The Media Research Center got a lot of mileage out of Uri Berliner, the now-former NPR editor who blew up his career and showed his disloyalty to his employer by writing a piece for a right-wing website complaining about NPR’s purported “liberal bias” — which fellow right-wingers like the MRC exploited to forward their longtime agenda of destroying NPR for not being a right-wing apparatchik. Tim Graham kept up the concern-trolling in a May 1 post:
Ex-NPR senior editor Uri Berliner appeared again on Chris Cuomo’s NewsNation show on Tuesday night. “I think that really, NPR has a lot of soul searching to do about representing the country at large. Being a publicly funded news organization and really trying to represent this country in all its great diversity and viewpoints.”
It should seem obvious that NPR is impervious to “soul searching” since they didn’t want Berliner to work there any more after he raised his questions about viewpoint diversity.
[…]Cuomo expressed amazement that the serious complaints within NPR were about wanting to take it further to the left, not further to the center.
If only Graham cared about the lack of viewpoint diversity at his employer’s former right-wing “news” division, CNSNews.com.
This all ended up being a prelude to what the MRC wanted all along: A Republican-led House hearing dedicated to attacking NPR, with Graham himself as a prime witness. Curtis Houck gushed over his boss’ testimony in a May 8 post:
On Wednesday, the Media Research Center’s NewsBusters executive editor Tim Graham testified before the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight & Investigations during a hearing on the decades-long liberal boondoggle that is National Public Radio (NPR). Not surprisingly, he came armed with examples of their virulent bias and hate for conservatives.
Joined by Americans for Tax Reform’s James Erwin, the American Enterprise Institute’s Howard Husock, and Free Press co-CEO Craig Aaron, Graham took questions from lawmakers that fell into all-predictable camps of Republicans recognizing the problem and Democrats not only denying reality, but accusing critics of NPR of putting the lives of journalists in danger.
Graham’s opening statement (which was also given its own post) was unsurprisingly filled whit partisan invective and ancient grievances:
Uri Berliner obviously tried to make the point that media bias became a bigger problem when Donald Trump ran for president. We are here to tell you this has been a problem for a very long time. NPR legal reporter Nina Totenberg destroyed the Douglas Ginsburg nomination to the Supreme Court in 1987, then she tried again with Clarence Thomas in 1991. They energetically channeled the accusers of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh in 2018, and when a man arrived in an Uber on Kavanaugh’s street two years ago with weapons and plans to assassinate Kavanaugh, NPR failed to file a single feature story on it. Nina Totenberg could not be found. NPR, a supposed source of civility, didn’t demonstrate that cared one bit about this potential political violence. But in March, between Morning Edition and Fresh Air, Kavanaugh accuser Christine Blasey Ford was granted an hour of taxpayer-funded air time to reproduce her unproven charges of teenaged sexual assault.
[…]NPR, that network of civility, also has encouraged chaos and disorder in society: On August 27, 2020, NPR’s blog “Code Switch”, with the slogan “Race In Your Face,” posted an interview promoting a new book titled In Defense of Looting. On The NPR Politics Podcast on July 17, 2021,they promoted a book by Yale law professor Elizabeth Hinton saying that protests against policy should not — they shouldn’t be called riots. They should be called “rebellions”. On NPR’s Fresh Air on April 15, 2023, their movie critic John Powers praised the movie How to Blow Up a Pipeline, hailing it as “hugely timely”. You know, this is what NPR is doing. They can devote our taxpayer dollars to getting behind looting, rioting, and blowing up pipelines . And yet, NPR represents the Republicans as uniquely extreme. We’ve seen this throughout this Congress where they come on and say, “oh, the hard right Republicans are ruining everything.” Um, they were doing this morning discussing Miss Taylor Greene, but they have had several sappy interviews with Hakeem Jeffries. Steve Inskeep at one said — said, “you say to Republicans drive the car off the cliff. We are not going to grab the wheel.” This is the way they treat Republicans, basically as nutballs who are gonna drive the car off the cliff. You might understand that’s why we might get a little upset.
Houck then had a fit when a Democratic senator pointed out the MRC’s partisan agenda:
Congressman Frank Pallone (D-NJ) was on the flip side, accusing those investigating NPR’s political tilt of a “disturbing” return to “the dark days of McCarthyism” when, instead, the House should crack down on private “right-wing media organizations that have a long history of peddling misinformation, disinformation, promoting partisan agendas and sowing fear and division.”
“Public cynicism about the media doesn’t come from NPR. It comes from the right-wing media,” he added as if to suggest NPR hasn’t done anything itself to harm its reputation.
Houck was much happier when all the right people were on message:
Moments later, Congressman Jeff Duncan used his time to lambaste NPR as “a Democrat propaganda machine funded by U.S. tax dollars” and mock the idea they’re providing “objective reporting”:
[…]Congresswoman Debbie Lesko (R-AZ) went to Graham after noting “there’s a hunger in our society for just plain, unbiased news” that also doesn’t send blood pressures soaring. She asked Graham about what’s needed “to ensure NPR provides impartial coverage and serves a broader audience”:
[…]And, in response to a question from Lesko, Erwin brought up what precipitated the last congressional hearing about NPR (that Graham also testified at), which was “a scandal where local affiliates were sharing donor lists with Democratic Party operatives” and suggested a remedy of allowing taxpayers to opt out of funding NPR (and PBS) on their tax forms.
[…]Graham explained how NPR has strayed from its mission of representing all voices by explaining how, oftentimes, stories will claim to feature a Republican voice, but said voice will be from, say, Liz Cheney.
Graham apparently didn’t explain why Cheney cannot be considered a Republican merely because she opposes a rapist, convicted felon and insurrection inciter for president.
Graham was quite pleased with himself and his biased testimony in his May 8 podcast:
The House Republicans on the Energy & Commerce Committee invited me to testify on Wednesday about allegations of bias at National Public Radio. The expose by former NPR business editor Uri Berliner galvanized the Republicans to introduce several bills about defunding NPR after more than 50 years of taxpayer support. Is there any hope that NPR will change its biased ways? Don’t be wildly optimistic.
However, I told them they should hold more hearings and press new NPR CEO Katharine Maher to explain how their content serves all the public, and not just the Democrat fraction. Maher declined this invitation, insisting she had an previously schedule all-day board meeting. We’ll hope this committee can find a date to ask her to justify all the tilt we’ve been exposing.
The next day, Graham expressed further pleasure with himself in the right-wing safe space of Fox Business:
After his boat-rocking testimony before a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on the leftist tilt of National Public Radio on Wednesday, NewsBusters Executive Editor Tim Graham appeared on The Bottom Line with Dagen & Duffy on Fox Business. Host Sean Duffy said it was unfair to make taxpayers fund a “radical liberal machine.”.
NPR CEO Katharine Maher declined an invitation to the hearing, and Graham said “Maybe she didn’t want to show up because we had all of the examples today…. NPR likes books like In Defense of Looting. NPR likes the movie How to Blow Up a Pipeline and then it’s everything they have to say about the Republicans, being ‘hard right’ Republicans who want to drive the country off a cliff. I don’t know how you can defend all that. We had Democrats today trying to claim what NPR does is objective, you just don’t like objective reporting, which is comedy. You can’t provide a laugh track when they say that, because it impolite. But you sure wanted to.”
Co-host Dagen McDowell suggested the Democrats don’t listen to NPR so they can be “blissfully ignorant” when they call it unbiased, so they “can stay that without laughing.” She called NPR a “sewage lagoon.” They discussed how NPR claims they only receive one percent of the budget from the federal government, but in reality, the government funds the local affiliates, who send money back to Washington in “programming fees.” So a defunding would be dramatic for them.
Tim said “What they really need to do is just take that threat, and say we getter go back to what we are supposed to be doing, which is allowing both sides to speak, let both parties speak. That is not what they are doing, they have softballs for Democrats and hardball for Republicans — when they get a chance [to be interviewed].”
It was not pointed out that people with a differing view than Graham, Duffy and McDowell were forbidden from taking part in this segment. Perhaps they were afraid of pegging the irony meter. But the MRC gave away the game — and its ultimately goal of censorship — with the headline of this post: “MRC’s Tim Graham on Fox Biz: NPR’s CEO Should Be Afraid of Us and Our Evidence.”
Graham gave Berliner one more opportunity to display his disloyalty and bias in a May 12 post:
NPR whistleblower Uri Berliner, who penned a bombshell expose on the woke one-sidedness of the “public” radio network’s news product, knocked new NPR CEO Katherine Maher for failing to show for Wednesday’s House hearing on the leftist bias of her new employer. She claimed she had a Board of Directors meeting all day.
Instead, Maher submitted written testimony NPR is “bringing trusted, reliable, independent news and information of the highest editorial standards” to tens of millions of listeners. Eli Lake at The Free Press, which ran Berliner’s piece, talked to Berliner about the no-show.
“Why isn’t she there? Is she the right person for the job at this time?” he asked, adding that her written statement “sounds like a pledge drive.” This question could be turned around on Berliner, who surely was invited to testify by the House Republicans.
It could also be that Maher had no interest in being a punching bag for right-wing congressmen (and Graham) at a hearing that was stacked against her. Graham concluded by whining about “the kind of contempt NPR reporters show for their critics” — even though Graham himself has nothing but contempt for his critics, given how he has muted us on his Twitter/X account.