NPR has reportedly been thrown into turmoil after a bombshell essay penned by a veteran editor claimed the broadcaster allowed liberal bias to affect its coverage — with the editor-in-chief telling furious staffers she did not want him to become a “martyr.”
Uri Berliner, a Peabody Award-winning journalist who has worked at NPR for 25 years, called out journalistic blind spots around major news events, including the origins of Covid-19, the war in Gaza, and the Hunter Biden laptop, in an essay published Tuesday on Bari Weiss’ online news site The Free Press.
The senior business editor also said the internal culture at NPR had placed race and identity as ”paramount in nearly every aspect of the workplace.”
Berliner’s essay sparked a firestorm of criticism from prominent conservatives — with former President Donald Trump demanding NPR’s federal funding get yanked — and has led to internal tumult, The New York Times reported Friday.
The essay was brought up at what was described as a “long-scheduled meet-and-greet” with the hosts of NPR’s biggest shows on Wednesday, where NPR Editor in Chief Edith Chapin reportedly said she did not want Berliner to become a “martyr,” according to The Times.
Others took to the internal messaging system to rail against Berliner’s assertions.
“Mr. Berliner’s essay also sent critical Slack messages whizzing through some of the same employee affinity groups focused on racial and sexual identity that he cited in his essay. In one group, several staff members disputed Mr. Berliner’s points about a lack of ideological diversity and said efforts to recruit more people of color would make NPR’s journalism better,” The Times reported.
NPR managing editor of standards and practices Tony Cavin disputed Berliner’s assumptions and claimed the essay will likely make it “harder for NPR journalists to do their jobs.”
”The next time one of our people calls up a Republican congressman or something and tries to get an answer from them, they may well say, ‘Oh, I read these stories, you guys aren’t fair, so I’m not going to talk to you,”’ Cavin said.
NPR did not immediately return calls for comment.
Berliner told The Times on Thursday that he didn’t regret publishing the essay, saying he loved NPR and hoped to make it better by “airing criticisms that have gone unheeded by leaders for years.”
Calling the broadcaster a “national trust” that people rely on for fair reporting and top-notch storytelling, he said: ”I decided to go out and publish it in hopes that something would change, and that we get a broader conversation going about how the news is covered.”
Berliner said he hasn’t been disciplined for writing the essay, but he did get a note from his supervisor reminding him that NPR requires employees to clear speaking appearances and media requests with standards and media relations teams.
Some former NPR staffers defended Berliner’s essay.
Jeffrey A. Dvorkin, NPR’s former ombudsman, said Berliner was ”not wrong”. Chuck Holmes, a former managing editor at NPR, called Berliner’s essay ”brave’.’
After the essay was published, Berliner said he received “a lot of support from colleagues, and many of them unexpected, who say they agree with me.”
“Some of them say this confidentially,” Berliner told NewsNation anchor Chris Cuomo on Tuesday.
Chapin had pushed back on Berliner’s claims of a liberal bias, saying: ”We’re proud to stand behind the exceptional work that our desks and shows do to cover a wide range of challenging stories.”
