An editor at National Public Radio who publicly accused the news organization of having a liberal bias and a growing absence of “viewpoint diversity” has resigned, days after being suspended without pay.
On Wednesday, Uri Berliner posted a screenshot of his resignation letter to NPR’s CEO, Katherine Maher, in which he wrote: “I am resigning from NPR, a great American institution where I have worked for 25 years.
“I don’t support calls to defund NPR. I respect the integrity of my colleagues and wish for NPR to thrive and do important journalism. But I cannot work in a newsroom where I am disparaged by a new CEO whose divisive views confirm the very problems at NPR I cite in my Free Press essay,” Berliner added.
The resignation of Berliner, who was a senior business editor, came just days after NPR suspended him without pay for five days following his essay in Free Press, an online news outlet founded by the former New York Times journalist Bari Weiss.
In his essay, Berliner said NPR has always had a liberal bent but he accused the partly publicly funded news organization of having embraced, in recent years, “the distilled worldview of a very small segment of the US population”, adding: “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,” Berliner continued.
In response to Berliner’s essay, NPR’s chief content officer, Edith Chapin, said she “strongly disagreed” with Berliner and said 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”.
Following the publication of Berliner’s essay, NPR suspended Berliner, saying he had not received approval for outside work for other news outlets – a requirement for NPR journalists. The news organization also said: “The CEO is not involved in editorial decisions.”
