Senior NPR editor resigns after accusing outlet of liberal bias
Uri Berliner, who worked as a senior business editor at NPR, wrote an essay for The Free Press in which he said he believes NPR is losing the public’s trust.
An editor for National Public Radio resigned Wednesday just days after he inflamed the ongoing culture war about mainstream media with an essay about what he considers the news outlet’s liberal leanings.
Uri Berliner, who was a senior business editor, wrote an essay for the right-leaning online publication The Free Press in which he said he believes NPR is losing the public’s trust.
NPR, a nonprofit radio network, has an “absence of viewpoint diversity,” he wrote in the essay, which was published April 9. It “has always had a liberal bent,” but now an “open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR,” he wrote.
The essay triggered a wave of scrutiny of NPR from conservatives, some of whom responded to it with calls to defund the news organization, which receives federal funding through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. NPR says on its website that federal funding is “essential” to NPR but that “less than 1% of NPR’s annual operating budget comes in the form of grants from CPB and federal agencies and departments.”
Uri Berliner in 2017. JP Yim / WireImage fileIn a resignation statement on X, Berliner briefly elaborated on the reason for his departure, which came days after NPR reported that it had suspended him for five days without pay following the op-ed’s release.
Rating: 5