Is it a preview of the horror show that is to come from National Public Radio? Sure, but it’s nothing we haven’t seen before. This circus is like Friday the 13th franchise—we know what will happen. We’ve seen NPR’s bias for years accelerating into absurd depths post-2016. It’s why now-former senior business editor Uri Berliner penned an essay criticizing the network’s hard left turn. He was suspended and later resigned from NPR, confirming what he wrote.
"The number one challenge that we see is the First Amendment in the United States"
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) April 17, 2024
NPR's new CEO Katherine Maher.
pic.twitter.com/kTznD2SJlu
Katherine Maher is the new CEO, who claims that the First Amendment is a major obstacle in combating misinformation, aka conservative views that obliterate her woke political disposition. With Berliner’s resignation, she was asked about viewpoint diversity at NPR and unsurprisingly gave the run-around on the question (via Fox News):
Embattled NPR president and CEO Katherine Maher sidestepped a question about whether she should prioritize "viewpoint diversity" in the newsroom in the wake of the resignation of a veteran editor who sounded the alarm about the organization's liberal groupthink.
During a conversation Wednesday at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Maher was asked about "viewpoint diversity," a topic NPR's senior business editor Uri Berliner tackled last week in his bombshell essay in The Free Press, which resulted in his suspension and exit following reported "turmoil" that erupted among colleagues.
"Is that kind of diversity something that you track or should track internally, or how do you get a handle on whether those things are actually happening or not?" Carnegie senior fellow Jon Bateman, who moderated the "Disinformation, Journalism, and Technology" event, asked.
"I think that's reflected in the stories, right?" Maher responded. "I think that's reflected in what is the audience that we serve and how much value do they get out of our work. Tracking individual viewpoints- I mean, this is the thing about journalism is that, of course, people come from all sorts of backgrounds. They have different lived experiences, but they come to the table to do the work and uphold journalistic ethics and integrity. And that means reporting stories based on the facts. That means reporting stories matter. That means ensuring that we're rigorous with our sourcing. That means ensuring that we are focused on delivering what is accurate and what we know about the world today and then updating it again, right? Because the news is constantly changing and we're going to constantly need to follow those stories to make sure that we're really doing it well."
[…]
Maher, who joined NPR last month, repeatedly insisted she has no editorial control over NPR's coverage. She also said she never had the chance to meet Berliner, telling Bateman, "I wish in some ways that I had had that chance so that we could have talked about what his concerns were."
"I don't have any editorial guidance on the newsroom, but it would have been interesting to hear and be able to think about structurally what can we do," Maher said before pointing to quarterly meetings with NPR stations she implemented and a monthly newsroom meeting addressing NPR's coverage.
At points in the article, she comes off as sensible until you dive into her social media history, which is so left-wing, it’s almost a caricature. The truth is that NPR is the heroin for rich white, urban liberals are who addicted to stories of racial struggles by non-whites but have very little interest, and in some cases, are openly hostile, toward stories about these communities who have had individuals and families achieve better lives.
No one in the NPR universe cares about black, Hispanic, or Asian communities rising above the odds, which is indelibly American, but will take to the streets over stories about racial oppression, even if it’s totally manufactured.
If NPR wants to continue being a left-wing outlet, that’s fine, but it shouldn’t be subsidized with our tax dollars.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member