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(NewsNation) — On April 9, Uri Berliner — a 25-year veteran at NPR, who describes himself as a Subaru-driving, Sarah-Lawrence-educated man raised by a lesbian peace activist mother — accused NPR of bias in a letter he wrote in The Free Press.
“It’s true NPR has always had a liberal bent, but during most of my tenure here, an open-minded, curious culture prevailed,” Berliner wrote. “We were nerdy, but not knee-jerk, activist, or scolding. In recent years, however, that has changed. Today, those who listen to NPR or read its coverage online find something different: the distilled worldview of a very small segment of the U.S. population.”
In a letter obtained by NewsNation, NPR employees asked CEO Katherine Maher to consider how Berliner’s comments may impact their careers and the outlet’s editorial direction.
“Our impression is that an unauthorized public comment like this has attracted more attention and immediate reaction from leadership than those long-standing efforts – it appears to have ushered in a monthly content review board that has been under discussion,” the letter stated. “What is your guidance for staff who do care about NPR and make well-intended efforts to change editorial choices for the better going forward?”
Berlinger has slammed the network for groupthink and a lack of diversity in thought.
“An open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR, and now, predictably, we don’t have an audience that reflects America,” he wrote.
Berliner’s words rocketed around the internet and newsrooms.
Former NPR vice president for news and ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin wrote, “I know Uri. He’s not wrong.”
Berliner told NewsNation’s Chris Cuomo that he has a lot of support and many colleagues who agree.
“I think there has been a lot of response saying, look — these are things that need to be addressed,” Berliner said. “We haven’t. We’ve been too reluctant, too frightened too timid to deal with this thing and I think this the right opportunity to bring it all out in the open.”
NPR Editor-in-Chief Edith Chapin responded internally to colleagues, saying, “I and my colleagues on the leadership team strongly disagree with Uri’s assessment of the quality of our journalism…”
The network suspended Berliner without pay. He acknowledged that he did not clear his writing for another news outlet with NPR.
In the letter to Maher, Berliner then resigned, firing a parting shot at Maher.
“I cannot work in a newsroom where I am disparaged by a new CEO whose divisive views confirm the very problems at NPR I cite in my Free Press essay,” he wrote.
Now, dozens of NPR employees have signed a letter to Maher, demanding a public rebuttal of the “factual inaccuracies and elisions” in Berlinger’s Free Press essay.
But critics of NPR point to the new CEO and partisan comments she has made like this since-deleted 2018 post saying, “Donald Trump is a racist.”
They also point to comments like one from 2021, when Maher talked about how Wikipedia worked with the government to stop the spread of “disinformation and misinformation” during the pandemic and the 2020 election.
“We took a very active approach to disinformation and misinformation,” she said. “In response to the pandemic but also the upcoming U.S. election, as a model for future elections.”
During a 2022 Ted Talk while she was CEO of Wikipedia, Maher said, “Our reverence for the truth might be a distraction that’s getting in the way of finding common ground and getting things done.”
Margaret Sullivan, the former ombudsman at the Washington Post, wrote:
“One wonders if the network did its due diligence before making the hire; her years-old social media posts call Trump a racist and seem to shrug off the rioting during social justice protests.”