Journalist who accused NPR of liberal bias resigns from the community

Uri Berliner, the veteran NPR journalist who publicly accused his employer of liberal bias, has resigned from the network.

Berliner posted a concept Wednesday on the social media platform X with his resignation letter to the public broadcaster’s main executive Katherine Maher.

“I am resigning from NPR, a great American establishment in which I have labored for 25 decades,” Berliner wrote. “I never guidance phone calls to defund NPR. I regard the integrity of my colleagues and desire for NPR to prosper and do vital journalism. But I can not work in a newsroom exactly where I am disparaged by a new CEO whose divisive viewers ensure the incredibly issues I cite in my Totally free Press essay.”

Berliner, a business editor at the network, was suspended final Friday, 4 times immediately after the visual appearance of an April 9 opinion piece for the Substack e-newsletter the Absolutely free Push. His essay mentioned NPR is catering to “a distilled worldview of a incredibly little segment of the U.S. inhabitants.” The all round thrust of the piece asserted that NPR has “lost America’s rely on.”

Berliner was suspended for five times for violating NPR’s coverage requiring management to distinct any do the job developed for a further media outlet.

Berliner’s essay explained he voted in opposition to former President Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020. But he believes progressive advocacy seeped into the network’s protection of Trump and other matters these as the Israel-Hamas war, the origins of COVID-19 and the contents of Hunter Biden’s deserted notebook.

Berliner’s polemic was promoted by conservative critics of NPR, which led to the resurfacing of politically billed social media posts from Maher.

Maher, who took about as NPR’s chief government in January, expressed her disdain for Trump in a quantity of tweets, including 1 2020 write-up in which she known as him a racist.

NPR issued a assertion Tuesday calling the resurfaced tweets a coordinated try to harm the network.

“This is a terrible faith attack that follows an proven playbook, as on the web actors with specific agendas operate to discredit independent information organizations,” the network stated. “In this situation, they resorted to digging up previous tweets and producing conjectures dependent on our new CEO’s resume. Expending time on these accusations is supposed to detract from NPR’s mission of informing the American community and giving local facts in communities all over the state is much more significant than at any time.”

Maher earlier headed the nonprofit Wikimedia Basis, which operates Wikipedia, and has no previous expertise in journalism.

She did not directly react to Berliner’s essay but defended NPR’s efficiency in a letter to staff members manufactured community past week.

“Questioning whether or not our individuals are serving our mission with integrity, based mostly on minor much more than the recognition of their identification, is profoundly disrespectful, hurtful, and demeaning,” Maher wrote.

NPR has nonetheless to issue a comment on Berliner’s resignation.