Uri Berliner is a senior business editor at NPR. In his 25 years with NPR, his work has been recognized with a Peabody Award, a Gerald Loeb Award, an Edward R. Murrow Award, and a Society of Professional Journalists New America Award, among others.
Today, we published in The Free Press his firsthand account of the transformation he has witnessed at National Public Radio. Or, as Uri puts it, how it went from an organization that had an “open-minded, curious culture” with a “liberal bent” to one that is “knee-jerk, activist, scolding,” and “rigidly progressive.”
Uri describes a newsroom that aimed less to cover Donald Trump but instead veered towards efforts to topple him; a newsroom that reported the Russia collusion story without enough skepticism or fairness, and then later largely ignored the fact that the Mueller report found no credible evidence of collusion; a newsroom that purposefully ignored the Hunter Biden laptop story—in fact, one of his fellow NPR journalists approved of ignoring the laptop story because “covering it could help Trump.” A newsroom that put political ideology before journalism in its coverage of Covid-19. And, he describes a newsroom where race and identity became paramount in every aspect of the workplace and diversity became its north star.
In other words, NPR is not considering all things anymore.
On today’s episode: How did NPR lose its way? Why did it change? And why does this lone journalist feel obligated to speak out?
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The reason thefp.com exist is because of NPR refugees.
This was a great article. I didn't realize the extent of the problem until Oct. 7th. My 20 minutes in the car on the way to work switched instantly from my favorite part of the day - to my most dreaded because I feared the one-sided coverage. I finally decided to switch off NPR all together when a story came on about women in Gaza not having ample access to maxi pads. NPR deemed the great scarcity of pads newsworthy - with 0 mention of what Israeli women endured and are enduring during this conflict. I also told my husband to never again make our annual NPR donation and I even tried Fox News for a day or two until I found Bari and the FP. On reflection and after reading this, maybe defunding is not the answer - but how do we start to turn the tide? The rot is so pervasive.