Far-left National Public Radio (NPR) employs 87 registered Democrats in editorial positions but zero Republicans in the same positions in its Washington, DC, headquarters, NPR Senior Editor Uri Berliner wrote Tuesday.
Berliner, who admittedly leans left, wrote a scathing article about NPR’s illiberal newsroom, slamming the taxpayer-funded network for refusing to address “a diversity problem” within the office.
In an article published in the Free Press, Berliner said he opposed many of the left-wing and perhaps false narratives NPR spun about the coronavirus “lab leak theory,” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, Hunter Biden’s laptop, former President Donald Trump, and the 2016 Russia hoax.
“[P]olitics were blotting out the curiosity and independence that ought to have been driving our work,” he explained. His concerns came to a head when he told management in 2021 that NPR, which presents its news stories as unbiased, had a bias problem within the network.
Berliner reported:
So on May 3, 2021, I presented the findings at an all-hands editorial staff meeting. When I suggested we had a diversity problem with a score of 87 Democrats and zero Republicans, the response wasn’t hostile. It was worse. It was met with profound indifference. I got a few messages from surprised, curious colleagues. But the messages were of the “oh wow, that’s weird” variety, as if the lopsided tally was a random anomaly rather than a critical failure of our diversity North Star.
In a follow-up email exchange, a top NPR news executive told me that she had been “skewered” for bringing up diversity of thought when she arrived at NPR. So, she said, “I want to be careful how we discuss this publicly.”
For years, I have been persistent. When I believe our coverage has gone off the rails, I have written regular emails to top news leaders, sometimes even having one-on-one sessions with them. On March 10, 2022, I wrote to a top news executive about the numerous times we described the controversial education bill in Florida as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill when it didn’t even use the word gay. I pushed to set the record straight, and wrote another time to ask why we keep using that word that many Hispanics hate—Latinx. On March 31, 2022, I was invited to a managers’ meeting to present my observations.
Over the years, Berliner wrote, NPR’s newsroom tilted left. In 2011, he said the network’s “audience tilted a bit to the left” but “still bore a resemblance to America at large.” He described NPR listening as 26 percent conservative, 23 percent “middle of the road,” and 37 percent far-left.
That changed by 2023 when only 11 percent of listeners described themselves as conservative, 21 percent as “middle of the road,” and 67 percent left-leaning.
“That wouldn’t be a problem for an openly polemical news outlet serving a niche audience,” he wrote, “but for NPR, which purports to consider all things, it’s devastating both for its journalism and its business model.”
NPR’s business model appears in decline. The taxpayer-funded organization laid off ten percent of its workforce, going from approximately 1,200 to about 1,050 employees after the left-wing media company failed to generate enough revenue, the organization announced in 2023.
Taxpayer funds subsidized NPR’s budget by nearly 11 percent.
NPR’s far-left position was reflected in the network’s coverage when Breitbart News Senior Editor-at-Large Joel B. Pollak appeared on its Morning Edition with Steve Inskeep in 2016. During the interview, Pollak defended Breitbart News’s then-Executive Chairman Stephen K. Bannon, while calling out NPR’s “racist programming,” as Breitbart News reported:
National Public Radio ombudsman/public editor Elizabeth Jensen has recommended that the taxpayer-funded radio news service bar future live interviews of conservatives who may have controversial views, following an interview Nov. 16 with Breitbart News’ Joel B. Pollak.
(Update, Nov. 21: NPR has clarified its policy and says live interviews of conservatives will continue. See here.)
Pollak, who serves as Breitbart’s Senior Editor-at-Large and In-house Counsel, defended its Executive Chairman Stephen K. Bannon from false and defamatory claims of antisemitism and “white nationalism.” He also turned the tables, pointing out that NPR has “racist programming,” including a story that called the 2016 election results “nostalgia for a whiter America.”
Wendell Husebo is a political reporter with Breitbart News and a former GOP War Room Analyst. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Follow Wendell on “X” @WendellHusebø or on Truth Social @WendellHusebo.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.