NPR has defended its journalism after a senior editor criticized its progressive bias.
“We’re proud to stand behind the exceptional work that our desks and shows do to cover a wide range of challenging stories,” NPR’s Chief News Executive Edith Chapin wrote. “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.”
This comes after Uri Berliner, a senior business editor for NPR, admitted in The Free Press that the news organization has gone too far in its bias by turning its journalists into activists who tell its audience what to think.
He cited NPR’s promotion of the Russian collusion conspiracy theory to shed a negative light on former President Donald Trump, it’s turning a blind eye to the Hunter Biden laptop report, its refusal to acknowledge the theory that a Wuhan lab leak was a possible source of COVID, and its emphasis on “bizarre” stories about systematic racism as major issues that signaled to him there is a problem.
Mr. Berliner said that the NPR of today, as opposed to the one he started working at 25 years ago, reflects “the distilled worldview of a very small segment of the U.S. population.”
Ms. Chapin said that NPR’s work isn’t above “scrutiny or critique.”
“We must have vigorous discussions in the newsroom about how we serve the public as a whole,” Ms. Chapin wrote.
NPR Media Correspondent David Folkenflik said the story “ricocheted Tuesday around conservative media.”
“Others picked it up on social media, including Elon Musk, who has lambasted NPR for leaving his social media site, X,” Mr. Folkenflik said.
In April 2023, NPR left the X platform after it labeled the news organization as “state-affiliated media.”
Then, CEO John Lansing said in response, “At this point, I have lost my faith in the decision-making at Twitter. I would need some time to understand whether Twitter can be trusted again.”
However, as Mr. Berliner states in his article, much of NPR’s audience is questioning whether NPR can be trusted again.
Pendulum Swung Too Far
Mr. Folkenflik doesn’t refute this argument, pointing to a leadership shift from those with experience and education to the younger generation in the wake of social justice movements that may have swung the pendulum too far.“Leaders at many newsrooms, including top editors at The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, lost their jobs,” Mr. Folkenflik wrote. “Legendary Washington Post Executive Editor Martin Baron wrote in his memoir that he feared his bonds with the staff were ‘frayed beyond repair,’ especially over the degree of self-expression his journalists expected to exert on social media, before he decided to step down in early 2021.”
He quoted New York Times chairman and publisher A.G. Sulzberger who said journalists shouldn’t be engaged in advocacy.
“Independence asks reporters to adopt a posture of searching, rather than knowing,” Mr. Sulzberger wrote in the Columbia Journalism Review. “It demands that we reflect the world as it is, not the world as we may wish it to be. It requires journalists to be willing to exonerate someone deemed a villain or interrogate someone regarded as a hero.”
‘Heated Pushback’
Mr. Folkenflik said there was “heated pushback” at NPR given that private conversations were allegedly revealed, though Mr. Berliner only alluded to conversations without naming anyone.Still, he said, some journalists questioned whether they can now trust Mr. Berliner with their stories, he said.
“Others express frustration that he had not sought out comment in advance of publication,” Mr. Folkenflik said. “Berliner acknowledged to me that for this story, he did not seek NPR’s approval to publish the piece, nor did he give the network advance notice.”
Some reporters like Fernando Alfonso, a senior supervising editor for digital news, “are responding heatedly” over Mr. Berliner’s criticism of NPR’s obsession with systematic racism and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policies instituted, Mr. Folkenflik said.
“As a person of color who has often worked in newsrooms with little to no people who look like me, the efforts NPR has made to diversify its workforce and its sources are unique and appropriate given the news industry’s long-standing lack of diversity,” Mr. Alfonso says. “These efforts should be celebrated and not denigrated as Uri has done.”
Mr. Folkenflik said after this story was published, Mr. Berliner refuted Mr. Alfonso’s framing of his criticism of DEI policy.
“I never criticized NPR’s priority of achieving a more diverse workforce in terms of race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation,” he said. “I have not ‘denigrated’ NPR’s newsroom diversity goals. That’s wrong.”
‘He’s Not Wrong’
Mr. Folkenflik listed media leaders who agreed and who disagreed with Mr. Berliner’s article.He quoted Jeffrey Dvorkin, a former NPR vice president for news, who said on X, “I know Uri. He’s not wrong.”
On Mr. Berliner’s argument that NPR no longer reflects the American voice, Mr. Folkenflix quoted Mr. Lansing who spearheaded the DEI initiatives at the news organization in saying: “The philosophy is: Do you want to serve all of American and make sure it sounds like all of America, or not? I’d welcome an argument against that.”
A Call to Change
Mr. Berliner recommended that NPR acknowledge its mistakes.“News organizations don’t go in for that kind of reckoning,” he said. “But there’s a good reason for NPR to be the first: we’re the ones with the word public in our name.”
The news organization has lost the trust of its audience, he added, which has left it at a crossroads.
“We can keep doing what we’re doing, hoping it will all work out,” he said. “Or we could start over, with the basic building blocks of journalism.”
He said change could begin with its new CEO, Katherine Maher.
“Her first rule could be simple enough: don’t tell people how to think,” he said. “It could even be the new North Star.”
Mr. Folkenflik reported that an NPR spokesperson said Ms. Maher supports Ms. Chapin’s response to Mr. Berliner’s article, stating that she “believes that it’s a healthy thing for a public service newsroom to engage in rigorous consideration of the needs of our audiences, including where we serve our mission well and where we can serve it better.”
The Epoch Times has contacted NPR for comment.
