPR Editor’s Critical Op-Ed Ignites Debate Over Political Bias in Journalism: ‘This Essay Has It Backwards’ appeared first on TheWrap.
