Of Course: NPR Suspends Senior Editor For Exposing the State Media Outlet's Bias

NPR respects all viewpoints, except those which conflict with its own.

NPR has suspended a senior editor who authored an essay published last week on an online news site in which he argued that the network had "lost America's trust" because of a liberal bias in its coverage, the outlet reported.

Uri Berliner was suspended Friday for five days without pay, NPR reported Tuesday. The revelation came exactly a week after Berliner publicly claimed in an essay for The Free Press, an online news publication, that NPR had allowed a "liberal bent" to influence its coverage, causing the outlet to steadily lose credibility with audiences.

The essay reignited the criticism that many prominent conservatives have long leveled against NPR and prompted newsroom leadership to implement monthly internal reviews of the network's coverage, NPR reported. Berliner's essay also angered many of his colleagues and exposed NPR's new chief executive Katherine Maher to a string of attacks from conservatives over her past social media posts.
Start the day smarter. Get all the news you need in your inbox each morning.

In a statement Monday to NPR, Maher refuted Berliner's claims by underscoring NPR's commitment to objective coverage of national issues.

"In America everyone is entitled to free speech as a private citizen," Maher said. "What matters is NPR's work and my commitment as its CEO: public service, editorial independence, and the mission to serve all of the American public. NPR is independent, beholden to no party, and without commercial interests."

USA Today thinks that statement "refutes" Berliner's long, detailed criticism.

...

The Peabody Award-winning journalist highlighted what he viewed as examples of the network's partisan coverage of several major news events, including the origins of COVID-19 and the war in Gaza. Berliner also lambasted NPR's diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies -- as reflected both within its newsroom and in its coverage -- as making race and identity "paramount in nearly every aspect of the workplace."

"All this reflected a broader movement in the culture of people clustering together based on ideology or a characteristic of birth," he wrote.

...

According to the NPR article, Berliner's essay also invoked the ire of many of his colleagues and the reporters whose stories he would be responsible for editing.

"Newsrooms run on trust," NPR political correspondent Danielle Kurtzleben said in a post last week on social media site X, though he didn't mention Berliner by name. "If you violate everyone's trust by going to another outlet and [expletive] on your colleagues (while doing a bad job journalistically, for that matter), I don't know how you do your job now."

Oh, trust huh? Like lying constantly to support whatever delusion the left is currently obsessed with?

Amid the fallout, NPR reported that NPR's chief news executive Edith Chapin announced to the newsroom late Monday afternoon that Executive Editor Eva Rodriguez would lead monthly meetings to review coverage.

Another liberal Democrat is going to check every other liberal Democrats' work?

Oh good, that should take care of everything.

Berliner expressed no regrets about publishing the essay in an interview with NPR, adding that he tried repeatedly to make his concerns over NPR's coverage known to news leaders.

More: NPR has informed Berliner he will be fired if he speaks truth to power again.

NPR media writer David Folkenflik revealed on Tuesday that Berliner beginning on Friday was suspended for five days without pay. Folkenflik, who reviewed a copy of the letter from NPR brass, said that the company told the editor he had failed to secure its approval for outside work for other news outlets -- a requirement of NPR journalists.

NPR called the letter a "final warning," saying Berliner would be fired if he violated NPR's policy again.

Via Instapundit.

posted by Disinformation Expert Ace at 12:06 PM

| Access Comments