NPR Editor Uri Berliner Quits After Backlash to His 'Free Press' Article

By Dustin Rowles | Social Media | April 17, 2024 |

By Dustin Rowles | Social Media | April 17, 2024 |

Uri Berliner, an NPR editor who worked at the organization for 25 years, announced his resignation today. The decision comes following a controversial essay he wrote for the Free Press, in which he criticized NPR’s coverage of various issues over the last eight years, including Russiagate, the COVID lab leak theory, Hunter Biden’s laptop, systemic racism, and antisemitism following the events of Oct. 7.

In his essay, Berliner highlighted the disparity between Democrats and Republicans in NPR’s D.C. newsroom, alleging that some NPR staffers actively sought to undermine the presidency of Donald Trump. Berliner’s piece angered many of his colleagues, and some said that they would refuse to work with him in the future. It also gave Donald Trump and the Republicans a lot of ammunition to use against the organization, including another round of calls to defund NPR. (Despite his criticism of NPR, Berliner emphasized that he does not support calls to defund the organization.)

Consequently, NPR suspended Berliner for five days without pay and issued a “final warning,” stating that any further violation of NPR’s policy on working with outside news organizations would result in his termination. Instead of accepting these terms, Berliner chose to resign.

In his resignation statement, Berliner also referred to Katherine Maher, NPR’s newly appointed President and CEO, who has recently come under fire for her past social media posts calling Donald Trump a racist and expressing support for Joe Biden. The campaign against Maher is largely being provoked by Christopher Rufo, the same person who led the charge against Claudine Gay, the President of Harvard University, forcing her resignation.

I take issue with a number of the points made by Berliner in his essay. However, I don’t disagree with some of those inside the NPR newsroom who agree that the organization presents news through an “ideological or idealistic prism” that can be alienating I also agree with those same people who believe that Berliner could’ve proven is point without blowing up the newsroom. Nevertheless, NPR seems to target an affluent, white liberal audience, often to the point of parody, and while the organization’s attempts to diversify the newsroom are commendable, it hasn’t really changed the organization’s perspective. To wit, this paragraph in Berliner’s essay:

Despite all the resources we’d devoted to building up our news audience among blacks and Hispanics, the numbers have barely budged. In 2023, according to our demographic research, 6 percent of our news audience was black, far short of the overall U.S. adult population, which is 14.4 percent black. And Hispanics were only 7 percent, compared to the overall Hispanic adult population, around 19 percent. Our news audience doesn’t come close to reflecting America. It’s overwhelmingly white and progressive, and clustered around coastal cities and college towns.

He’s not wrong. NPR is a solid source of news for a very particular kind of person — a kind of person very much like myself. I don’t care that NPR makes little attempt to engage with the MAGA audience — right-wing Republicans are averse to facts, which is the foundation of good journalism — but they could do a much better job of reaching out to listeners who don’t spend their Saturday mornings at the Farmer’s Market carrying their NPR totes.

I also think that forcing out a guy critical of his organization is very Times thing to do.