Uri Berliner’s blowing up his NPR career by running to a right-wing outlet and complaining about his (now ex-) employer’s alleged liberal bias was a huge gift to longtime right-wing NPR-haters — and hypocrites –like those at the Media Research Center. Jeffrey Lord demonstrated just how much of a gift it was in his April 20 column:
God bless America and free speech. But the decidedly obvious problem is that you are paying the bill – and the money is lifted right out of your wallet automatically, giving you absolutely zero choice in paying for what has morphed into left-wing propaganda radio.
Imagine taxpayer dollars going to subsidize Limbaugh or Levin. You don’t have to wonder whether the Left would find that a horrible expenditure of tax dollars to promote one side of the fence.
Which makes the saga of longtime NPR editor Uri Berliner considerably interesting. A longtime editor at NPR, Berliner penned a lengthy article which not only startlingly admits to the problem but criticizes his bosses and colleagues for producing news every day from the liberal bubble.
[…]So there you have it. You, the American taxpayer, are paying for NPR and its left-wing bias. And if you are working at NPR and protest that bias, you will be suspended without pay and then made so uncomfortable you are forced to resign.
The real problem? This is but one example of a journalistic outlet pretending to “just the facts” reporting. The fact that taxpayers have to pay for it is particularly insulting to Americans. And that is something that Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn is determined to change, sponsoring legislation to defund NPR. While over in the House the same move is being led by Indiana Congressman Jim Banks.
But make no mistake, there are plenty of so-called journalism outlets out there that pretend to straight-up reporting when, in fact, just like NPR, their newsrooms are under the iron-fisted control of left-wing activists.
And viewpoint diversity, as is true at NPR, is not to be tolerated.
At NPR, thanks to Uri Berliner — at the cost of his job — the mask of journalistic independence and objectivity has finally dropped. It’s about time someone from the inside told the ugly truth about it.
Lord made sure not to mention that Fox News’ slogan is “fair and balanced” — meaning it’s an article that pretends to offer straight-up reporting despite being under the control of right-wing activists. That makes Lord’s purported concern about journalistic balance a pathetic sham.
The same day, Clay Waters touted how “The hopeless wokeness of tax-funded National Public Radio has been confirmed by NPR senior business editor Uri Berliner” — he didn’t define what he meant by “hopeless wokeness” — then whined that NPR once put a trigger warning on the Declaration of Independence because it includes “offensive language about Native Americans, including a racial slur.” Waters didn’t dispute the existence of that language.
After new NPR CEO Katherine Maher — whom the MRC had also been attacking for saying non-right-wing things years before she took the job — pointed out the bad-faith nature of partisan critics like, um, the MRC, Tim Graham whined about it in an April 24 post, complaining further that NPR public editor Kelly McBride “McBride went on Brian Stelter’s podcast and divided NPR critics as supporters (liberals) and ‘bad faith’ critics (conservatives). McBride sounds less like a Public Editor (working on behalf of the audience) and more like a Public Cheerleader (working on behalf of company morale).” Graham didn’t explain how the MRC’s relentless criticism of NPR — based on partisan politics, not journalism — should be seen as anything other than bad faith.
Graham then complained: “Maher said their internal research shows people see NPR as ‘accurate and intellectual,’ she said. ‘We want to be able to speak to folks as though they were our neighbors and speak to folks as though they were our friends.’ That’s not the way conservatives hear it on the radio.” But conservatives like Graham aren’t listening to NPR for news — they’re listening for perceived bias (not actual bias) and clips they can exploit for online clicks and perpetuating the anti-NPR narrative they have spent so many years invested in developing. In other words, the very definition of bad-faith criticism.
Lord spent his April 27 column rehashing a somewhat related controversy:
Uri Berliner’s expose of the ideological unanimity at NPR reminds the Republican half of America that they send their taxpayer dollars to Washington to have their viewpoints excluded or ridiculed as “far right” hate.
Back there in the Stone Age of 2023, Elon Musk, he of X that is formerly Twitter, antagonized NPR and PBS because – ready? Musk had made some changes to “state-affiliated” media designations, applying the term to both of those outlets. They’re state-funded, but not state-affiliated?
[…]There was an easy and obvious way for NPR and PBS to answer Musk’s criticism and get out from under his “state-affiliated” designation once and for all.
That would be: Stop taking money from the government. Period. Stop taking any money from any government apparatus. Period. Make the “P” in NPR and PBS stand not for “Public” – aka taking government funds – but rather “P” as in “Private.” As in “National Private Radio” and “Private Broadcasting Service.”
All of which would make NPR and PBS a genuine private sector competitor with the rest of the American private sector free market in the world of television and radio broadcasting.
Would that happen? Of course not. Again, as Uri Berliner documents, the network exists in a liberal bubble. Not even Elon Musk can get through it.
As we documented at the time the MRC was squeeing over Musk doing this, Musk had no reason whatsoever for doing so other than messing with NPR and PBS, and it was unfair and inaccurate for him to place the same label on them as Twitter/X had on explicitly state-run outlets, which is not what NPR and PBS are, which violated its own established labeling standards. And in the end, Musk dropped the label from not only NPR and PBS but also the state-run propaganda outlets, meaning that Twitter/X users lost a tool for evaluating such outlets.
And just to further prove the bad-faith nature of his NPR attacks, Graham cranked out an April 25 post:
Anyone who spends time reading about NPR on NewsBusters is going to roll their eyes when NPR executives blather about how they believe in “viewpoint diversity” and “inclusion” of important voices. It’s readily apparent on a daily basis that NPR is a sandbox for left-wingers, polishing Democrats and punishing Republicans, touting liberal journalists as heroic and conservative journalists as a pox on the First Amendment.
Coming up with a list of ten egregious examples to advocate for separating NPR from the taxpayers is difficult, because there are many more examples than just ten. We decided to limit it to the Trump era, since that’s roughly how long Uri Berliner was complaining inside NPR.
Because nothing says “good-faith serious criticism” like a demand to censor and defund a media outlet you don’t like for not adhering to your preferred narratives.