NPR Pearl-Clutching Continues As Woke Staffers Demand ‘Public and Direct’ Debunking of Uri Berliner’s Essay
“Publicly and directly call out the piece’s factual inaccuracies and elisions. (Others, including NPR staff, have already done so, but hearing it come from NPR management would hold even greater weight.)”
I think it’s safe to say that Uri Berliner exposing NPR’s woke left bias and emphasis on DEI in his Free Press essay is going to have serious repercussions for the purported news network for the foreseeable future, both in terms of reputation and possibly even funding.
When last we left you, Berliner, a longtime editor and reporter for NPR, had resigned just a day after receiving a five-day suspension without pay along with an employment termination threat, which he was told was for writing for another publication without first getting approval from NPR’s higher-ups.
Here’s what he wrote in his resignation letter:
“I am resigning from NPR, a great American institution where I have worked for 25 years. I don’t support calls to defund NPR. I respect the integrity of my colleagues and wish for NPR to thrive and do important journalism. But 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.”
My resignation letter to NPR CEO @krmaher pic.twitter.com/0hafVbcZAK
— Uri Berliner (@uberliner) April 17, 2024
Two hours after he shared his resignation notice on Twitter, news broke that 50 NPR staffers had sent a letter to CEO Katherine Maher and Editor-in-Chief Edith Chapin pushing for a more forceful response to Berliner’s article because they felt their supposed journalistic creds had been impugned. Further, they wanted to know why their ideas for change had allegedly gotten little attention while Berliner’s claims had sparked immediate reactions at the network:
“We’re writing to urge stronger support for staff who have had their journalistic expertise called into question by one of their own in a public forum,” read the letter, which New York Times reporter Ben Mullin posted to X. “We also urge more transparency regarding the consequences of making unauthorized public comments that seek to change NPR’s editorial direction.”
“[T]here are still unanswered questions about how NPR staff are expected to conduct themselves,” it continued. “What and who are our standards for? Are we all being held to the same scrutiny? And will we all be going forward?”
[…]
“Staff, many from marginalized backgrounds, have pushed for internal policy changes through mechanisms like the DEI accountability committee, sharing of affinity group guidelines, and an ad-hoc content review group,” the letter said.
“Our impression is that an unauthorized public comment like this has attracted more attention and immediate reaction from leadership than those longstanding efforts,” they also wrote, while adding this demand later in the letter:
“[NPR should] Publicly and directly call out the piece’s factual inaccuracies and elisions. (Others, including NPR staff, have already done so, but hearing it come from NPR management would hold even greater weight.)”
The full letter is below:
new: About 50 NPR employees sign a letter to CEO Katherine Maher and top editor Edith Chapin calling for, among other things, a public rebuke of the “factual inaccuracies and elisions” in Uri Berliner’s Free Press essay. pic.twitter.com/jXc1R4J0G3
— Ben Mullin (@BenMullin) April 17, 2024
Though the letter reportedly did not contain the names of those who agreed with the sentiments expressed, NPR TV critic Eric Deggans admitted he was one of the ones who signed on to the letter, declaring without evidence that Berliner’s claims were false:
I’m one of the names who signed this letter. As I have said often, we are open to honest, fair and accurate criticism at NPR. But Berliner’s piece was none of those things. https://t.co/omzTk19ncm
— Eric Deggans at NPR (@Deggans) April 18, 2024
Some, including veteran journalist Brit Hume, opined that the letter essentially confirmed Berliner’s arguments:
As if the bias problem at NPR were not well enough establishes, now we have this from staff members. https://t.co/iliFTVfwZ1
— Brit Hume (@brithume) April 17, 2024
More than the suspension or the fact that NPR's new CEO is an honest-to-God hashtag Resistance NPC, this letter proves Berliner's entire point. https://t.co/xE32SJBF2v
— T. Becket Adams (@BecketAdams) April 17, 2024
“We all condemn Uri Berliner for saying we all think alike” is not the message @NPR may think. https://t.co/NzXRFhZ2Be
— IT Guy (@ITGuy1959) April 17, 2024
Townhall.com Political Editor Guy Benson pointed to the red flags in the letter, including the “DEI accountability committee,” as more evidence as to why NPR should once and for all be defunded:
“Marginalized backgrounds”
“DEI accountability committee”
“Attracted harassment”
The place is what Berliner said it is. If this is how they want to run their company, fine. Not a single one of us should be forced to pay for it with our tax dollars. https://t.co/fBTtpCX8rL
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) April 17, 2024
Endorsed.
— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —
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Comments
No self-awareness whatever.
Pure infantile and malignant narcissism, entitlement and arrogance — the core animating traits of vile Leftists and Dhimmi-crats.
Defund NPR !
And take away their tax status that allows donations to be tax-deductible. No tax breaks for NPR or anyone contributing to them. They have to earn their own airtime.
Donations to NPR really should be considered political campaign contributions to the democrats but I’d be satisfied just taking away their tax-exempt status.
+1000000000000
Too late NPR. You already showed your hand, and we see you.
It was not your “expertise” that was called into question, but your integrity.
But this letter serves well to call your expertise into question, too. Thanks for that.
Quite a quote, isn’t it…
“We also urge more transparency regarding the consequences of making unauthorized public comments that seek to change NPR’s editorial direction.”
Translation-
The foundation of what we believe is so weak that we cannot tolerate a single dissenting opinion. Destroy the career of anyone who deviates from the ordered path.
These ignoramuses manage to misuse a key word in a very short statement. God only knows what they think an elision is.
I loved the part of the letter at the end:
ROFLMAO! Awesome.
…
…
… still laughing …
I hope we can all agree that it is completely unfair to have a staff with festering resentment and discontent. The kindest thing NPR can do is fire them all and hire a new staff whose resentment and discontent is not festering.
The reality is Berliner embarrassed himself, his article was error ridden and of poor quality. There seems to be a severe lack of critical thinking here, just parroting of talking points
https://steveinskeep.substack.com/p/how-my-npr-colleague-failed-at-viewpoint
LOL. This Inskeep guy is a moron and a LIAR. That is not what Berliner wrote, at all. Not even close. Berliner’s actual essay said:
This Inskeep worm slipped his own “unanimously registered” in to lie about Berliner. Berliner didn’t say anything about “everybody” or unanimously” but only that there were 87 registered as democrat and ZERO registered as Republican. I’m sure there were lots of registered greens and communists, but that wasn’t the point that Berliner was making.
I feel offended that they send some idiot like you to try and defend leftist nihilistic America-hate, here. We deserve better.
1. If you give a set of numbers 87 vs 0 by definition you are claiming that everyone is in the 87 category. He doesn’t mention any context around that number at all. So I’m sorry but your point fails.
2. Lovely cherry picking, a number of issues were discussed in the critique.
3. Projecting your own incompetence and vitriol isn’t much of an argument.
LOL … no, you are claiming that 87 people are in the 87 category. That’s what the “87” is for.
Do you actually think with that brain?
You are an idiot. Your claim is not even wrong.
“There seems to be a severe lack of critical thinking here, just parroting of talking points”
Save this. It is the perfect epitaph for your tombstone.
If Berliner cherry-picked and withheld information that may have been relevant to the reader, what he stated could still be factual (if it’s not untrue) and, even if Berliner lied, Inskeep lied about what Berliner wrote (instead of showing how Berliner cherry-picked and unfairly framed the facts). But Berliner told the truth and Inskeep as much as proves it for finding it necessary to lie about Berliner’s statement in order to discredit it.
The bigger issue is why NPR hasv87 (or more) EDITORIAL positions.
Nah, I don’t think so.
Another Inskeep gem of retardation:
LOL. In PA, all you need to find out anyone’s voter registration is their name, county, zip code and date of birth. Anyone can look up anyone else. For Maryland, you only need the name, date of birth, and zip code.
Voter registration data is a public record.
This Inskeep moron doesn’t even know how people have access to voter registration records. Wow. And he’s supposed to be some sort of journalist?
It’s framed as a question, as in what method did he use to find this information out. It’s not necessarily the case that he went through employee data to then search for voter registration especially in context of having shown the stat given of 87 vs 0 was incorrect. Your jumping to conclusions, do better
It’s not a question, it’s a statement in which Inskeep is trying to plant doubt in his (Inskeep’s) readers’ minds that Berliner was able to ascertain what he claims to be a fact (without actually saying what Berliner claims to have done is impossible). Inskeep understands his readers, and knows that they will sagely nod their heads in agreement, “He couldn’t possibly have known what he claims to know,” even if intellectually they know that’s not true. It’s called “cognitive dissonance.”
Is NPR bias left of center, right of center or is it the center?
That’s not the point I’m making, it’s the credibility of Berliner.
That’s the point that Berliner was making; that NPR has become a mouthpiece for the left and shill for woke ideology without any true diversity, the diversity of opinion.
He spent 25 years sucking on the taxpayer’s teat.
He worked for NPR.
He thought that exposing their left wing bias was a revelation?
He would have been just as effective pointing out that water is wet and fire is hot.
Having said that, I DO love when they devour their own.
The sad thing is that this is just a TINY window into the mindset in Washington.
The Deep Staters believe that by dint of their status as unelected functionaries in the Federal Leviathan they have the omniscience that affords them the right to tyrannical bureaucratic rule, with no dissent. All dissent from their orthodoxy is – by definition – heretical, no matter how factually accurate.
They can remake laws by redefining words, (like “sex” in Title IX to mean behavior); they can choose to ignore other laws entirely like our immigration laws; they can lie to Federal courts to conduct a coup against a duly elected President….all with no consequence.
And when you point out the truth, like the fact that there are *indisputably* 87 Dems and zero Reps in their workforce, they lose their minds and try to crack down even harder than before.
This is not the behavior of honest, ethical, or independent-minded people.
The NPR staff grievance memo reads like those internecine woke battle texts waged against oldster leftist boomers at Sierra Club/John Muir etc. etc.
Short ebook .epub or .mobi or PDF detailing Woke internecine ruination:
https://archive.org/download/woke-cancel-culture
HOW OMNISEXUAL PARTICIPATION-TROPHY XE-XEM’S DEFEATED ALINSKY’S HIPPIES WITH HAIRCUTS
TOTALITARIAN [IN]BREEDING
a series of articles
HOW WOKE WORKERS UNHORSE LEADERS
UNFIT STAFF CREATE OFFICE MAYHEM IN BID TO PROTECT THEIR JO8S
TOXIC HUMAN RESOURCE COMMISSARS RECRUIT WOKE WORKERS
ENGINEERED PUSHBACK
If these were supposed to be links, they weren’t.
That the institute has spent the course of the Biden administration paralyzed makes it typical of not just the abortion rights community — Planned Parenthood, NARAL Pro-Choice America, and other abortion rights organizations had similarly been locked in knock-down, drag-out fights between competing factions of their organizations, most often breaking down along staff-versus-management lines. It’s also true of the traditional progressive advocacy space across the board, which has, more or less, effectively ceased to function. The Sierra Club, Demos, the American Civil Liberties Union, Color of Change, the Movement for Black Lives, Human Rights Campaign, Time’s Up, the Sunrise Movement, and many other organizations have seen wrenching and debilitating turmoil in the past couple years.
Katherine Maher, the new NPR CEO, used to be the Chief executive at the Wikimedia Foundation… which explains much.
She was also the chair of the Signal Foundation whose mission is to also “protect free expression and enable secure global communication”.
What a perfect fit for the now defunct (supposedly) Disinformation Governance Board of the DoJ, or perhaps a future Truth Commissioner.
Maher is the IRL Titania McGrath, a walking AWFL self-parody.
Remember, the Disinformation Governance Board’s purpose was to coordinate multi-agency anti-disinformation operations, not actually conduct the ops itself. The fact that the board was stillborn doesn’t mean that those operations have gone away, because they didn’t. They’re just less efficient than they might have been with the board.
Look, everybody calm down. As soon as the results of the coming elections is are corrected by the White House, then the new administration will establish a Ministry of Information that will license all news and commentary. Then the problems will be over, right?
And if you cannot recognize that as sarcasm, y’all must be a Leftist.
Subotai Bahadur
Umm if it is a credible prediction doesn’t that make it not sarcasm? Frankly we probably ain’t too far off from that becoming reality.
Do tell, please. Inquiring minds want to know. For example, Berliner told us how NPR smothered the Hunter Biden laptop story in 2020. Mr. Deggins, you are going to document how NPR informed its readers from the beginning about the validity of the Hunter Biden laptop story as reported in the NY Post? Yeah, tell me another one. 🙂
It is difficult to debunk that which is true.
“Further, they wanted to know why their ideas for change had allegedly gotten little attention while Berliner’s claims had sparked immediate reactions at the network”
Maybe because he put his career and his ass on the line, while you just continue to whine and moan at your masters, like the little komsomol snowflakes you are.