On Uri Berliner's Resignation from NPR

Thoughts on the resignation of the former NPR senior editor

Last week, NPR senior editor Uri Berliner rattled the media world with a tell-all piece in The Free Press, “I’ve Been at NPR for 25 Years. Here’s How We Lost America’s Trust.” He detailed a series of problems, including what he described as a transition from a “liberal bent” to a more “knee-jerk, activist, [and] scolding” posture, representing the “distilled worldview of a very small segment of the U.S. population.” He also described serious coverage failures surrounding Russiagate, the Hunter Biden laptop story, and Covid-19.

The ghoul pools in the media world started immediately. It’s one thing for a former employee to out so many serious newsroom problems (including a devastating account of one of NPR’s “best” journalists admitting to being glad to not cover the laptop story, because it “could help Trump”), but it’s rare for a still-working senior employee to drop that kind of bomb. Berliner in fact was hit with a five-day unpaid suspension last Friday, but this wasn’t announced until Tuesday, when I wrote, “The Vegas over/under line on Berliner’s days left has not been released.”

Whatever that line might have been, betting the under would have been smart. Berliner resigned today, taking a direct shot at new CEO Katherine Maher in the process, writing in an email:

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.

We all saw this coming, but many journalists reacted angrily to this news. A lot of people in media still have affection for the old NPR and wanted this moment to become its turnaround. Finding a way to keep Berliner around would have been a powerful message that the network intended to try to fix its problems. Sadly, this was never going to happen, as we learned in the last week: