Uri Berliner is a senior business editor and reporter at National Public Radio (NPR). And, true to what NPR has stood for all these years, Mr. Berliner is a dyed-in-the-wool leftist who – no surprise here – can’t stand Donald Trump.
But Mr. Berliner also can’t stand BS partisanship posing as neutral journalism. And – I would think this is his end-game for NPR – he has decided to very frankly, very honestly, talk about how far down that rabbit hole NPR has fallen/how far left it has become.
You can read his piece by clicking here. It is lengthy, but every word is worth your time.
Here is how it starts:
You know the stereotype of the NPR listener: an EV-driving, Wordle-playing, tote bag–carrying coastal elite. It doesn’t precisely describe me, but it’s not far off. I’m Sarah Lawrence–educated, was raised by a lesbian peace activist mother, I drive a Subaru, and Spotify says my listening habits are most similar to people in Berkeley.
I fit the NPR mold. I’ll cop to that.
So when I got a job here 25 years ago, I never looked back. As a senior editor on the business desk where news is always breaking, we’ve covered upheavals in the workplace, supermarket prices, social media, and AI.
It’s true NPR has always had a liberal bent, but during most of my tenure here, an open-minded, curious culture prevailed. We were nerdy, but not knee-jerk, activist, or scolding.
In recent years, however, that has changed. Today, those who listen to NPR or read its coverage online find something different: the distilled worldview of a very small segment of the U.S. population.
If you are conservative, you will read this and say, duh, it’s always been this way.
But it hasn’t.
For decades, since its founding in 1970, a wide swath of America tuned in to NPR for reliable journalism and gorgeous audio pieces with birds singing in the Amazon. Millions came to us for conversations that exposed us to voices around the country and the world radically different from our own—engaging precisely because they were unguarded and unpredictable. No image generated more pride within NPR than the farmer listening to Morning Edition from his or her tractor at sunrise.
Back in 2011, although NPR’s audience tilted a bit to the left, it still bore a resemblance to America at large. Twenty-six percent of listeners described themselves as conservative, 23 percent as middle of the road, and 37 percent as liberal.
By 2023, the picture was completely different: only 11 percent described themselves as very or somewhat conservative, 21 percent as middle of the road, and 67 percent of listeners said they were very or somewhat liberal. We weren’t just losing conservatives; we were also losing moderates and traditional liberals.
An open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR, and now, predictably, we don’t have an audience that reflects America.
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.
Want more? Then use the link and keep reading, because there’s plenty of it…
…which blows the lid off the difference between what NPR purports to be and what it actually has become.
Welcome to a small club, Mr Uri Berliner. A club that includes folks like Matt Taibbi, Glenn Greenwald, occasionally, bordering on frequently Bill Maher, and a few others, who retain their leftward personal views but decry how far left supposedly neutral journalism has veered.
In this life people gain and they lose. Uri Berliner has gained (maybe regained is the word) his journalistic integrity. And, I have no doubt, he has lost all credibility with most of the people he cares about/agrees with along with, I would assume, just about any standing he has at NPR.
Personally, I think that translates into a major win.
