A veteran National Public Radio reporter who blew the whistle on National Public Radio’s blatant liberal bias said he has heard from colleagues who privately agreed with him but were unable to publicly criticize him.
Uli Berliner, an award-winning business editor and reporter during his 25-year career at NPR, wrote in an essay: Bari Weiss’ online news site, The Free Press “I have received a lot of support from colleagues, many of whom were unexpected and who say they agree with me.”
“Some of them say this in private.” Berliner told NewsNation anchor Chris Cuomo on Tuesday.
Berliner said he wrote the essay in part because “we were too reluctant about these things, too scared, too timid.”
“And I think this is the right opportunity to bring everything into the light.”
In this essay, “I’ve been at NPR for 25 years. This is how we lost faith in America.” — Mr. Berliner is a registered member of the editorial staff at NPR’s Washington, D.C., headquarters. There were 87 Democrats and no Republicans, he said.
He wrote that he presented these findings to colleagues at a May 2021 full editorial staff meeting.
“When I suggested there was a diversity problem with 87 Democrats and 0 Republicans, the reaction was not hostile,” Berliner wrote.
“It was worse.”
Berliner wrote that his colleagues reacted with “extreme indifference.”
“I received several messages from surprised and curious colleagues,” he wrote. “But the message was more of a, ‘Wow, that’s weird,’ as if the skewed tally was a random anomaly rather than a major failure in our diversity north star.”
Berliner accused NPR’s bosses of letting Democratic political leanings seep into their editorial decisions, including NPR’s decision to turn a blind eye to Hunter Biden’s laptop story.
The Post first reported the existence of a laptop containing emails revealing Hunter Biden’s business connections overseas.
Former national security officials opposed to President Trump signed a letter claiming the laptop incident was the product of Russian disinformation. Still, independent investigators and the FBI later confirmed the authenticity of the email and computer content, corroborating the Post’s reporting.
According to Berliner, NPR’s senior editors wrote the Hunter Biden article weeks before voters cast their ballots in the fall of 2020, out of concern that it would help President Trump’s re-election chances. , reportedly refused to cover Hunter Biden’s article.
He said NPR has moved too far to the left, exaggerating allegations of Russian collusion against Donald Trump while ignoring the findings of special counsel Robert Mueller, who recommended no criminal charges against the Trump campaign. I wrote that I didn’t pay attention.
When asked by Cuomo if she was worried about her job given the fact that she is “white” and “not 18 years old,” [years old]”I’m not worried,” Berliner said.
“I think people want an open dialogue…[and] Please have an honest discussion,” Berliner told Cuomo. “There’s a hunger in this. Most people aren’t bound by ideology, and I think a lot of people are just fed up with ideology.”
Berliner said NPR reporters have always been liberal, but that has never been more evident in their work than in recent years.
“We were nerds in a way, and we loved digging deep into things and understanding the intricacies of things. I think that evolved over the years into a much narrower kind of niche mindset,” he said. told Cuomo.
Berlin said NPR “has a group that thinks it’s very selective and entrenched around progressive views and doesn’t give it enough air or enough space to consider all kinds of viewpoints.” He said he was troubled by the fact that there was no such thing.
Berliner’s bosses responded to the bias claim by saying they “strongly disagree” with his view that NPR suffers from a “lack of viewpoint diversity.”
“We’re proud to support the outstanding work our desks and programs do to cover a wide range of difficult stories,” said Edith Chapin, NPR’s chief news officer. I wrote to the employee.
Chapin wrote, “None of our works is beyond scrutiny and criticism.”
“We must have a vigorous discussion in the newsroom about how we serve the nation as a whole,” she told employees in a memo.
An NPR spokesperson said NPR had no further comment.
When asked by Cuomo about the executive memo, Berliner said he was “not surprised” by the response from “the same executives that I have been making these points to.”
