The Skunk at the Garden Party

NPR provides cautionary tale about viewpoint diversity

When I brought up viewpoint diversity at a meeting of Colorado Press Women, I felt a bit like the skunk at the garden party. Shutterstock photo

So, I’ve become a visible wrong-thinker at a place I love. It’s uncomfortable, sometimes heartbreaking.”—Uri Berliner

Identification of “goals, strengths, and challenges” was on the agenda when I attended a Colorado Press Women meeting in April 2024. Aware I’d likely be the skunk at the garden party, I nonetheless wanted to get in my two-cents-worth about the importance of viewpoint diversity in the strength and longevity of a general journalism organization.

Luckily, on April 9 long-time NPR senior business editor Uri Berliner had published an essay in the Substack publication The Free Press. He wrote about his disenchantment with the public radio giant and his essay provides a cautionary tale for journalism outlets and organizations that may swing too far in one direction.

The essay was titled “I’ve Been At NPR For 25 Years. Here’s how we lost America’s Trust: Uri Berliner, a veteran at the public radio institution says the network lost its way when it started telling listeners how to think.”

Less than all things considered

Berliner started by establishing how well he matched NPR’s liberal ethos and reminiscing about the salad days at the broadcasting icon.

“It’s true NPR has always had a liberal bent, but during most of my tenure here, an open-minded, curious culture prevailed,” Berliner wrote. “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 find something different: the distilled worldview of a very small segment of the U.S. population.

“If you are conservative, you will read this and say, duh, it’s always been that way.

“But it hasn’t.”

In 2011, he reported, 26 percent of listeners described themselves as conservative, 21 percent as middle-of-the-road, and 67 percent as very or somewhat liberal. But since then, the organization has lost moderates and traditional liberals, as well as conservatives.

“An open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR, and now, predictably, we don’t have an audience that reflects America,” Berliner wrote.

“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.”

Putting politics before journalism

Berliner offered three examples where NPR let opportunities slip by. 

The Trump collusion story: Berliner wrote problems began in 2016 with Trump’s election and the “persistent rumors that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia. … At NPR, we hitched our wagon to Trump’s most visible antagonist, Representative Adam Schiff.” He wrote that Schiff became NPR’s “ever-present muse” and NPR hosts interviewed him 25 times.

Berliner wrote, “But when the Mueller report found no credible evidence of collusion, NPR’s coverage was notably sparse. Russiagate quietly faded from our programming.”

The 2020 Hunter Biden laptop scandal: Another miscue Berliner identified was NPR’s failure to investigate reports about the laptop Hunter Biden abandoned at a repair shop. 

He wrote, “When the essential facts of the (New York) Post’s reporting were confirmed and the emails verified independently about a year and a half later, we could have fessed up to our misjudgment. But, like Russian collusion, we didn’t make the hard choice of transparency.”

Covid 19 coverage: This was another case Berliner cited where he felt NPR dropped the ball.

“Politics also intruded into NPR’s coverage, most notably in reporting on the origin of the pandemic,” he stated. He wrote of how quickly and steadfastly NPR amplified the public health establishment’s insistence on natural origins of the virus.

“We didn’t budge when the Energy Department—the federal agency with the most expertise about laboratories and biological research—concluded albeit with low confidence, that a lab leak was the most likely explanation for the emergence of the virus,” Berliner wrote.

“Again politics were blotting out the curiosity and independence that ought to have been driving our work.”

Intersectionality above all behind the scenes

Berliner wrote, “to truly understand how independent journalism suffered at NPR, you need to step inside the organization.”

In 2019, John Lansing came from Voice of America to lead NPR. As chief executive officer, his duties were mainly external--“to raise money and to ensure good working relations with hundreds of member stations that acquire NPR’s programming,” according to Berliner.

But, after the death of George Floyd, amid all that followed, Lansing became more involved with the inner workings of NPR.

“Given the circumstances of Floyd’s death,” Berliner wrote, “it would have been an ideal moment to tackle a difficult question: 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.”

Instead, Berliner continued, “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.”

Lansing confessed his white privilege and said NPR was part of the problem. “He declared that diversity—on our staff and in our audience –was the overriding mission, the ‘North Star’ of the organization. Phrases like ‘that’s part of the North Star’ became part of meetings and more casual conversation.”

Journalists were required to ask interviewees about their race, gender, and ethnicity and enter that into a centralized tracking system. Staff attended diversity, equity, and inclusion training and multiple affinity groups emerged with support from the NPR Foundation.

Berliner wrote, “They included MGIPOC (Marginalized Genders and Intersex People of Color mentorship program); Mi Gente (Latinx employees at NPR); NPR Noir (black employees at NPR); Southwest Asians and North Africans at NPR; Ummah (for Muslim-identifying employees); Gender-Expansive, and Transgender People in Technology Throughout Public Media; Khevre (Jewish heritage and culture at NPR); and NPR Pride (LGBTQIA employees at NPR).

The interests of the affinity groups became an item in the collective bargaining between NPR and NPR’s union, SAG-AFTRA. Thus, management was required “to keep up to date with current language and style guidance from journalism affinity groups,” according to Berliner.

Berliner noted, “In essence, this means the NPR union, of which I am a dues-paying member, has ensured that advocacy groups are given a seat at the table in determining the terms and vocabulary of our news coverage.”

Berliner was dismayed that no one raised objections about this situation. He observed, “people at every level of NPR have comfortably coalesced around the progressive worldview.

“And this, I believe is the most damaging development at NPR: the lack of viewpoint diversity.”

Berliner wrote, “The mindset animates bizarre stories—on how The Beatles and bird names are racially problematic, and others are alarmingly divisive; justifying looting, with claims that fears about crime are racist; and suggesting that Asian Americans who oppose affirmative action have been manipulated by white conservatives.”

He also wrote that the mindset causes NPR to approach the “the Israel-Hamas war and its spillover onto streets and campuses through the ‘intersectional’ lens that has jumped from the faculty lounge to newsrooms.”

Berliner told how the reaction of listeners he met on the street changed over the years. In the past they’d gush about NPR, as well as their favorite stories and personalities. Now they’re likely to ask, “What’s happening there? Why is NPR telling me what to think?”

Berliner wrote, “In recent years I’ve struggled to answer that question. Concerned by the lack of viewpoint diversity, I looked at voter registration for our newsroom. In D.C., where NPR is headquartered and many of us live, I found 87 registered Democrats in editorial positions and zero Republicans. None.”

So, NPR headquarters is home to far more DEI affinity groups than Republican journalists.

“People are polite, but nothing changes”

For years, Berliner wrote, he spoke up when he believed NPR coverage had gone off the rails. He wrote to an 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.” He questioned why NPR kept using the term Latinx when Hispanics hate it. He spoke out about the lack of viewpoint diversity. Every time, the reaction was the same.

“People are polite. But nothing changes,” he wrote.

He observed, “what’s indisputable is that no one in a C-suite or upper management position has chosen to deal with the lack of viewpoint diversity at NPR and how that affects our journalism.”

He noted some of the consequences. NPR’s audience is smaller and less diverse with percentages of blacks at Hispanics that are far below their percentages within the population. “Our news audience doesn't come close to reflecting America,” he wrote. “It’s overwhelmingly white and progressive, and clustered around coastal cities and college towns.”

In 2023, NPR laid off 10 percent of its staff and cancelled four podcasts. Berliner wrote, “The digital stories on our website rarely have national impact. They aren’t conversation starters. Our competitive advantage in audio—where for years NPR had no peer—is vanishing. There are plenty of informative and entertaining podcasts to choose from.

“Even within our diminished audience, there’s evidence of trouble at the most basic level: trust.”

Berliner wrote NPR can take one of two paths: keep going in the same direction. “Or we could start over, with the building blocks of journalism.”

He suggested that the first rule new CEO Katherine Maher could impose could be: don’t tell people what to think.

“It could even be their new North Star,” he wrote.

The First Amendment as a challenge to bad info

Despite Berliner’s optimism about the future of NPR, it doesn’t appear the organization is starting over with the building blocks of journalism. Instead, it appears to have followed its original left turn with another.

Katherine Maher, who was formerly CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation, replaced Lansing as CEO in March.

Christopher Rufo wrote, “At Wikipedia, Maher became a campaigner against ‘disinformation’ and admitted to coordinating online censorship ‘through conversations with government.’ She openly endorsed removing alleged ‘fascists,’ including President Trump, from digital platforms, and described the First Amendment as ‘the number one challenge’ to eliminating ‘bad information.’”

A May 21 report by Jon Alsop of the Columbia Journalism Review put Berliner’s essay in the context of global events. Alsop started his essay, titled “The public broadcasters facing tumult in Europe,” by addressing Berliner’s essay:

“Berliner was suspended, nominally for failing to clear an outside essay with bosses in violation of NPR rules; a few days later, he resigned. But the fallout— which touched off heated debate both inside and outside NPR—has continued. Right-wingers dredged up old tweets in which Katherine Maher, NPR’s new CEO, espoused liberal views; House Republicans then convened a hearing to address ‘bias’ at NPR and invited Maher, who provided written testimony but did not attend, citing a long-standing board meeting. (She has offered to appear on a future date.) Last week, NPR announced plans to institute a new layer of editorial review, a move some staffers reportedly feared could be seen as a sop to Berliner. The Free Press took a victory lap.”

According to Alsop, public broadcasters around the globe are facing various challenges and “finding themselves defending their core values of public service and independence—more or less convincingly—in the face of competing pressures from the public, politicians, and their own staffs.”

He identified three recurrent themes: “tensions around the war in Gaza, allegations of liberal bias emanating from the political right, and organizational challenges from workplace misconduct to funding shortfalls.” Alsop explored how this is happening in Poland, Slovakia, France, Italy, and the Netherlands.

The North Star: don’t tell people what to think

Obviously, some journalism outlets and organizations appeal to a narrow constituency. For example, many magazines appeal to different sorts of hobbyists. Some newsletters target conservatives, progressives, or specific topics or issues, such as personal finance or climate change. All may advocate for the First Amendment.

But, in a constitutional republic with democratic institutions, public broadcasters need to cast a wide net, appealing to a whole spectrum of tax-paying citizen-listeners. Their audiences need to reflect viewpoint diversity, much as the 2011 NPR audience did.

The same is true of general journalism organizations.

Changes and chatter have been going on at organizations where I belong. Bylaws are being changed to become gender-neutral. There’s talk about taking “press” out of the names, since computers and digital communication have replaced printing presses to a large extent—even though the First Amendment refers to “press” freedom. I’ve heard the suggestion that “women” be taken out of the name of one club. These organizations clearly want to stay relevant going into the future.

My advice is to welcome viewpoint diversity and stay away from one-sided partisan and trendy ideological positions. It’s fine, of course, for individual members to venture into that territory and debate over the issues would be wonderful. But organizations should stay neutral.

I’d suggest general journalism organizations would do well to follow Berliner’s guidance for NPR: Go back to the basic building blocks of journalism—journalism that lets evidence lead the way. Don’t tell people what to think.

Let’s make that our North Star.