“NO MORE” tax dollars should fund NPR after a senior editor unveiled several examples of blatant network bias, former President Donald Trump said.
NPR employs 87 registered Democrats in editorial positions but zero Republicans in the same positions in its Washington, DC, headquarters, NPR Senior Editor Uri Berliner reported Tuesday in a scathing essay.
Berliner, who leans left, said he opposed many of the left-wing and perhaps false narratives NPR spun about the coronavirus “lab leak theory,” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, Hunter Biden’s laptop, former President Donald Trump, and the 2016 Russia hoax.
“NO MORE FUNDING FOR NPR, A TOTAL SCAM! EDITOR SAID THEY HAVE NO REPUBLICANS, AND IS ONLY USED TO ‘DAMAGE TRUMP,’” Trump wrote Wednesday on Truth Social. “THEY ARE A LIBERAL DISINFORMATION MACHINE. NOT ONE DOLLAR!!!”
Taxpayer funds subsidized NPR’s budget by nearly 11 percent.
NPR’s business model appears in decline. The taxpayer-funded organization laid off ten percent of its workforce, going from approximately 1,200 to about 1,050 employees after the left-wing media company failed to generate enough revenue, the organization announced in 2023.
NPR is in panic mode https://t.co/iSVVaS5AQz
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) April 11, 2024
In 2011, Berliner said, the network’s “audience tilted a bit to the left” but “still bore a resemblance to America at large.” He described NPR listening as 26 percent conservative, 23 percent “middle of the road,” and 37 percent far-left. That changed by 2023 when only 11 percent of listeners described themselves as conservative, 21 percent as “middle of the road,” and 67 percent left-leaning.
Berliner reported:
So on May 3, 2021, I presented the findings at an all-hands editorial staff meeting. When I suggested we had a diversity problem with a score of 87 Democrats and zero Republicans, the response wasn’t hostile. It was worse. It was met with profound indifference. I got a few messages from surprised, curious colleagues. But the messages were of the “oh wow, that’s weird” variety, as if the lopsided tally was a random anomaly rather than a critical failure of our diversity North Star.
In a follow-up email exchange, a top NPR news executive told me that she had been “skewered” for bringing up diversity of thought when she arrived at NPR. So, she said, “I want to be careful how we discuss this publicly.”
For years, I have been persistent. When I believe our coverage has gone off the rails, I have written regular emails to top news leaders, sometimes even having one-on-one sessions with them. On March 10, 2022, I wrote to a top news executive about the numerous times we described the controversial education bill in Florida as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill when it didn’t even use the word gay. I pushed to set the record straight, and wrote another time to ask why we keep using that word that many Hispanics hate—Latinx. On March 31, 2022, I was invited to a managers’ meeting to present my observations.
NPR’s chief news executive, Edith Chapin, denied her employee’s claims, citing nuance and inclusion.
Wendell Husebo is a political reporter with Breitbart News and a former GOP War Room Analyst. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Follow Wendell on “X” @WendellHusebø or on Truth Social @WendellHusebo.
