The taxpayer-funded pundits at National Public Radio (NPR) follow editorial guidance crafted by radical trans activists and hyperfixate on the skin color of their sources, according to a whistleblower op-ed published in The Free Press.
Senior Business Editor Uri Berliner is a 25-year veteran of NPR who outlined Tuesday how the outlet “lost America’s trust.”
“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.”
Berliner pointed to NPR’s commitment to intersectionality and explained that so-called diversity — specifically of skin color and sexual identities — became its “North Star.” Overall, “[r]ace and identity,” Berliner said, “became paramount in nearly every aspect of the workplace.”
Berliner explained that NPR reporters were required to ask every person they interviewed about their sex, skin color, and ethnicity, and then input that information into “a centralized tracking system.” He added that NPR’s burgeoning “diversity, equity, and inclusion” staff organized meetings intended to spark conversations about race, with monthly sessions for “men of color” and “women of color” that included “nonbinary people.” Journalists also underwent “unconscious bias training sessions.”
[RELATED: Is NPR Trying To Start A Race War?]
But it wasn’t just race, and it wasn’t just a top-down effort to become more “inclusive.” Berliner explained that this identity-obsessed North Star began to dictate the terms reporters used in stories, with the government-funded outlet’s editorial guidance created with pro-trans activists. Berliner wrote:
There’s an unspoken consensus about the stories we should pursue and how they should be framed. It’s frictionless — one story after another about instances of supposed racism, transphobia, signs of the climate apocalypse, Israel doing something bad, and the dire threat of Republican policies. It’s almost like an assembly line.
The mindset prevails in choices about language. In a document called NPR Transgender Coverage Guidance—disseminated by news management—we’re asked to avoid the term biological sex. (The editorial guidance was prepared with the help of a former staffer of the National Center for Transgender Equality.)
According to Berliner, NPR’s audience shifted from a slightly more liberal reader and listenership in 2011 to one that was just 11 percent conservative and 67 percent liberal by 2023. And as for NPR’s D.C. newsroom? Berliner said he dug up voter registrations in 2021 and “found 87 registered Democrats working in editorial positions and zero Republicans. None.” His colleagues didn’t seem to care.
“Like many unfortunate things, the rise of advocacy took off with Donald Trump. As in many newsrooms, his election in 2016 was greeted at NPR with a mixture of disbelief, anger, and despair. (Just to note, I eagerly voted against Trump twice but felt we were obliged to cover him fairly.),” Berliner wrote. “But what began as tough, straightforward coverage of a belligerent, truth-impaired president veered toward efforts to damage or topple Trump’s presidency.”
Berliner highlighted three primary stories where NPR’s coverage “faltered,” including the origins of the novel coronavirus, the Hunter Biden laptop, and the Trump-Russia hoax — which was propelled by Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who was interviewed by hosts at the public media organization at least 25 times.
“During many of those conversations, Schiff alluded to purported evidence of collusion. The Schiff talking points became the drumbeat of NPR news reports,” 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.”
Editors also responded to the Biden laptop by writing off the election-year bombshell, which exposed Joe Biden’s involvement with his son’s potentially criminal business schemes as a “waste” of “time on stories that are not really stories.” Meanwhile, NPR dismissed as racist theories surrounding the coronavirus as a lab leak, which deviated from the official narrative peddled by Anthony Fauci and former NIH head Francis Collins.
“Reporting on a possible lab leak,” Berliner said, “became radioactive.”
NPR did not respond to The Federalist’s multiple requests for comment.
Berliner said he does not think defunding National Public Radio is the answer — because he sees a need for a good-faith “public” news organization. But as his expose demonstrates, the “P” in NPR could just as easily stand for “propaganda.”
