Why is NPR losing financial support? An insider has some ideas...

Last week a veteran NPR reporter and editor published a fair and formidable critique of the organization he has worked for for 25 years. (Audio track included)

NPR was a big part of my life until seven years ago. I listened on the way to work. I listened on the way home. It was on in the kitchen while we made dinner. It was on Saturday mornings in our bedroom. It was reassuring to be properly and constantly informed.

I no longer tune into our local public radio station, 90.9 WBUR, to be informed. I tune in for entertainment. What is it about the tone and tonality of their show hosts that had me captivated for so long? Is it the musical interludes? Is it the perfect balance between local and world news? Though I no longer have any confidence in their content, I still marvel at their packaging.

NPR has become an intriguing mystery to me. Are they are being controlled by their patrons and corporate donors? Am I alone in recognizing that they aren’t doing commendable journalism anymore?

A few weeks ago I happened to catch a few seconds of their spring funding drive and was surprised to hear that they had fallen on some hard times. In a letter to the WBUR community Margaret Low, CEO of WBUR announced that they have lost 40% of their annual on-air sponsorship from underwriting in the last 5 years—a 7 million dollar cut in support.

What’s going on?

Low offers her explanation:

“Because the old economics of our business can no longer sustain us.

At WBUR we've seen a dramatic loss of sponsorship support. In the digital age, almost all that money now goes to the big platforms — like Facebook, Google, Amazon and Spotify. This is bad news for the news business and has created big gaps that can't easily be filled.”

Okay, but why is almost all that money going to the big platforms? Her superficial analysis is emblematic of the problem her organization has.

Isn’t it possible that listeners are no longer satisfied with the product WBUR peddles—what is ostensibly balanced and in-depth coverage of newsworthy events?

Perhaps it is the looming budget contractions and job cuts at NPR and member stations that prompted Uri Berliner, a senior business editor and reporter at NPR, to express his understanding of the problem in this thoughtful missive, titled “I’ve Been at NPR for 25 Years. Here’s How We Lost America’s Trust” which The Free Press ran on April 9.

Berliner is a recipient of the Peabody Award, a Loeb Award, an Edward R. Murrow Award and a Society of Professional Journalists New America Award among others.

In this unprecedented self-critique from an NPR insider with a quarter century of experience with the organization, Berliner feels that NPR hasn’t always been an Uber-leftish news organization appealing to, as he puts it, “EV-driving, Wordle-playing, tote bag–carrying coastal elite[s]”. It has been a gradual transformation that has accelerated over the last few years.

In his opinion, the slippery slope from objectivity turned into a cliff with the election of Trump in 2016 which he says,

“was greeted at NPR with a mixture of disbelief, anger, and despair. But what began as tough, straightforward coverage of a belligerent, truth-impaired president veered toward efforts to damage or topple Trump’s presidency. Persistent rumors that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia over the election became the catnip that drove reporting. At NPR, we hitched our wagon to Trump’s most visible antagonist, Representative Adam Schiff.”

What emerged subsequently, Berliner noted, was a pattern of poor investigative journalism and lack of transparency around the massive mistakes that were made:

• When the Mueller report found no evidence of collusion between Russia and Trump despite Schiff’s constant insistence that such evidence existed, the organization never admitted that they got it wrong.

• On the other hand, the Hunter Biden Laptop, which came into the public’s eye just a few weeks before the 2020 general election, was ignored by NPR reporting. The contents of that computer included evidence that Joe Biden used his influence as the Vice President to further his son’s corrupt business dealings. Yet again, when such evidence was eventually validated, NPR coverage was conspicuously absent on the matter.

• NPR chose not to investigate the concerns of qualified voices around the evidence that the SARS-COV2 virus emerged from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (or elsewhere) and not a wet market some miles away. Instead they chose to blindly ally themselves with Anthony Fauci and never turn back despite mounting evidence of a lab leak and the former NIAID director’s efforts to hide that possibility. Even now NPR largely stands alone in their insistence that the pandemic was due to zoonotic spillover.

Three years after concerns over a lab leak emerged, NPR strangely chose to dismiss the US Department of Energy’s conclusion on the matter and instead insist that “the scientific evidence overwhelmingly points to a natural origin for the virus.”

When it comes to matters of science, on what grounds can a journalist decide which group of experts is correct? They can’t. Their job is to fairly report on what both sides are saying. Don’t they teach that at journalism school?

This is precisely the kind of situation which begs the question I posed earlier, are the journalists at NPR unable to see that they are biased (i.e. crappy journalists) or are they being impelled to push a certain narrative by their masters?

Berliner notes that even though there has been a massive push to support and enhance diversity amongst the staff at NPR there hasn’t been any diversity in viewpoints. He writes:

“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 working in editorial positions and zero Republicans. None.”

He presented what he found at a staff meeting and nobody was concerned. He raised his concerns with the CEO John Lansing, who agreed to meet but then cancelled and never rescheduled.

Has Uri Berliner answered my question? Is there really nobody driving the bus? NPR has become an echo chamber. It’s becoming more and more obvious, and as Berliner observes, “… what’s notable is the extent to which people at every level of NPR have comfortably coalesced around the progressive worldview.”

Then again, nobody is saying that journalists can’t have a particular worldview. But they’re journalists. The job of a journalist is to report all sides of an issue, especially at an organization which flaunts its independence from corporate interests.

That’s Uri’s main criticism of NPR. They haven’t been doing their job. There’s something very wrong with journalism right now and he’s seeing it with his own eyes.

NPR’s embarrassing Response

The day after Uri Berliner’s story ran, NPR correspondent, David Folkenflik, responded with this article, “NPR defends its journalism after senior editor says it has lost the public's trust”.

It’s worth a read—once again for entertainment purposes only. As if to showcase the very failures Berliner alludes to, Folkenflik doesn’t respond to the three major failures in NPR reporting that Berliner brought up. Folkenflik doesn’t defend NPR’s journalism like the title implies. He’s just saying Berliner is wrong because that’s the way some people at NPR feel about it.

Folkenflik never tells us if NPR feels they blew it with RussiaGate, the Hunter Biden laptop story or the lab leak theory. The three specific examples which Berliner used to make his point are never refuted in his defense of NPR’s journalism.

This is a tacit admission of fault in my eyes. The fact that NPR won’t admit their obvious failures during a time when the public needed the kind of “listener supported” coverage the most speaks volumes about their integrity as a news organization.

Instead he begins by oversimplifying Berliner’s observations:

“A strategic emphasis on diversity and inclusion on the basis of race, ethnicity and sexual orientation, promoted by NPR's former CEO, John Lansing, has fed ‘the absence of viewpoint diversity,’ Berliner writes.”

Berliner did describe in detail the efforts management has made to diversify the staff under Lansing’s stewardship. He also did state the plain fact that there is an absence of viewpoint diversity at NPR. He makes a very reasonable and important point that the two could be related. Why wouldn’t they be?

Unlike Folkenflik, Uri Berliner took an honest look at the potential repercussions of NPR’s vigorous DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) initiatives. While they may have created a safe culture where people could come together based on ideology and a characteristic of birth, NPR’s union prioritized standing of these affinity groups which ultimately led to their seat at the table in determining, he writes, “the terms and vocabulary of our news coverage”.

Having a team that is inclusive of all viewpoints, especially those that have been ignored or excluded is assumed to be of benefit, no matter the team or the cause. This is why DEI initiatives have become a sacred cow to many, if not all progressive organizations like NPR.

But when a news organization has chosen to treat unsubstantiated rumors as fact and refuse to pursue stories because it might challenge a particular worldview, it’s time for an apology and a reckoning, at least if you want to be regarded as a legitimate news organization. That’s the case that Uri Berliner is making.

Instead we see in Folkenflik’s response the very same misstep that has led to NPR’s fall from grace. An overconfidence in assumptions. “A strategic emphasis on diversity and inclusion on the basis of race, ethnicity and sexual orientation” can’t ever be a bad thing, right? That’s why Berliner is wrong!

Trump couldn’t have won in 2016 without Russian collusion!

Joe Biden couldn’t have done anything that bad while he was Vice President!

Covid couldn’t have come from a lab!

There’s no reason to believe scientists that disagree with Dr. Fauci!

The US Department of Energy’s investigation into the proximal origin of SARS-COV2 can’t be correct!

NPR is clearly dismayed that one of their own would be audacious enough to admit that mistakes were made. Dismay or not, the inescapable facts of the matter remain:

• A progressive world view is held by the majority of NPR staff

• While DEI initiatives at NPR have expanded diversity they have narrowed diversity of viewpoints

• NPR blew at least three major stories, each of which took years to unfold (just imagine the number of radio broadcasts aired during those periods that are cringe-worthy now)

• NPR is hemorrhaging financial support

NPR’s response to fair criticism is all too familiar amongst three-letter organizations these days. The tough questions aren’t answered. The criticism is purposefully misconstrued and dismissed on different grounds and in the end, the organization believes it has been vindicated because the organization says so.

Folkenflik quotes Edith Chapin, NPR’s chief news executive right up front in his opening salvo against Berliner’s criticism:

"We're proud to stand behind the exceptional work that our desks and shows do to cover a wide range of challenging stories"

Do I need to point out the irony here? NPR isn’t the only entity that misrepresents facts, refuses to admit their mistakes, admonishes their critics and then doubles down on their “totally excellent” track record…

Berliner sets an important example

Readers of this substack will know that I think Uri Berliner went easy on his organization.

Where are the stories of the vaccine injured on NPR? Where is the criticism against the lockdowns and the masking of toddlers? Why aren’t they pointing out how the American people were lied to about the miracle “vaccine”? Why did they never give any voice to highly credentialed doctors and scientists who condemned the pandemic response, the vaccine mandates and the prohibition of using licensed medications against Covid when no other treatment was available?

Mr. Folkenflik, do you really believe NPR made the right call by not fairly covering the other side of the biggest story of this century?

Nevertheless, this was a step in the right direction. A small one for Berliner but a giant leap towards clarity and potential change.

I believe we could see a period of frequent whistleblowing. But whistleblowing requires an honest media, for they ultimately determine who is blowing a whistle at crimes, corruption and fraud and who is a crank-far-right-conspiracy-theorist-antivax-grifter looking for attention.

This is why we need more Uri Berliners. The public is in desperate need of more journalists to come forward and admit that they aren’t doing journalism, they’ve become social influencers. Unless the media can hold itself accountable there’s not going to be a lot of people willing to blow a whistle.

Why would a scientist at the CDC or a director at Pfizer who is witness to corruption ever come forward if no one will believe them?

The media is the key player in all big conspiracies and cover ups. My hope is that Uri Berliner will be the first of many media insiders to come forward and begin to restore our free press to its proper and necessary role in a free society as the only guardian we have against tyranny.

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(Addendum: Today, April 16, NPR reported that Berliner is now serving a five day suspension without pay)