(HorizonPost.com) – A National Public Radio editor on Tuesday wrote a scathing, detailed column arguing that NPR’s overt bias was “devastating both for its journalism and its business model.”
In an April 9 op-ed in The Free Press, NPR senior business editor Uri Berliner called out NPR’s unwillingness to concede when it gets a story wrong, citing as examples its failure to acknowledge its inaccurate reporting on Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop and the so-called “lab leak” theory about the COVID pandemic.
Berliner, a 25-year veteran of NPR, said while conservatives may think the outlet has always been biased, in reality, it hasn’t always been as biased as it is today.
He noted that as recently as 13 years ago, NPR’s audience was roughly 37 percent liberal while about half its audience was either moderate or conservative. However, by last year, 67 percent of NPR’s audience was liberal while moderate listeners dropped to 21 percent and conservatives fell to 11 percent.
Berliner said NPR’s former “open-minded spirit” no longer existed and as a result, its audience no longer “reflects America.”
He added that while that would be no problem for an openly biased news outlet that caters to a “niche audience,” for NPR, such bias was “devastating for its journalism and its business model.”
In a memo to NPR staff, chief news executive Edith Chapin defended the outlet’s coverage and said that she and the leadership team rejected Berliner’s assessment. She told NPR staffers that the leadership was “proud to stand behind” their “exceptional work” in covering “a wide range of challenging stories.”
Chapin insisted that NPR believed that “inclusion” was “critical to telling the nuanced stories of this country and our world.”
Berliner’s op-ed caused a firestorm in the media, which rushed to defend NPR while criticizing Berliner and The Free Press editor-in-chief Bari Weiss. Some, including CNN’s Oliver Darcy, blamed Donald Trump.
When Darcy asked Berliner why he didn’t address Trump’s attacks on the media in his op-ed, Berliner sent him a link to a 2023 Gallup survey showing Americans’ trust in the media had declined. He told Darcy that confidence had “tanked” even among Democrats and suggested that it was a “good time” for those in the media “to look in the mirror.”
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