How my NPR colleague failed at “viewpoint diversity”

Uri Berliner gave a perfect example of the kind of journalism he says he’s against.

I was in San Antonio last weekend for a book festival, and took an early-morning run along the city’s River Walk. The paths go beside the water and below the streets, which cross the river on Art Deco bridges. A city looks different from underneath; you feel its layers of history.

Up at street level the book festival was underway, and in a tent filled with people I talked about Differ We Must, my biography of Lincoln as seen through his encounters with people who disagree with him. Moderator Dan Goodgame, editor of Texas Monthly, took the occasion to ask about an item in the news. NPR senior business editor Uri Berliner had written an article criticizing the people who work with him. His article alleged that his colleagues are unanimously progressive and publish progressive stories without any debate—a failure of “viewpoint diversity.” What did I make of that?

Having been asked, I answered: my colleague’s article was filled with errors and omissions. And having given my opinion in public, it’s fair that I should show my work in this space, where I often discuss NPR and journalism more broadly. Nothing I say here is personal; it’s about the journalism. I’ve already told Uri much of what I am telling you, and I have taken his responses seriously. He told me he loves NPR and wants to make it better. 

If Uri wanted to start a discussion about journalism at NPR, he succeeded, though maybe not in the way he intended. His colleagues have had a rich dialogue about his mistakes. The errors do make NPR look bad, because it’s embarrassing that an NPR journalist would make so many. NPR correspondent Eyder Peralta wrote on Facebook, “There are a few bits of truth in this… but it mostly suffers from the same thing it accuses NPR of doing. It is myopic and uses a selective reading to serve the author’s world views.”

The errors are so numerous that his defenders—and he has some!—have taken to admitting them, then adding words to the effect of: I hope this doesn’t obscure his “larger point”!

If Uri’s “larger point” is that journalists should seek wider perspectives, and not just write stories that confirm their prior opinions, his article is useful as an example of what to avoid.

This article needed a better editor. I don’t know who, if anyone, edited Uri’s story, but they let him publish an article that discredited itself.

I discussed one example on stage in San Antonio. The article made headlines for Uri’s claim that he “looked at voter registration for our newsroom” in Washington, D.C., and found his “editorial” colleagues were unanimously registered Democrats—87 Democrats, 0 Republicans.

I am a prominent member of the newsroom in Washington. If Uri told the truth, then I could only be a registered Democrat. I held up a screenshot of my voter registration showing I am registered with “no party.” Some in the crowd gasped. Uri had misled them.

NPR says its content division has 662 people around the world, including far more than 87 in Washington. The article never disclosed this context. (NPR doesn’t ask employees about their voter registration; I don’t know how Uri learned the 87 registrations he says he found.)

When I asked Uri, he said he “couldn’t care less” that I am not a Democrat. He said the important thing was the “aggregate”—exactly what his 87-0 misrepresented by leaving out people like me. While it’s widely believed that most mainstream journalists are Democrats, I’ve had colleagues that I was pretty sure were conservative (I don’t ask), and I’ve learned just since Uri’s article that I am one of several NPR hosts of “no party” registration.

Is there a “larger point” that too many elite journalists share similar backgrounds, and think the same way in assigning and shaping stories? Yes, I think so, but it’s a subtle issue that has more to do with people’s educations, experiences and associations than with partisan registration. There’s less of a headline in that. And it’s an issue that NPR has tried to address with some of the people it has promoted, and by leaning more heavily on reports from our local stations across America.

A careful read of the article shows many sweeping statements for which the writer is unable to offer evidence. He says there is no debate over stories at NPR, just a “frictionless” process like an “assembly line.” I have been involved in passionate debates over stories at Morning Edition, as Uri knows; I have sometimes relied on his advice. Uri is a prominent editor—did he approve bad stories without friction? 

Uri might have made a narrower statement, that certain specific stories are not tested, with too many easy assumptions. Or that we are too willing not to cover certain edgy stories. I might have agreed. But that would be a different story than Uri told. 

When I challenged him, Uri seemed to acknowledge that there is debate, contrary to what he had written. But he said that is not important. He said the real test is what we broadcast or publish.

I agree: the test is what we broadcast. Yet the article keeps failing to nail down what bothers him about the broadcasts.

He writes of a dismaying experience with his managers: “I asked why we keep using that word that many Hispanics hate—Latinx.”

Why indeed? It’s true that many Latinos don’t like this ungendered term, including some who work at NPR. That may be why NPR does not generally use the term. I did a search at npr.org for the previous 90 days. I found:

197 uses of Latino

201 uses of Latina

And just nine uses of “Latinx,” usually by a guest on NPR who certainly has the right to say it.

Like Uri, I often have opinions about NPR’s coverage. Sometimes I am right; and sometimes I check the easily searchable archives and discover I am wrong. I wish he’d done the same.

My colleague goes on to write that “we” cover Israel through “the intersectional lens,” as progressives who see a battle of oppressors and oppressed.

First: who is “we”? I wasn’t aware that the senior business editor has covered Israel, but I have. He seems to have done no research before offering his assessment of my philosophy. Or anyone else’s. If he did explore his colleagues’ views on Israel, he would have found some “viewpoint diversity”!

But that’s beside the point. As Uri said, the test is what we report. His article does not critique a single NPR story on Israel.

Since he mentioned none, allow me. After the Oct. 7 attack, my first interview was with a member of the Israeli war cabinet. When I went to Israel my first story was on a Hamas missile attack; my second was on a Hezbollah attack; my third was on a hostage family. Later, I interviewed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. I have also interviewed many Palestinians and even a member of Hamas, covering all sides as a journalist should.

While in Israel, I saw my colleague Daniel Estrin in Tel Aviv and heard from my colleague Anas Baba in Gaza. Both have covered the story fairly, honorably, and at great personal cost. Scores of Americans, Israelis and Palestinians have contributed to the coverage.

If he was going to denounce these colleagues, Uri might at least have picked out specific stories that bothered him. Many of us could—I was in a discussion about such a story just a few days ago. But that would be a different story than he told. 

The article does correctly note that in the fall of 2020, NPR did not repeat a New York Post scoop about the discovery of Hunter Biden’s laptop. The article leaves out the context: other organizations also held off on the story because of doubts about the laptop’s authenticity. It wasn’t confirmed until much later.

Above all, Uri calls for “viewpoint diversity” but did not seem to embrace it for this article. He didn’t seek comment from anyone or otherwise engage anyone who had a different point of view. The failure to vet the story may explain why the errors and omissions all go in one direction, toward confirming the writer’s pre-existing opinions.

A little vetting would have been good for the writer and his cause. This is especially true in the article’s lengthy attack on NPR’s diversity efforts.

If you conducted a confidential survey, you would hear a lot of “viewpoint diversity” within NPR about those efforts! And opinion would not break down entirely on racial lines. But Uri’s lengthy attack on those efforts had a particular effect on readers. One perceptive reader was Kenya Young of WNYC, a public radio station executive in New York. She is former senior manager at NPR, and widely respected. “The entire long diatribe,” she wrote on Facebook, “actually did not need to be included at all to make his points (some of which I believe to be valid), so the fact this it was shows me exactly where he’s coming from and (disappointingly) how he feels about the much needed changes that had to happen at NPR.”

Here is a prominent member of the community Uri says he wants to influence. He has her attention! And she is receptive to what he has to say! Then he loses his audience through an irrelevant “long diatribe.” The story is written in a way that is probably satisfying to the people who already believe it, and unpersuasive to anyone else—a mirror image of his critique of NPR. 

If we separate that critique from its messenger, there are things to talk about, as Kenya Young says. We are broadcasting to a divided society, at a time when news media consumption has broadly declined. We are competing with many news organizations, and some of them make it part of their business model to tell their audiences not to trust NPR. It’s a tough crowd! And NPR can do more to rise to that challenge.

Many journalists describe the debate within their profession as not so much left vs. right as younger vs. older, or old-school journalism vs. a more activist position. Such debates can be good; but sometimes the traditionalists have fallen silent or struggled to find the language to hold up their end of the discussion. Uri was one who spoke openly, but ineffectively. He didn’t work any of the beats he complained about, which might be why his critique misfired so wildly.

My view is neither the old-school model nor the radical one. I don’t think we need new rules of journalism, but do need better execution of the rules we already have, as I have described in this Substack. We need to report and write more rigorously, and prove every point we make, conscious that someone out there will definitely not be on the same page. We need to be curious. We need to keep searching for new voices, and new facts. The whole of humanity is out there to be covered.