A National Public Radio (NPR) editor who criticized the news organization’s progressive ‘groupthink’ direction has been suspended without pay.
This past week, Uri Berliner, the senior business editor for NPR, wrote a piece 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.”
According to David Folkenflik, an NPR media correspondent, the news organization is “grappling” with “the fallout” from Mr. Berliner’s statements, among them being that in its striving to become diverse, it lost its spirit of open-mindedness.
“It angered many of his colleagues, led NPR leaders to announce monthly internal reviews of the network’s coverage, and gave fresh ammunition to conservative and partisan Republican critics of NPR, including former President Donald Trump,” Mr. Folkenflik said.
Mr. Berliner cited NPR’s promotion of the Russia 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 alleged systematic racism.
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.
CEO’s Past Social Media Posts
Katherine Maher, NPR’s new CEO, responded by calling his critique “profoundly disrespectful, hurtful, and demeaning.”
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.
Conservative journalist Christopher Rufo highlighted Ms. Maher’s past Tweets on X, in which she has expressed an obsession with biased, progressive ideologies.
A New York Times article quoted Mr. Rufo as saying, “If NPR wants to truly be National Public Radio, it can’t pander to the furthest-left elements in the United States.”
He called for NPR to “part ways with Katherine Maher.”
He posted on X, stating that with The New York Times not shying away from reporting on her past Tweets is a shift in who is “driving the narrative.”
“It’s time for Republican leaders to speak out against NPR’s new CEO: ‘Taxpayers should not be funding a pro-censorship, left-wing partisan,’” he posted. “Put NPR in a dilemma: if they defend her, they continue to lose public trust; if they let her go, we take the win and keep moving.”
He challenged Mr. Folkenflik’s characterization of Mr. Rufo as being among those “targeting” Ms. Maher for her posts to social media “years before joining the network.”
“NPR is now claiming that I am ‘targeting’ its CEO by highlighting her own tweets,” Mr. Rufo posted. “Katherine Maher is a standard-issue affluent, white female liberal, who is now discovering that her inner monologue is wildly out of touch with the public that, in part, pays her salary.”
Mr. Berliner’s Reported Response
Mr. Folkenflik later reported that in an interview with Mr. Berliner, he said the social media posts “demonstrated Maher was all but incapable of being the person best poised to direct the organization.”“We’re looking for a leader right now who’s going to be unifying and bring more people into the tent and have a broader perspective on, sort of, what America is all about,” Mr. Berliner told him. “And this seems to be the opposite of that.”
Mr. Folkenflik reported that Mr. Berliner’s suspension letter said that he “failed to secure its approval for outside work for other news outlets,” which is required, and said it was Mr. Berliner’s “final warning.”
The Epoch Times has contacted NPR for comment.
