Pointing out the corrosive and divisive bias at NPR is something guys like me have been doing for decades, so it came as a sort of battle cry victory when Uri Berliner, a business editor at NPR, dropped this huge truth bomb entitled “I’ve Been at NPR for 25 Years. Here’s How We Lost America’s Trust.”
As Berliner states, conservatives would read this and say “duh, it’s always been this way.” But things have gotten progressively (wiseguy-ism intended) worse as listeners are waking up to it and NPR stations are losing money as a result.
“An open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR, and now, predictably, we don’t have an audience that reflects America.”
Pretty devastating stuff for a station that ostensibly has shows called All Things Considered. As Berliner points out they really don’t consider all things, or even all sides to issues. Like everyone at NPR he deeply dislikes Donald Trump and “eagerly” voted against him each time, but he courageously points out that “what began as tough, straightforward coverage of a belligerent, truth-impaired president veered toward efforts to damage or topple Trump’s presidency.”
This is not what a news agency is supposed to do, but pushing a partisan agenda seems to be not only a minor quirk in newsrooms but a big part of their business model. And it’s not just on the left. Anyone who gets all their news from Fox News or am radio is only getting one side and will be just as biased, and just as uninformed, as any NPR listener.
Best of all, Berliner points out the reason for all this. “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. “
This is not only a problem at NPR, it’s the also the problem at CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, every network news station, and pretty much every newspaper and magazine. The only exceptions are local independents like The Valley Patriot where Editor Tom Duggan goes out of his way to get all sides and all parties to report openly and freely. With the way they’re losing readers and money you’d think papers like the Boston Globe would wake up to this.