A top editor of National Public Radio on Tuesday challenged the taxpayer-subsidized network to diversify its views, sources, reporters, and stories or continue to fail by producing news for liberals by liberals.
“Even within our diminished audience, there’s evidence of trouble at the most basic level: trust,” 25-year NPR veteran Uri Berliner wrote.
“With declining ratings, sorry levels of trust, and an audience that has become less diverse over time, the trajectory for NPR is not promising. Two paths seem clear. We can keep doing what we’re doing, hoping it will all work out. Or we could start over, with the basic building blocks of journalism. We could face up to where we’ve gone wrong,” he added in an essay published by the Free Press and commentary on the popular podcast Honestly with Bari Weiss.
In over 3,500 words, the senior business editor explained the changes inside NPR that have angered tax-paying conservatives for years as it has turned from both-sides coverage to uber-liberal bias.
Berliner said that while he voted against former President Donald Trump twice, he has always encouraged thought diversity on the staff and regularly called for it in memos and staff meetings.
But it never came. For example, in 2021, he looked up the party registration of staffers and found that 87 were Democrats and zero were Republicans. “It was met with profound indifference,” he said.
Instead, he said that the network’s leadership started to emphasize race and diversity as the “north star.” In his talk with Weiss, for example, he explained a system in which sources were asked their race so it could be tracked for executives.
“Race and identity became paramount in nearly every aspect of the workplace. Journalists were required to ask everyone we interviewed their race, gender, and ethnicity (among other questions), and had to enter it in a centralized tracking system. We were given unconscious bias training sessions. A growing DEI staff offered regular meetings imploring us to ‘start talking about race.’ Monthly dialogues were offered for ‘women of color’ and ‘men of color.’ Nonbinary people of color were included, too.
“These initiatives, bolstered by a $1 million grant from the NPR Foundation, came from management, from the top down. Crucially, they were in sync culturally with what was happening at the grassroots — among producers, reporters, and other staffers. Most visible was a burgeoning number of employee resource (or affinity) groups based on identity,” he wrote.
Story topics were also segregated, and many were ignored for political reasons. For example, NPR stayed away from covering first son Hunter Biden’s scandalous laptop, which the media dismissed until after Joe Biden was elected president.
“The laptop was newsworthy. But the timeless journalistic instinct of following a hot story lead was being squelched. During a meeting with colleagues, I listened as one of NPR’s best and most fair-minded journalists said it was good we weren’t following the laptop story because it could help Trump,” he wrote.
In his essay, he noted that NPR has been facing defunding calls from critics. But he said the answer wasn’t in killing the news source.
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“Despite our missteps at NPR, defunding isn’t the answer. As the country becomes more fractured, there’s still a need for a public institution where stories are told and viewpoints exchanged in good faith. Defunding, as a rebuke from Congress, wouldn’t change the journalism at NPR. That needs to come from within,” he wrote.
What’s more, Berliner said he has high hopes that new CEO Katherine Maher might listen to his suggestions. “I’ll be rooting for her. It’s a tough job. Her first rule could be simple enough: don’t tell people how to think. It could even be the new North Star,” he wrote.
And to Weiss, Berliner said he took his case public instead of retiring because he wanted to improve NPR. “I felt an obligation to do this,” the editor said.