![\"Free](\"https:\/\/fair.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/Free-Press-NPR-350x525.png\")
Uri Berliner (Free Press<\/strong>, 4\/9\/24<\/a>) blamed what he saw as NPR<\/strong>‘s problems on the way that “race and identity became paramount in nearly every aspect of the workplace.”<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n \u201cI\u2019ve Been at NPR<\/b> for 25 Years. Here\u2019s How We Lost America\u2019s Trust,\u201d reads the headline of a recent essay in the Free Press <\/b>(4\/9\/24<\/a>), a Substack<\/b>-hosted outlet published by former New York Times<\/b> opinion editor Bari Weiss<\/a>. The author, senior NPR <\/b>business editor Uri Berliner, argued that the broadcaster\u2019s \u201cprogressive worldview\u201d was compromising its journalism and alienating conservatives, including Berliner himself\u2014who subsequently resigned<\/a>.<\/p>\n Berliner\u2019s screed was the latest instance of a trend in which legacy-media staffers publicly grouse that their workplaces are overrun by left-wing firebrands. Former New York Times <\/b>assistant opinion editor Adam Rubenstein recently did so in the Atlantic<\/b> (2\/26\/24<\/a>). Two months before that, James Bennet<\/a>, previously the editorial page editor at the Times<\/b>, spent 16,000 words lamenting that the Times<\/b> had \u201clost its way\u201d in the Economist<\/b>\u2019s 1843 <\/b>supplement (12\/24\/23<\/a>).<\/p>\n Readers were invited to view these critics as brave iconoclasts at odds with the radical doctrines of their former employers. But the records of NPR <\/b>and the New York Times <\/b>show just how misleading this characterization is.<\/p>\n The tirades shared several themes, including resentment of the 2020 protests against police violence following the murder of George Floyd. Rather than letting “evidence lead the way,” Berliner complained that NPR<\/b> management “declared loud and clear” that “America’s infestation with systemic racism…was a given.” He rebuked NPR<\/b> for supposedly “justifying looting” in relation to the demonstrations, citing an interview (8\/27\/20<\/a>) with In Defense of Looting <\/i>author Vicky Osterweil. Conveniently, Berliner didn\u2019t note NPR<\/b>\u2019s repeated scolding of looters (6\/2\/20<\/a>, 8\/11\/20<\/a>, 10\/28\/20<\/a>) before and after that interview.<\/p>\n Adam Rubenstein (Atlantic<\/strong>, 2\/26\/24<\/a>) presents his career at the New York Times<\/strong>\u2014where he was hired to seek out “expressly conservative views” because he had “contacts on the political right”\u2014as evidence of the paper’s left-wing bias.<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n Both Rubenstein and Bennet condemned the Times<\/b>\u2019 handling of an op-ed (6\/3\/20<\/a>) by Sen. Tom Cotton (R\u2013Ark.) that they took part in publishing. Appearing during the uprisings, the op-ed called for the deployment of the military to suppress protests. (In Bennet\u2019s view, Cotton wanted to \u201cprotect lives and businesses from rioters.\u201d) After much reader\u2014and staffer<\/a>\u2014outrage at the bald incitement of racist violence, the Times <\/b>appended a note stating regret over the piece, and both editors left the newspaper.<\/p>\n Embittered by the Times<\/b>\u2019 response, neither Rubenstein nor Bennet paused to consider that a paper that had not only commissioned a fascistic op-ed by a neocon senator, but had published that same senator<\/a> multiple times before\u2014in one case, to celebrate the Trump-ordered assassination of Iranian Gen. Qassim Suleimani (1\/10\/20<\/a>)\u2014might not be beholden to the left.<\/p>\n Bennet also complained that the Times <\/b>was \u201cslow\u201d to report that \u201cTrump might be right that Covid came from a Chinese lab\u201d\u2014which is true; the Times<\/b>‘ coverage of the lab leak theory in 2020 was decidedly (and appropriately) skeptical (2\/17\/20<\/a>, 4\/30\/20<\/a>, 5\/3\/20<\/a>; see FAIR.org<\/b>, 10\/6\/20<\/a>). The paper did eventually jump on the bandwagon of the evidence-free conspiracy theory, with David Leonhardt promoting it in his popular<\/a> Morning<\/b> newsletter (5\/27\/21<\/a>).<\/p>\n James Bennet (1843<\/strong>, 12\/24\/23<\/a>) blames the rise of Trump on journalists’ forfeiting “their credibility as arbiters of truth and brokers of ideas”\u2014which is odd, because his argument is that journalists shouldn’t arbitrate truth or broker ideas.<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n Berliner, too, took umbrage at his employer\u2019s treatment of the lab theory:<\/p>\n We didn\u2019t budge when the Energy Department\u2014the federal agency with the most expertise about laboratories and biological research\u2014concluded<\/a>, albeit with low confidence, that a lab leak was the most likely explanation for the emergence of the virus.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n But NPR<\/b> did budge. An episode of Morning Edition<\/b> (2\/27\/23<\/a>) featuring Wall Street Journal <\/b>reporter Michael Gordon promoted the Energy Department\u2019s admittedly shaky assertion, lending credence to a hypothesis informed far more by anti-China demagoguery than by scientific evidence (FAIR.org<\/b>, 6\/28\/21<\/a>, 4\/7\/23<\/a>). This wasn\u2019t the first time NPR <\/b>had advanced the theory: In a 2021 segment of Morning Edition<\/b> (6\/3\/21<\/a>), media correspondent David Folkenflik suggested that news organizations publicizing the lab-leak claim were \u201clisten[ing] closely.\u201d<\/p>\n Alicia Montgomery (Slate<\/strong>, 4\/16\/24<\/a>) diagnosed NPR<\/strong>‘s actual problem: “NPR<\/strong> culture encouraged an editorial fixation on finding the exact middle point of the elite political and social thought, planting a flag there, and calling it objectivity.”<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n The perceived lack of lab-leak coverage was one of many examples Berliner cited to make the case that NPR<\/b> sought to \u201cdamage or topple Trump\u2019s presidency.\u201d Yet, as NPR <\/b>alum Alicia Montgomery wrote for Slate<\/b> (4\/16\/24<\/a>):<\/p>\n I saw NO trace of the anti-Trump editorial machine that Uri references. On the contrary, people were at pains to find a way to cover Trump\u2019s voters<\/a> and his administration fairly. We went full-bore on \u201cdiner guy in a trucker hat\u201d coverage and adopted the \u201calt-right\u201d label<\/a> to describe people who could accurately be called racists. The network had a reflexive need to stay on good terms with people in power, and journalists who had contacts within the administration were encouraged to pursue those bookings.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Contrary to Berliner’s allegations, Montgomery noted that staffers were “encouraged to make sure that any coverage of a Trump lie was matched with a story about a lie from Hillary Clinton.” When a colleague “asked what to do if one candidate just lied more than the other,” they were met with silence.<\/p>\n On the subject of Israel and Palestine, Berliner condemned what he perceived as NPR<\/b>\u2019s \u201coppressor versus oppressed\u201d framing. Rubenstein, meanwhile, remarked that a colleague once told him, \u201cThe state of Israel makes me very uncomfortable.\u201d It\u2019s possible that a New York Times<\/b> journalist said this, even if Rubenstein\u2019s anecdotes elicited skepticism<\/a>. But the coverage of the Times<\/strong><\/a>, and of NPR<\/strong><\/a>, contradict this sentiment.<\/p>\n Indeed, it\u2019s hard to believe that media platforms resemble, in Rubenstein\u2019s words, \u201cyoung progressives on college campuses,\u201d when they soften Israeli militarism through human-interest stories (NPR<\/b>, 12\/27\/23<\/a>; FAIR.org<\/b>, 1\/25\/24<\/a>), deem Israeli sources more worthy than Palestinian ones (FAIR.org<\/b>, 11\/3\/23<\/a>) and discourage the use of words like \u201cgenocide\u201d and \u201cethnic cleansing\u201d to refer to Israel\u2019s Gaza assault (Intercept<\/b>, 4\/15\/24<\/a>; FAIR.org<\/b>, 4\/18\/24<\/a>).<\/p>\n Politico<\/strong> (12\/14\/23<\/a>) accepted Bennet’s depiction of a struggle at the Times<\/strong> between “traditional journalistic values like fairness, pluralism and political independence,” and “the ideological whims of the paper\u2019s younger, left-leaning staffers.”<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n Undermining the self-assigned pariah status of Berliner, Rubenstein and Bennet, corporate media have normalized, even endorsed, the authors\u2019 polemics.<\/p>\n The New York Times<\/b> (4\/11\/24<\/a>) reported that NPR <\/b>had been \u201caccused of liberal bias\u201d\u2014the word \u201caccused\u201d implying that insufficient appeal to the far right was a misdeed. The Chicago Tribune<\/b>\u2019s editorial board (4\/14\/24<\/a>) called Berliner\u2019s essay \u201cnuanced and thoughtful,\u201d and commended his \u201ccourage\u201d in adopting what the Tribune <\/b>considered a dissident stance among news organizations. Berliner offered \u201cgood lessons for all news organizations,\u201d the paper concluded.<\/p>\n A month prior, New York <\/b>magazine\u2019s Jonathan Chait (3\/1\/24<\/a>) defended Rubenstein\u2019s rant, breezing past its disdain for racial justice activists to insist on the veracity of a detail about a Chick-Fil-A sandwich. Chait wrapped the piece with a grumble about the \u201cleft-wing media criticism\u201d that dared to doubt Rubenstein; right-wing media criticism, of course, was safely in Chait\u2019s good graces.<\/p>\n The day 1843<\/b> published Bennet\u2019s harangue, Politico <\/b>(12\/14\/23<\/a>) ran a splashy profile portraying Bennet as the victim of left-wing tyranny. The publication described Bennet as \u201carmed\u201d with damning email correspondence and verbatim quotations from the end of his tenure at the Times<\/b>, depicting him as a lone soldier battling those who \u201cpushed the paper to elevate liberal viewpoints and shun conservative perspectives.\u201d<\/p>\n Criticism from the left is something the New York Times<\/strong> won’t tolerate (New York Post<\/strong>, 2\/16\/23<\/a>).<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n NPR<\/b> and the Times <\/b>themselves, while articulating some<\/a> disagreement<\/a> with their critics, largely accepted those critics\u2019 premises. In an internal email, NPR <\/b>editor-in-chief Edith Chapin indulged Berliner\u2019s demands to appeal to the right, stressing the need to serve \u201call audiences\u201d and \u201c[break] down the silos.\u201d (NPR <\/b>staffers have since written<\/a> an internal letter urging a more forceful defense of the outlet.) Times <\/b>publisher A.G. Sulzberger\u2019s response<\/a> to Bennet sympathized further, presenting a rightward shift as a point of pride: \u201cToday we have a far more diverse mix of opinions, including more conservative and heterodox voices, than ever before.\u201d<\/p>\n The New York Times<\/b>\u2019 message stands in stark contrast to one it sent not long before. In February 2023, over 1,200 Times<\/b> contributors signed an open letter<\/a> expressing alarm about the paper\u2019s demeaning<\/a> coverage of transgender, nonbinary and gender-nonconforming people, noting that three Times<\/b> articles had been referenced as justification in anti-trans legislation. Rather than taking these concerns into consideration, or even recognizing their legitimacy, the paper declared<\/a> it was \u201cproud of its coverage.\u201d Sulzberger went on to exalt said reportage as \u201ctrue\u201d and \u201cimportant\u201d (FAIR.org<\/b>, 5\/19\/23<\/a>).<\/p>\n In this media milieu\u2014in which it\u2019s more acceptable to support reactionaries in power than the people whose lives they attempt to destroy\u2014the real \u201cheretics<\/a>\u201d prove not to be those issuing critiques from the right, but from the left.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The post Right-Wing Critiques Miscast NPR, NYT as Lefty Bastions<\/a> appeared first on FAIR<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n This post was originally published on FAIR<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0 \u201cI\u2019ve Been at NPR for 25 Years. Here\u2019s How We Lost America\u2019s Trust,\u201d reads the headline of a recent essay in the Free Press (4\/9\/24), a Substack-hosted outlet published by former New York Times opinion editor Bari Weiss. The author, senior NPR business editor Uri Berliner, argued that the broadcaster\u2019s \u201cprogressive worldview\u201d was compromising [\u2026]<\/p>\n The post Right-Wing Critiques Miscast NPR, NYT as Lefty Bastions<\/a> appeared first on FAIR<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7554,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1303,259,1784,2143,262,263],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1628296"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7554"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1628296"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1628296\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1632260,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1628296\/revisions\/1632260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1628296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1628296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1628296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Right-wing embrace<\/b><\/h3>\n
![\"Atlantic:](\"https:\/\/fair.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/Atlantic-NYT-350x300.png\")
![\"1843:](\"https:\/\/fair.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/1843-NYT-350x192.png\")
‘Good terms with people in power’<\/b><\/h3>\n
![\"Slate:](\"https:\/\/fair.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/Slate-NPR-350x341.png\")
Warmly welcomed rebukes\u00a0<\/b><\/h3>\n
![\"Politico:](\"https:\/\/fair.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/Politico-NYT-350x223.png\")
The real heretics<\/b><\/h3>\n
![\"NY](\"https:\/\/fair.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/NY-Post-NYT-350x291.png\")