NPR Editor Uri Berliner Resigns As Calls for Defunding Grow

Uri Berliner, the NPR senior business editor who was suspended after publicly accusing the non-profit media outlet of a pervasive left-wing bias, said Wednesday he has resigned due to the "divisive views" of CEO Katherine Maher.

But as the Berliner saga comes to a close, conservative attacks on Maher persist and calls for defunding NPR are only growing louder.

In his scathing essay published April 9 at The Free Press, Berliner wrote that NPR lacked viewpoint diversity, noting that at its headquarters in Washington, D.C., there were 87 Democrats in editorial positions and zero Republicans.

"An open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR, and now, predictably, we don't have an audience that reflects America," he wrote about the outlet, which is partially funded by government grants.

The lengthy essay in Free Press that claimed that NPR was biased against Donald Trump and favored President Joe Biden in a variety of ways, resulted in a five-day suspension of Berliner handed down on Friday.

But instead of returning to work, Berliner posted on social media: "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."

But while Berliner's tenure may have come to an end, the issues he raised are expected to reverberate as conservatives like Trump, Senator Ted Cruz and others have cited Berliner's story on social media along with calls to defund the NPR.

NPR has said it only receives one percent of its funding from taxpayers. In fiscal 2023, it received $7 million from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which is primarily funded by the U.S. government. Though it's murkier than that, as The Hill reported last year the CPB doles out about $500 million annually to local public TV and radio stations which use such funding to license NPR programming.

Newsweek reached out to NPR but has not received a response.

In a letter to employees addressing Berliner's claims, Maher, who has been CEO for less than one month, wrote, "Questioning whether our people are serving our mission with integrity, based on little more than the recognition of their identity, is profoundly disrespectful, hurtful, and demeaning."

Berliner, though, didn't only rely on voter registration when making his assertions, writing in Free Press that, "It's frictionless—one story after another about instances of supposed racism, transphobia, signs of the climate apocalypse, Israel doing something bad, and the dire threat of Republican policies. It's almost like an assembly line."

On Wednesday, Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn told Fox News Digital that she is considering a variety of options for defunding the CPB.

"The mainstream media has become obsessed with doing the Left's bidding and taking down strong conservatives—and NPR has lead the pack," she told the outlet. "It makes no sense that the American people are forced to fund a propagandist left-wing outlet that refuses to represent the voices of half the country. NPR should not receive our tax dollars."

Her remarks come as conservatives at X, formerly Twitter, have been gleefully publishing their own "proof" of Maher's alleged biases, including a photo of her wearing her self-described "Biden grandpa hat," an image she posted to X in 2020.

One of those leading the online charge against Maher is conservative activist Christopher Rufo, who posted on X Wednesday a video of a presentation at the 360/Open Summit 2021 where she said, "The No. 1 challenge here that we see is, of course, the First Amendment," because it makes it "a little bit tricky" to prevent "influence peddlers" from spreading "bad information."

Others, such as conservative radio host Dan Bongino, have been spreading remarks Maher made during a 2022 TED talk just after stepping down as CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation. In the video, she says: "Seeking the truth, and seeking to convince others of the truth, might not be the right place to start."

She also says in her TED talk that "there are many different truths and so, in the spirit of that, I'm certain that the truth exists for you, and probably for the person sitting next to you, but this may not be the same truth."

Republicans have been talking about defunding NPR for decades, notes John Pitney, a professor of American politics at Claremont McKenna College.

"This time, they have the benefit of an internal NPR critic. 'Your guy says so' can be an effective rhetorical tool," Pitney said.

Pitney said Maher didn't do NPR any favors when she said in her TED talk two years ago that, "In fact, our reverence for the truth might be a distraction that is getting in the way of finding common ground and getting things done."

Conservatives, said Pitney, "are interpreting that statement to mean that truth takes a back seat to NPR's political agenda. That may not be what she meant, but it certainly sounds that way."

Others are also noting that in 2018 Maher tweeted "Donald Trump is a racist" and other progressive sentiments after that, such as in 2020 during Black Lives Matter demonstrations when she wrote: "I mean, sure, looting is counterproductive. But it's hard to be mad about protests to prioritizing the private property of a system of oppression found on treating people's ancestors as private property."

Update, 4/17/2024 at 10:27 p.m. ET: The article was updated to add expert commentary.