On April 9, 2024, Uri Berliner wrote a piece for the Free Press claiming that National Public Radio (NPR) had lost America’s trust because they began to tell their listeners how to think. Berliner is a senior editor at NPR and has been with the organization for 25 years. He’s a self-described progressive but is concerned with the direction of the media outlet. Berliner writes, “An open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR, and now, predictably, we don't have an audience that reflects America.”
He continues, “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. He claims that there are 87 registered Democrats at the outlet while there are zero registered Republicans. While this lopsided political representation may not be shocking to some, it should be troubling to all. If NPR was a fully private outlet, partisanship would not be as much of a concern. After all, if one reads The Daily Wire you know you are getting a conservative viewpoint. Just as you know you are getting a progressive viewpoint if you read Vox. The problem with NPR is that it is at least partially publicly funded with taxpayer dollars. While not exactly state-run media, it is government-funded and therefore should try to be as unbiased and representative of the diversity of America as it can.
NPR responded by stating, “We're proud to stand behind the exceptional work that our desks and shows do to cover a wide range of challenging stories," Edith Chapin wrote. "We believe that inclusion — among our staff, with our sourcing, and in our overall coverage — is critical to telling the nuanced stories of this country and our world."
Fox News Contributor and former NPR staple, Juan Williams, was not surprised by Berliner’s assertion. Williams, who was fired by NPR in 2010 for expressing a bit of apprehension when seeing airline passengers in Muslim garb after 9/11, claimed that NPR thought he was too conservative for a black guy and even went as far as calling Williams a “psycho,” among other public insults. He continued by noting that, “they are (a) very much an insulated cadre of people who think they're right, and they have a hard time with people who are different."
Tesla and X owner Elon Musk has called for the de-funding of NPR. NPR responded by claiming that they only receive 1% of their funding from the federal government, but a closer look reveals that is not the case. After leaving X due to Musk’s statements, he noted that their own website claimed that federal funding was “essential” to their operation and their own numbers reveal that in 2020 23% of their funding came from tax monies at various levels of government.
In short, NPR has become a (partially) publicly funded arm of the Democratic Party. Gone is their image of objective news. Sadly, they’ve become as partisan as many private companies. Thus, I join Musk’s call to defund them of federal and state tax dollars until they return to representing all political viewpoints and halt their blatant attempt to indoctrinate their listeners into democratic groupthink.
Even when you hear their fundraising beg-a-thon, you realize that those are just grant requirements. Listener supported only applies to a small portion of their budget. Much of their funding is also from far-left foundations.