DCStockPhotography / Shutterstock.com
CV NEWS FEED // After National Public Radio attempted to punish a senior editor who wrote about how the radio platform lost America’s trust, he announced that he has resigned from his position and stands by what he wrote.
Uri Berliner had worked for NPR for 25 years as a committed editor and journalist. On April 9, Berliner wrote an op-ed in The Free Press expressing his concerns about the company replacing reporting the truth with pushing a biased narrative.
In his article, Berliner gave three examples of times when NPR purposely neglected or ignored key facts about politically charged stories because they conflicted with leftist narratives. He also wrote about how NPR reporters are required to avoid certain terminology when talking or writing about issues such as transgenderism.
“In a document called NPR Transgender Coverage Guidance—disseminated by news management—we’re asked to avoid the term biological sex,” Berliner wrote in his op-ed.
In a response to Berliner’s article, NPR spokesmen expressed the company’s disagreement with his claims.
As CatholicVote previously reported, an NPR spokesman stated that NPR’s recently-hired CEO Katherine Maher “believes that it’s a healthy thing for a public service newsroom to engage in rigorous consideration of the needs of our audiences, including where we serve our mission well and where we can serve it better.”
NPR also attempted to punish Berliner by issuing him a five-day suspension from work without pay, which began on April 12.
NPR informed Berliner of the suspension in a letter delivered to him on April 11. The letter warned that he had violated company policy for technically working for an outside news outlet without approval from NPR, and would be fired if he violated company policy a second time.
Before the suspension concluded, Berliner announced that he was resigning from his position at NPR.
On April 17, Berliner posted on his X account a copy of his resignation letter to Maher:
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.
