A Senior Editor At NPR Admits The Media Is "Losing America's Trust" Because Of Their Obvious Bias

In a candid essay for The Free Press, NPR senior business editor, Uri Berliner, shares about his long career with the public radio institution.

"You know the stereotype of the NPR listener: an EV-driving, Wordle-playing, tote bag–carrying coastal elite," he begins. "It doesn’t precisely describe me, but it’s not far off. I’m Sarah Lawrence–educated, was raised by a lesbian peace activist mother, I drive a Subaru, and Spotify says my listening habits are most similar to people in Berkeley.  I fit the NPR mold. I’ll cop to that."

"So when I got a job here 25 years ago, I never looked back," he continues. "As a senior editor on the business desk where news is always breaking, we’ve covered upheavals in the workplace, supermarket prices, social media, and AI. It’s true NPR has always had a liberal bent, but during most of my tenure here, an open-minded, curious culture prevailed. We were nerdy, but not knee-jerk, activist, or scolding. In recent years, however, that has changed. Today, those who listen to NPR or read its coverage online find something different: the distilled worldview of a very small segment of the U.S. population."

You can and should read the full essay here, but Berliner goes on to describe the way leftwing bias began to creep in. The election of Donald Trump in 2016 was one catalyst (and Berliner adds that he voted against Trump twice but still felt the media should've covered him fairly and failed to do so) and noted the numerous times (over 25 to be exact that NPR dedicated time to now-debunked theories of "collusion" and corruption.

"When the Mueller report found no credible evidence of collusion, NPR’s coverage was notably sparse," Berliner explains. "Russiagate quietly faded from our programming. It is one thing to swing and miss on a major story. Unfortunately, it happens. You follow the wrong leads, you get misled by sources you trusted, you’re emotionally invested in a narrative, and bits of circumstantial evidence never add up. It’s bad to blow a big story. What’s worse is to pretend it never happened, to move on with no mea culpas, no self-reflection. Especially when you expect high standards of transparency from public figures and institutions, but don’t practice those standards yourself. That’s what shatters trust and engenders cynicism about the media."

The essay outlines other incredible journalistic missteps at NPR, ranging from their agenda-driven coverage of Hunter Biden to Covid, but he says where they really missed the mark when it came to George Floyd.

NPR's former CEOJohn Lansing joined the team in 2019, after working for the federally funded agency that oversees the very leftwing group,  Voice of America. Berliner says Lansing became much more "forceful" after Floyd's death and insisted on activism rather than evidence.

"Given the circumstances of Floyd’s death, it would have been an ideal moment to tackle a difficult question," wrote Berliner. "Is America, as progressive activists claim, beset by systemic racism in the 2020s—in law enforcement, education, housing, and elsewhere? We happen to have a very powerful tool for answering such questions: journalism. Journalism that lets evidence lead the way. But the message from the top was very different. America’s infestation with systemic racism was declared loud and clear: it was a given. Our mission was to change it."

From there Lansing went on to turn the workplace into a chaotic and divisive place where race and identity took the forefront, and NPR's sharp slide to the far left continued at an alarming rate, both internally and externally.

"With declining ratings, sorry levels of trust, and an audience that has become less diverse over time, the trajectory for NPR is not promising," Berliner concludes, after sharing some insights into the behind-the-scenes metrics. "Two paths seem clear. We can keep doing what we’re doing, hoping it will all work out. Or we could start over, with the basic building blocks of journalism. We could face up to where we’ve gone wrong."

NPR's chief news executive, Edith Chapin, however, strongly disagreed. She wrote in a memo to staff Tuesday afternoon that she and the news leadership team strongly reject Berliner's assessment.

"We're proud to stand behind the exceptional work that our desks and shows do to cover a wide range of challenging stories," she wrote. "We believe that inclusion—among our staff, with our sourcing, and in our overall coverage—is critical to telling the nuanced stories of this country and our world."

Interestinly, despite his own assessment of NPR's clear bias and lack of journalistic integrity, Berliner still believes defunnding NPR "isn't the answer," which many people disagree with, espeically in light of what he shared.

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