Liberals are all for acceptance, tolerance, and diversity — until they’re not.
As journalist Uri Berliner has learned.
Berliner, a senior business editor for National Public Radio, was suspended, beginning last Friday, for five days without pay after he publicly chastised the taxpayer-funded network for its liberal, anti-Trump bias.
As the Tampa Free Press reported last week, Berliner, a 25-year NPR veteran, wrote a long essay in which he noted how far NPR had drifted to the left since former President Donald Trump burst onto the political scene in 2015.
To recap, an audience survey in 2011 found that 26% of NPR listeners identified as conservative, 23% were in the middle, and 37% were liberal.
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In 2023, only 11% were conservatives, 21% were moderates, and a whopping 67% described themselves as very or somewhat liberal.
Berliner noted that on several big stories of the Trump era, NPR not only promoted the liberal line, it actively shut out conservative or even contrary opinions.
That included massively promoting the Russia collusion hoax and steadfastly downplaying or ignoring stories favorable to Trump or conservatives, such as the Mueller report, Hunter Biden’s laptop, and the Wuhan lab leak theory.
Berliner asserted that NPR never corrected the record when its premises and reporting were proven false.
The icing Berliner applied to the proverbial cake was his own survey of voter registration in the NPR newsroom.
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In 2021, he found that NPR had 87 registered Democrats working in editorial positions and zero Republicans.
After Trump was elected, NPR’s coverage openly “veered toward efforts to damage or topple Trump’s presidency,” he wrote.
“An open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR, and now, predictably, we don’t have an audience that reflects America,” Berliner added.
“That wouldn’t be a problem for an openly polemical news outlet serving a niche audience. But for NPR, which purports to consider all things, it’s devastating both for its journalism and its business model.”
In its own report on its own staffer on Tuesday, NPR noted Berliner’s piece “angered many of his colleagues, led NPR leaders to announce monthly internal reviews of the network’s coverage, and gave fresh ammunition to conservative and partisan Republican critics of NPR, including former President Donald Trump.”
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Trump responded to Berliner’s column on Truth Social, his social media platform, denouncing NPR as a “total scam” and calling for its taxpayer funding to be cut off.
In its article, NPR pointed out that Berliner was being punished because he had “failed to secure its approval for outside work for other news outlets, as is required of NPR journalists. It called the letter [announcing his punishment] a ‘final warning,’ saying Berliner would be fired if he violated NPR’s policy again.”
“His essay and subsequent public remarks stirred deep anger and dismay within NPR. Colleagues contend Berliner cherry-picked examples to fit his arguments and challenge the accuracy of his accounts,” the NPR article continued.
Yet one of its journalists, “Morning Edition” host Michel Martin, told NPR’s own reporter that “some colleagues at the network share Berliner’s concerns that coverage is frequently presented through an ideological or idealistic prism that can alienate listeners.”
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