Uri Berliner, longtime National Public Radio (NPR) editor, he resigned by the media organization.
His saga began last week after he published an essay for Bari Weiss’ THE Free printing in which he criticized creeping liberal groupthink in the workplace. Many NPR employees were furious that he would “burn his workplace,” though Berliner’s piece carefully noted that he still believes the outlet is important and should continue to receive government funding.
For writing about his newspaper without asking permission from his bosses, Berliner was suspended for five days without pay. But in the end he chose to resign.
“I cannot work in a newsroom where I am vilified by a new CEO whose controversial views confirm the same problems at NPR that I cite in my Free Press essay,” he said, referring to statements made by NPR CEO Katherine Maher, the whose considerable history of tweeting Even woke nonsense is now under public scrutiny.
And he’s right. Berliner’s article for Weiss concludes with this thought: “What is notable is the extent to which people at all levels of NPR have coalesced comfortably around the progressive worldview. And that, I think, is NPR’s Most Damaging Development: The Absence of Viewpoint Diversity.”
Berliner cited Russiagate, the Hunter Biden laptop story, and coverage of the lab leak theory on the origins of COVID-19 as areas of coverage where NPR’s bias in favor of the progressive and establishment perspectives of Democratic Party led the outlet astray. A media company that didn’t completely dismiss non-progressive views might have fared better.
The lack of viewpoint diversity at NPR should not be surprising, however, when you consider its CEO apparently believes that ideological diversity is a “dog whistle for anti-feminist and anti-POC stories.” For Maher, diversity involves “race, ethnicity, gender, class, ability, geography” – everything except diversity of thought.
The discussion between Silicon Valley and Russia was pretty fun, until it got to ideological diversity. In case it wasn’t obvious, around here this is often a boo for anti-feminist and anti-POC stories about meritocracy. Maybe that’s not what the author intended. But I don’t know, maybe it is?
— Katherine Maher (@krmaher) July 6, 2018
And Maher is not alone. About 50 of Berliner’s colleagues signed a letter to Maher asking her to enforce NPR’s current editorial policy by weaponizing every tool at her disposal.
“Staff, many of them from marginalized backgrounds, have pushed for internal policy changes through mechanisms such as the [diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)] accountability committee, affinity group guideline sharing, and an ad hoc content review group,” they wrote. Elsewhere in the letter they put the term diversity of points of view in scary quotes.
It certainly does not appear that the DEI Accountability Committee is working to broaden NPR’s ideological perspective. In contrast, DEI-obsessed employees appear to be primarily concerned with eradicating anti-DEI heresy.
Now Berliner is not a victim of cancel culture: Most news organizations would exercise some disciplinary authority over an employee who publicly discusses the company’s internal policies without prior approval. But there should be no doubt that he accurately described a real problem in a (sadly taxpayer-funded) news outlet. The acronym DEI apparently stands for diversity, equity and inclusion, and the public is learning exactly what these terms really mean.