Uri Berliner resigns from NPR
[NOTE: Please see yesterday’s post for some background.]
Uri Berliner has resigned from NPR:
Longtime NPR editor Uri Berliner, who was suspended after blowing the whistle on liberal bias at the organization, announced Wednesday he has resigned.
“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 cited in my Free Press essay,” Berliner wrote in a statement published on X.
It’s interesting that he takes such a mild position about NPR itself, after lambasting it in his recent article that caused so much furor. As I’ve said many times, a mind is a difficult thing to change, even in someone undergoing some sort of mental transition from one point of view to another. Berliner has been at NPR for much of his adult working life and has a great deal invested in believing that its biased coverage is a relatively recent phenomenon although it’s not.
However, I applaud him for his courage in writing his article. I think he must have known it would result in his feeling the need to quit, once he’d burned his bridges that way. Then again, if he really believed in NPR as an institution, he might have been naive enough to think that his article would cause some soul-searching and change for the better there. But the only change it probably caused is that he’s now on the outs.
A brave man, and I applaud his honesty. Perhaps he was hoping against hope that NPR would be ashamed, and change. I hope he gets another job with a more honest news agency, if there are any which will hire him.
The person who should have been let go is the radical CEO.
No surprise, but he was the wrong one to go. Katherine Maher should be the one out the door. NPR was bad enough before she came aboard; I have no doubt it will get worse.
I wonder if this will negatively effect NPR in terms of listeners/readers? Are most NPR consumers even aware of this kerfuffle? And if so, are they inclined to just chalk Berliner’s story up to a disgruntled employee, or will they think there’s some truth to it? Or will they believe him but not even care? My sense is that a lot of NPR listeners are less interested in actual objective news and far more interested in having their biases confirmed. They want to continue to believe that they’re “The Good People”. They don’t want to have their sensibilities challenged in any way. NPR is like comfort food for them.
But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe this will cost NPR a large number of listeners. I doubt it, but maybe.
NPR is a genteel abomination.
He’s past 60. He wanted his say before retiring. If the hag currently running the joint gets taken out in the process, that’s gravy.
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I have a suspicion he’s had lots of mundane friction with his younger co-workers over the years and they’re not surprised at what he had to say even if the company president is. (See Matt Taibbi on her preparation for the position).
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If NPR was a horse, dog, cat, etc, you know what we’d (sadly) have to do.
Meanwhile the new NPR CEO seems to be a derranged AWFL who finds truth to be a “distraction”.
“Our reverence for the truth might be a distraction that’s getting in the way of finding common ground and getting things done.”
Better dead than Red
Of course he wondered leaving his Marxism, but they might have left him
Nonapod
My sense is that a lot of NPR listeners are less interested in actual objective news and far more interested in having their biases confirmed. They want to continue to believe that they’re “The Good People”…..But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe this will cost NPR a large number of listeners. I doubt it, but maybe.
I am in agreement with your analysis. “The Good People” don’t believe for one minute that NPR is extremely biased in its reporting the news. From their point of view, NPR is merely reporting the truth.
Being one of “The Good People” is a big part of their self-identification. Good whites versus bad whites. Garrett Bucks wrote on that POV- his POV: The Right Kind of White: A Memoir.
Nothing to see here
https://www.reddit.com/r/NPR/comments/1c2qrnq/the_code_switch_newsletter_tackled_the_uri/
Uri, we hardly knew ye …
This isn’t going to cost NPR any listeners. They are already pre-selected by their own ideological biases and will come up with a ready explanation for why he had to go.
There’s a pulp SF novel from 1954 that posits as future US which, while still formally a democracy, is *really* run by experts in persuasion. Only a few really understand just how powerful these experts have really become:
“Even the biggest wheels only know part of it. They think the Communications Administrative Department exists to help them–and not the other way around.”
The book has disturbing resonance with our current situation. I reviewed it a couple of years ago:
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/64491.html
Related?
‘Supercharged Spying Provision Buried In “Terrifying” FISA 702 Reauthorization’—
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/supercharged-spying-provision-buried-terrifying-fisa-702-reauthorization
“Edward Snowden sounds alarm about ‘terrifying’ proposed government surveillance law”—
https://www.abc3340.com/news/nation-world/edward-snowden-sounds-alarm-about-terrifying-proposed-government-surveillance-law-fisa-702-reauthorization-bill-elizabeth-goitein-house-senate-congress-national-security-agency
+ Bonus (golden oldie):
“Flashback: Maxine Waters Warns of Massive Database Obama’s Creating;
” ‘That database will have information about everything on every individual in ways that it’s never been done before’ “—
https://grabien.com/story.php?id=852
Uri Berliner is a sucker. He should have known he’d be backed into a corner and forced to resign. By doing things half-assed, he looks like a pussy. In other words, he’s just like all the other feminized NPR males.
If Berliner wanted to write an exposé, he should have jumped in hard with both feet, burned the house down, and forced NPR to fire him. Doing it this way exposes himself as a gutless wonder.
All the NPR listeners I know are so smug in their superiority that nothing will change their minds. CNN, MSNBC, are even beneath them.
The fact that this BS enterprise gets my tax money is what really galls me.
Cornflour:
I don’t know whether he was naive, or whether he knew full well that once he published that article he had burned his bridges and probably would have to resign.
At most, NPR will lose a minuscule percentage of its listeners. And under Maher, it’s going to get even more radical in its ‘coverage’. This is to be welcomed because it’s going to lead to its defunding. PBS is also somewhere on that same path. That too is to be welcomed.
Im guessing hes gone of to free press or substack he was the business reporter so he was somewhat outside the hive
Geoffrey Britain (6:10 pm) believes that the leftward lurch of the already very left NPR is “going to lead to its defunding.”
I propose the following gentleman’s bet, G.B.: I say NPR will *not* lose its taxpayer funding in [to ensure that the bet is closed-end] the next twenty years.
(If I’m around in twenty years (gettin’ up there, y’know))
I think he must have known it would result in his feeling the need to quit, once he’d burned his bridges that way.
–neo
Oh, yeah. If he could point out the problem, he already knew the problem.
He was Dead NPR Man Walking.
I guess he was trying not to entirely burn his bridges everywhere else.
Berliner has an intriguing “Early life and education” intro at wiki:
____________________________________
Berliner was born in 1956 as the only child of lesbian rights activist Eva Kollisch and photographer and artist Gert Berliner, who married in 1948 and divorced in 1959. Gert’s parents were captured by the Gestapo, sent to Auschwitz concentration camp, and executed in 1943. Uri graduated from Sarah Lawrence College.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uri_Berliner
____________________________________
If my grandparents were executed at Auschwitz and I found myself hip deep in today’s proggy Pro-Palestine world, then October 7 happened, I would rethink a few things too.
Berliner is in his late sixties. He’s gonna be OK.
Yikes
https://www.racket.news/p/new-npr-chief-katherine-mahers-guide?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Only gullible suckers and fools heed what NPR has to say. That tax dollars fund it is flat wrong.
Fascinaring angle
https://findingaids.smith.edu/repositories/2/resources/1123
…photographer and artist Gert Berliner…
That name and profession jumped out at me. One of my favorite indie films is “High Art” about a fictional, Jewish, avant-garde NYC photographer named Lucy Berliner.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Art
The film is directed by Lisa Cholodenko, of Ukrainian Jewish extraction. Lucy Berliner is transparently based on Nan Goldin, an American Jewish photographer, who made astonishing photography of the 70s/80s NYC underground.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nan_Goldin
Anyway. I suspect that Lucy Berliner was a hat tip to Gert Berliner, Uri Berliner’s father. The film has a wonderful scene in which Berliner’s mother, played by Tammy Grimes(!), goes on and on about Lucy’s relationship to a German 🙂 woman.
I don’t know “High Art” is quite the film here. Still, recommended.
David Foster:
That book review was very interesting.
I might have to read it for fun. Thanks!
As has been hashed and rehashed, Jews trend left.
However, speaking as an outsider, Jews are now rethinking. I am quite interested and hoping for the best.
Several people have been doing a deep dive into Maher’s social media history, and one of the tidbits they found is a comment made by Maher, seeing Berliner as an adversarial problem to be addressed, shortly after she was hired as CEO. I would think that Berliner would have been aware of such unfriendly attention.
So I conclude that he wrote and published the piece knowing that this reaction was likely, and now that he has it, a graceful and gracious exit will best serve his future lawsuit for wrongful termination and a hostile workplace.
NPR’s and PBS’s viewership has been on the decline for some time, so I don’t think it’s accurate to say that this episode won’t lose them viewers. And I would also point out that, even in the NYT’s coverage of this story, the majority of commenters are solidly in the category of former listeners or disaffected listeners that do NOT like the programming now, and miss the good old days of higher-caliber issues with higher-quality journalistic coverage. It was surprising to read all of those comments.
huxley: High Art! Yes, a lot of unintentional humor spiced up with soft-core girl-on-girl porn. You allude to the comic high point, where her mother’s only objection to an affair with a lesbian junkie is that she’s German.
When on the road, I listened to various public, which is to say university stations, for classical music. Then, at five, comes National Public Radio. Due to two or three particular interests or patches of life history, I knew a fair amount about some of the subjects. Not only were they wrong, or incomplete, it was invariably in support of a far left goal. Decades ago.
Quit listening.
Cornflour is more correct here than Neo:
“he had burned his bridges and probably would have to resign.”
Nobody in America needs to resign — even Nixon didn’t “need” to resign, as Bill Clinton did not.
I understand keeping your head down for the career. Or, after leaving, writing a tell-all expose. But if you’re trying to fight the problem, be honest with yourself that you’re fighting — and make them fire you.
Like Google fired James Damore, wrongly, and the Dem dominated courts said it was OK. Google firing Damore and getting sued was a bit of punishment for Google, and far more than if Damore had resigned.
At this point, all those who support Free Speech against rampant wokism, and are willing to fight, should fight thru the system and become a bigger martyr. Uri could have, and should have, been suing NPR for hostile work environment after whatever pressure they were using against him, with documentation & recordings (/maybe), The pressure to resign is likely to be seen in any jury trial as a “hostile work environment” — and even with a bad court decision, the trial will be somewhat punishing.
Could be that finding a lawyer willing to do this is tough — but I’d guess he didn’t even try the legal approach. And more conservatives need to be willing to fight in the courts, and even fight and lose.
He could do that, as could every conservative Professor in any college, including Amy Wax (maybe). The claim should be that NPR oppresses him, excludes him instead of including him, and opposes his diverse opinions.
I would have called him a wuss, but a f*ck speech becomes more normalized, all other vulgar or obscene words become acceptable, tho not some racist or sexist words.
Republicans should be fighting for Diversity & Inclusion in all tax-receiving orgs: 30% Republicans & 30% Democrats should be “included” to insure “diversity”. Or else they stop getting taxpayer funds, or tax exemptions.