NPR whistleblower says embrace of 'fringe progressivism' led to defunding
"It's a self-inflicted wound, a product of how NPR embraced a fringe progressivism that cost it any legitimate claim to stand as an impartial provider of news, much less one deserving of government support," Uri Berliner wrote in a Thursday op-ed entitled "Happy Independence Day, NPR."
Berliner resigned from NPR last April after he was suspended for not getting approval to do work for other outlets following an essay he wrote in The Free Press. The bombshell piece lambasted his former employer's coverage of contentious topics like Russiagate, Hunter Biden's laptop, and the COVID lab leak theory.
He said that his decision to leave was due in part to "absence of viewpoint diversity" at the outlet.
Republicans in the Senate and House narrowly passed the rescissions package this week that yanked over $1 billion in federal broadcast funding for the fiscal year.
"I witnessed that change firsthand in my 25 years at the network—and I tried to do something about it," he said. "I was a senior business editor at NPR when, a little more than a year ago, I published my account in The Free Press of how the network had lost touch with the country, and, like the legacy media everywhere, forfeited the trust of the public."
He said that the outlet eventually "became a boutique product for a well-heeled audience clustered around coastal cities and college towns" and "shed moderate and conservative listeners."
"Once fairly evenly divided between liberals, moderates, and conservatives, NPR's news audience shifted sharply to the left," Berliner wrote.
The former NPR editor, who is now a contributing editor at The Free Press, said that NPR eroded the trust of its readers through slanted coverage of the COVID "lab leak" theory, as well as not covering the Hunter Biden laptop scandal.
The outlet instead became part of what Berliner called the "Great Awokening," publishing headlines like "Which Skin Color Emoji Should You Use? The Answer Can Be More Complex than You Think," "Bringing Diversity to Maine's Nearly All-White Lobster Fleet," and "These Drag Artists Know How to Turn Climate Activism into a Joyful Blowout."
"We were told to avoid the term biological sex, warned not to say illegal immigrant (a hurtful label)," Berliner wrote.
He said his hope for NPR is it will return to its founding principles.
"Now NPR will be like any other media organization, free to be as partisan as it chooses, stripped of its unique claim to taxpayer support, still protected by the First Amendment, but subject to the same financial and competitive pressures as everyone else," Berliner wrote.
Fox News Digital reached out to NPR for comment, but did not immediately receive a response.
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