Uri Berliner, a25 year veteran editor at NPR comes clean about his employer s lack of journalistic integrity.
He admits NPR is now an advocate for the left.
Like many unfortunate things, the rise of advocacy took off with Donald Trump. As in many newsrooms, his election in 2016 was greeted at NPR with a mixture of disbelief, anger, and despair. (Just to note, I eagerly voted against Trump twice but felt we were obliged to cover him fairly.) But what began as tough, straightforward coverage of a belligerent, truth-impaired president veered toward efforts to damage or topple the Trump presidency.
Persistent rumors that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia over the election became the catnip that drove reporting. At NPR, we hitched our wagon to his most visible antagonist, Representative Adam Schiff.
Schiff, who was the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, became NPR s guiding hand, its ever present muse. By my count, NPR hosts interviewed Schiff 25 times about Trump and Russia. During many of those conversations, Schiff alluded to purported evidence of collusion. The Schiff talking points became the drumbeat of NPR news reports.
But when the Mueller report found no credible evidence of collusion, NPR coverage was notably sparse. Russiagate quietly faded from our programming.
Berliner and his mea culpa for slanted coverage of COVID, the Hunter laptop, and more can be found here:
https://www.thefp.com/p/npr-editor-how-npr-lost-americas-trust
Irony is dead. MAGA journos complain about a lack of diversity at legacy media outlets.
The Berliner essay has it backwards.you cannot blame NPR for conservatives not listening. You have to ask why conservatives have gone down conspiracy holes (climate change, 2020 election, vaccines) and how on earth mainstream media is supposed to cater to them now?
Ten years ago left wing journalist Juan Williams (working for NPR) had a
observation on a Fox News program( the OreillyFactor).
I am not a bigot. You know the kind of books I have written about the civil rights movement in this country, but when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.
NPR fired Williams and Fox hired him to be the voice of the left, notably on
The Five. Not only did they fire me , they called me a psycho. I mean, they said horrible things about me quite publicly.
I am not surprised by NPR veteran editor Uri Berliner comments that an open minded spirit no longer exists within NPR and it is devastating both for its journalism and its business model.
So they (NPR)are a very much an insulated cadre of people who think they are right, and they have a hard time with people who are different.
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