A scathing
op-ed from NPR veteran and current senior business editor Uri Berliner published in The Free Press on Tuesday has intensified debates over whether the publicly funded news organization has adopted a partisan lean in recent years.
In the
piece, Berliner details a culture shift at the organization, in which “An open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR, and now, predictably, we don’t have an audience that reflects America.”
Berliner argued that NPR is plagued with an “absence of viewpoint diversity,” which he considers to be a result of leadership’s emphasis on promoting diversity and inclusion on the basis of race and sexual orientation. He also claims that he found “87 registered Democrats working in editorial positions and zero Republicans.”