Uri Berliner is a left-leaning, major-league journalist, aspiring to objectivity and appalled by journalism’s descent into willfully blind propaganda. Forty-six years ago, I was a left-leaning minor-league journalist, aspiring to objectivity and appalled by hints that journalism-as-propaganda was on the horizon.
Berliner, a longtime Senior Editor at National Public Radio (NPR) issued a devastating nostra culpa against his employer and, by extension, against American journalism in general. Berliner said his news organization shifted from left-leaning-but-curious to leftist-and-incurious. Berliner was soon publicly chastised by NPR’s new and cartoonishly wackadoodle CEO, Katherine Maher and suspended without pay for penning his essay. He subsequently resigned in disgust.
First, a few words on Berliner’s seismic essay and NPR’s all-too-perfect reaction to it. Then, my own story from nearly half a century ago.
“HOW WE LOST AMERICA’S TRUST”
Uri Berliner’s essay, “I’ve Been at NPR for 25 Years. Here’s How We Lost America’s Trust” is among the most devastating critiques of American journalism in recent years. He describes a sort of don’t-ask-don’t-tell ethic whereby NPR journalists write stories that reinforce their preexisting biases, ignore and disparage evidence to the contrary, and follow a code of silence regarding criticism of the organization’s tendencies. Berliner’s essay is worth reading in its entirety, but here’s a brief summary:
Berliner is left-leaning in terms of voting habits and culture. “I’m Sarah Lawrence-educated … raised by a lesbian peace activist mother.”
NPR was formerly liberal, but open-minded. “We were nerdy, but not knee-jerk, activist, or scolding.” That has changed.
As recently as 2011, NPR’s listeners were ideologically diverse, whereas the network’s audience today is overwhelmingly on the left. “An open-minded spirit no longer exists at NPR, and now, predictably, we don’t have an audience that reflects America.”
Berliner voted against Donald Trump twice, but laments that at NPR, “what began as tough, straightforward coverage of a belligerent, truth-impaired president veered toward efforts to damage or topple Trump’s presidency.”
Rumors of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia dominated NPR reporting. Rep. Adam Schiff’s “talking points became the drumbeat of NPR news reports.” When the Mueller Report “found no credible evidence of collusion,” NPR simply moved on to other topics. “It is one thing to swing and miss on a major story. … What’s worse is to pretend it never happened, to move on with no mea culpas, no self-reflection. … That’s what shatters trust and engenders cynicism about the media.”
NPR “turned a blind eye” to the very real, critically important Hunter Biden laptop story, saying, “We don’t want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don’t want to waste the listeners’ and readers’ time on stories that are just pure distractions.”
“Politics also intruded into NPR’s Covid coverage, most notably in reporting on the origin of the pandemic.” When Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins argued that the coronavirus developed naturally, NPR “became fervent members of Team Natural Origin, even declaring that the lab leak had been debunked by scientists.” The lab-leak theory, of course, now appears to be the likeliest origin story.
Berliner describes at length the process of journalistic decay at NPR—and especially the network’s growing obsession with race: “America’s infestation with systemic racism was declared loud and clear: it was a given. Our mission was to change it.”
NPR’s CEO “declared that diversity—on our staff and in our audience—was the overriding mission, the ‘North Star’ of the organization. Phrases like ‘that’s part of the North Star’ became part of meetings and more casual conversation.” “Race and identity became paramount in nearly every aspect of the workplace.” Employees were pigeonholed into affinity groups by race, gender, sexuality, nationality, religion, etc.
The most damaging change, Berliner said, led to “the absence of viewpoint diversity.”
All of this led to Orwellian language control: “The mindset animates bizarre stories—on how The Beatles and bird names are racially problematic, and others that are alarmingly divisive; justifying looting, with claims that fears about crime are racist; and suggesting that Asian Americans who oppose affirmative action have been manipulated by white conservatives.”
Berliner raised all of these issues internally and found himself ignored and criticized. His essay spoke hopefully about NPR’s new CEO, Katherine Maher—and the aftermath of his essay demonstrated how misplaced that hope was.
Under Maher’s leadership, Berliner was quickly suspended without pay. Maher issued statements that made her sound like a South Park parody of a clueless leftist—the whitest, most privileged human on Earth whining endlessly about white privilege. Her long history of bizarre tweets on X/Twitter emerged as if flooding out of a backed-up sewer. Writing at the Washington Examiner, Conn Carroll called Maher “NPR’s Queen of the Karens”:
“She’s a vegetarian. She hates cars. And white men flying on planes. She supports race-based reparations, rioting, and the Black Lives Matter movement. She believes ‘America is addicted to white supremacy.’ …
She doesn’t want to become a mother because ‘the planet is literally burning.’ She uses phrases such as ‘CIS white mobility privilege’ unironically. She admits to growing up ‘feeling superior … because I was from New England and my part of the country didn’t have slaves.’”
In 2016, on X/Twitter, she criticized Hillary Clinton:
“I do wish Hillary wouldn't use the language of ‘boy and girl’—it's erasing language for non-binary people.”
In criticizing Berliner’s perceived treachery, Maher boasted how “diverse” NPR’s staff is—thereby reinforcing Berliner’s criticism. In resigning, Berliner’s parting words included:
“I cannot work in a newsroom where I am disparaged by a new C.E.O. whose divisive views confirm the very problems at NPR I cite in my Free Press essay.”
Again, read the whole Berliner essay. And when you’re done, here are a few related pieces worth perusing:
Matt Taibbi: New NPR Chief Katherine Maher's Guide to the Holidays.
David Zimmerman: NPR Suspends Longtime Editor after Scathing Exposé on Left-Wing Bias.
Haley Strack: Veteran Editor Resigns from NPR, Says New CEO’s ‘Divisive’ Left-Wing Views Confirm Bombshell Exposé.
Matt Taibbi: Note to Readers: On Uri Berliner's Resignation from NPR.
Now, on to my own little story from 1978.
ICH BIN EIN BERLINER
(I couldn’t resist using the above subhead. If you don’t understand it, I’m guessing that liquor stores still ask you for ID.)
In 1978, I was a small-town newspaper reporter, and part of my beat was covering Virginia’s 1978 U.S. Senate race—the one in which John Warner won the first of his five terms. For some years, I had been a semi-prominent Democratic Party official who accidentally became a journalist. When I switched roles, I strove to be objective in my writing and transparent about my past. Those aspirations were in no way special, unusual, or courageous on my part. Political journalism then, as now, was laden with ex-partisans. But back then, our employers expected us to leave our biases and baggage outside the newsroom doors.
Briefly, I chaired the Democratic Party’s statewide teen auxiliary in Virginia, was elected party chairman in my hometown, served as a delegate to the 1972 Democratic National Convention, and worked professionally on three state political campaigns. When all those candidates lost, I was an unemployed ex-English major, so when asked in a chance meeting to write for a newspaper, I jumped at the opportunity. For most of the next year, I wrote for a small chain of tiny papers in the mountains of Southwest Virginia. I recall two features of that chain with considerable admiration: (1) Though the newspapers’ owner was a constant presence in our newsroom, I have no recollection of his political leanings or party affiliation. (2) Those of us whose job was objective journalism were required to double periodically as opinion columnists. I don’t know whether the explicit intent was to make our personal biases transparent, but that was the effect. Local Republican politicians knew that I had been a Democratic Party activist—which paradoxically made our relations more congenial.
The U.S. Senate race began as a contest between former Democratic Attorney General Andrew P. Miller and former Virginia Republican Party Chairman Richard Obenshain. I had volunteered for Miller’s AG campaign in 1969, and his opponent was Obenshain, who was a polarizing figure far from my political tastes at the time. In 1978, when I had the opportunity to interview Obenshain for several hours, I began by informing him of my political past, and, with that out of the way, we had one of the most engaging conversations of my professional life. The photo above is a treasure to me; my interview with Obenshain was published around a week later—three days after Obenshain had delivered a speech described by attendees as visionary, only to be killed hours later in an airplane crash.
In my lengthy introduction to that posthumously published interview, I wrote:
“In the hours during which we chatted last week, away from the crowds, I saw for the first time Dick Obenshain the man. My perception of him had always been that of the public man. The public Obenshain had a steely, intense quality. Everything about the public Obenshain was intense. He seldom appeared completely comfortable. He was often called humorless. He seemed an absolutely no-nonsense man whose fervor for his views and for his party could sometimes be frightening.
In private though, the icy Obenshain melted and he revealed a warmth, a humor, and at the same time a more human seriousness than his public demeanor ever indicated.”
Readers knew I was a Democrat who was not enamored of Obenshain’s views, but for me, it was absolutely essential to write a piece that no Republican could criticize as biased or contrary to fact. Forty-some years later, Obenshain’s son received a copy of my piece from a mutual friend and sent me a note expressing his appreciation for what I had written—perhaps the most heartwarming review I ever received. And that conversation had a lifelong impact on my own thinking; Obenshain introduced me for the first time to the philosophy of Friedrich von Hayek, whose writings would ultimately become a political lodestar in my own ideological journey. For me, one of the great pleasures of journalism was having my own biases challenged and especially when those challenges persuaded me to change my own views.
After Obenshain’s death, the Republican Party nominated John Warner as his replacement for the November election. As with Obenshain, my first words to Warner were to advise him of my political past. In sharp contrast to Obenshain, Warner had a natural, breezy, ingenuous warmth. Hearing my caveat, he pointed his finger toward me (and slightly upwards) and said in his booming aristocratic-sounding cadence:
“Fair and impartial, Bob! That’s all I ask. Fair and impartial!”
I assured him that such would be my goal and that he was welcome to inform me if ever I failed to meet that standard. And, in my fairly frequent encounters with him throughout the Fall campaign, every single time he saw me, he’d walk up, point that finger, and say:
“Fair and impartial, Bob! That’s all I ask. Fair and impartial!”
I also saw his opponent, Andrew Miller, over those months. Again, I had worked on his 1969 and 1973 campaigns for Attorney General. His Senate campaign in 1978 ran into some fairly routine organizational difficulties, and I didn’t hesitate to write about them. Related to that were two small incidents that gave me a sense that something unhealthy was afoot in American journalism.
First, someone very close to Miller (and whom I also knew quite well) came into our newsroom one day to talk to me. She was agitated and asked why I was writing negative things about Andrew’s campaign. I said, “Because they’re true?” Still agitated, she said, “Bob you have worked on Andy’s campaigns.” I responded, “But I’m no longer a political operative. My job now is to be as objective and disinterested as I can be.” She repeated, “But what you’ve written is so negative.” I asked whether there were any factual errors or mere conjectures in what I had written. She merely reiterated her disappointment and said good-bye. That stood as the first and only time I was ever asked to tilt my writing to serve my political views. (Note: I never had any indication that Andrew Miller himself knew of this visit or wished to pressure me on my writings.)
Second, around that time, I was reading the Washington Post and came across an article on a conference, sponsored by a well-known foundation, calling for a revolution in journalism—a revolution in which journalists would jettison the quest for objectivity and become advocates for particular points of view. The conference applied a label to this revisionist ideal—and if memory serves me correctly, the term was the now-familiar “advocacy journalism.” Conference participants derided the very notion of objectivity. In hindsight, I suspect this conference was an early manifestation of “critical theory”—the toxic Frankfurt School brew that today indundates public discourse with critical race theory, critical education theory, postcolonialism, oppressor/oppressed dichotomy, and so forth.
These two fleeting memories—pressure to bias my writings and journalists openly discarding the goal of objectivity—stuck in my craw and gave me some concern over the future of journalism. I didn’t obsess over this impression, as I assumed (or perhaps hoped) that it was just a passing storm. But 46 years later, these two incidents bookend contemporary American journalism—biased, intolerant of disfavored viewpoints, and deeply unreliable.
Hats off to Uri Berliner for his courage and insights. Meanwhile, the rest of us continuing paying NPR’s salaries with our tax dollars.
THE EYES HAVE IT
This photo I took in 1978 offers a master class in acting and cinematography. The lineup includes four Virginia politicians—(left to right) Attorney General Marshall Coleman, Governor John Dalton, soon-to-be Senator John Warner, and Congressman William Wampler, along with their wives. Warner’s wife, of course, was screen legend Elizabeth Taylor. I was a reporter for a small newspaper in Southwest Virginia. The occasion was a campaign picnic for Warner, and I asked all eight to huddle for this photo.
In those long-pre-digital days, we reporters developed our own photos. As this one slowly emerged from the acrid fluids in the reddish gloom of the darkroom, I knew immediately that I had something special. My eyes were immediately drawn to Taylor, because—obviously—she alone understood my camera. Her seven companions gaze in every direction other than toward the camera. Some squint, others glare. Not Liz Taylor. She opens her eyes just enough to seduce the camera—the focus of her barely-perceptible pupils converging somewhere just behind the surface of my lens.
As the Senate candidate, John Warner had top billing at the event, but in this photo, Taylor is the star and Warner and the other six are mere extras. Scene-stealing, this photo taught me, is not a matter of waving one’s arms about, talking fast and loud, or interrupting others. Rather, it is a subtle art—snatching viewers’ attention away as a pickpocket snatches wallets. From this insight, I’ve seen parallels all through the business of persuasion and communication.
Notice how Chairman Maher replied. She called Berliner a bigot who hurts people's feelings: "Questioning whether our people are serving our mission with integrity, based on little more than the recognition of their identity, is profoundly disrespectful, hurtful, and demeaning."
Interestingly Maher is very concerned with diversity of appearance but promotes a singularity of thought and opinion. I would assume she is ok with advocacy journalism as long as it is in line with her beliefs and proper group think. She a “white person from New England” proud that her section of the Country didn’t have slaves is perfectly aligned with her Ted-talk about truth and each person’s lived truth. Even New England allowed slavery but that doesn’t comport with her “truth”. Interestingly she a white person, I assume of privilege, isn’t giving up her position to a person of color. It reminded me of a meeting my Dad and Uncle attended in the late 1960’s about the soon to be bussing for racial balance in Brooklyn NY. A very vocal advocate took the floor and proclaimed all those against bussing were bigots. She was from Syosset. No bussing there. But lots of superior indignation at the plebs in Brooklyn who didn’t want anyone’s children to sit on a bus for hours a day when they could walk to school. I was about to enter high school at that time and the city had open high school enrollment. Anyone could go to any high school they wanted to except the few schools that had entrance exams. Ms Maher and the unknown lady from Syosset are kindred “Karens”.