NPR under new scrutiny after longtime employee reveals its left-wing activist mission

National Public Radio’s long-standing liberal tilt has gone off the rails, a veteran insider claimed in an essay that has raised new questions about political bias at the taxpayer-funded radio and television network.

NPR is slated to receive more than $91 million in 2024 from the taxpayer-funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting. 

Uri Berliner’s viral essay about his observations as a longtime NPR producer and editor warned against defunding the organization. But at the same time, he made the case for it, chronicling NPR’s lurch to the far left after Donald Trump’s presidential victory in 2016 and its dedication to “identifying and ending systemic racism” following the death of George Floyd, a Black man killed in police custody in 2020. 

NPR’s news coverage after 2016, Mr. Berliner wrote in The Free Press, “veered toward efforts to damage or topple Trump’s presidency,” while race and identity “became paramount in nearly every aspect of the workplace.” At the same time, NPR began to completely shut out viewpoint diversity. 

Mr. Berliner’s piece triggered new calls to yank NPR’s public funding, or at least alter the funding formula to provide local public radio with more control over its coverage. 

NPR received $9.43 million in direct payments in 2024 and cites the figure to claim a mere 1% of its budget came from taxpayers. 

A much bigger pot of federal money — $81.77 million — will also end up at NPR in 2024 by way of direct CPB grants provided to public radio stations, who must use the money to purchase NPR content. 

The conservative watchdog Media Research Center said Mr. Berliner’s article confirmed its long-standing belief that NPR provides liberal content that interests only a small slice of the American public. 

“What we’ve always called for here is to take the taxpayer money away, because it’s unfair, really, for them to take my tax dollars and slap me in the face with it,” said Tim Graham, Media Research Center’s Newsbusters executive editor. “But that’s what they do to Republicans.”

Mr. Berliner criticized NPR’s dogged pursuit of the Trump-Russia collusion claims that reporters quietly dropped after the claims were debunked.

He detailed how NPR refused to provide coverage of the bombshell contents of Hunter Biden’s discarded laptop computer, which were exposed ahead of the 2020 election. Emails, photos and other documents included not only evidence of Hunter Biden’s deeply troubling behavior but also allegations that the former vice president was involved in his son’s business deals. 

At the time, Terence Samuels, NPR’s Managing Editor for News, said the story did not merit NPR’s attention and coverage would be a waste of time for listeners.

In the newsroom, Mr. Berliner revealed, a veteran reporter said NPR should not cover the laptop story because “it could help Trump.”

Mr. Berliner wrote that he investigated the political affiliation of newsroom staff and found 87% were Democrats and none were Republicans.

NPR’s chief news executive, Edith Chapin, rejected Mr. Berliner’s claims about the newsroom, according to a story published by NPR’s media reporter. 

“We are proud to stand behind the exceptional work that our desks and shows do to cover a wide range of challenging stories,” she wrote. “We believe that inclusion — among our staff, with our sourcing, and in our overall coverage — is critical to telling the nuanced stories of this country and our world.”

She added, “None of our work is above scrutiny or critique. We must have vigorous discussions in the newsroom about how we serve the public as a whole.”

NPR’s listener profile in 2023 was beginning to match its newsroom. It included only 11% who described themselves as very or somewhat conservative, 21% who said they were in the middle politically and 67% who identified as very or somewhat liberal.

Howard Husock, who served on the CPB board from 2013 until 2018, said the numbers do not surprise him because NPR is no longer adequately serving listeners. 

Rather than leading the coverage of the opioid epidemic that has devastated many of their listening areas, or breaking the story about the subprime mortgage crisis or other critical issues, he said, NPR clings to reporting on established progressive storylines that often focus on diversity, equity and inclusion. 

“It’s very dispiriting because taxpayers should not be supporting a service that they don’t listen to, and that doesn’t try to reach them,” he said. 

NPR’s studios are located in New York, Washington and Los Angeles and it maintains 16 international bureaus. But none of its studios are in the southern United States, Mr. Husock pointed out.

Its radio shows are syndicated to 1,500 local member stations that must pay annual fees to NPR paid for with the CPB grants. 

Mr. Husock has proposed an alternative to ending NPR’s federal funding.

Rather than eliminating it, he proposed, the federal funding formula should be made more flexible so that member stations can use the money not just to pay NPR dues, but to provide local coverage that is now sorely missing in many regions. 

The current formula requires 75% of CPB funding to go to public television, which Mr. Husock said is outdated and should be divided more evenly because public radio produces significant online content. 

Mr. Husock believes there is little interest in Congress to strip out the funding entirely as lawmakers in both parties make regular appearances on their local NPR and PBS affiliate stations. 

House Republicans tried to strip funding for the CPB in the 2024 government spending bill, but the money was restored in the final version signed by Mr. Biden last month. 

“They are not going to zero it out,” Mr. Husock said. “But you can tweak it in ways that would really make a difference.”