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NPR Chief Said She Didn’t Want Uri Berliner to Become a ‘Martyr’: Report

One of the organization’s senior editors publicly slammed NPR’s “absence of viewpoint diversity.”

NPR’s editor in chief, Edith Chapin, said she does not want the staffer who publicly accused the organization of liberal bias this week to become a “martyr,” according to a report. Chapin made the comment in a meeting with the hosts of some of NPR’s biggest shows Wednesday that came after the publication of senior editor Uri Berliner’s bombshell essay, sources told The New York Times. Berliner alleged that NPR suffered from an “absence of viewpoint diversity” and that the uniformity of staffers’ belief in “the progressive worldview” had affected the organization’s reporting, in turn harming its trustworthiness with its audience. Prominent conservatives have seized on Berliner’s claims to attack NPR while the Chapin, says she and others in leadership roles “strongly disagree” with Berliner’s assessment. Some staff members also sent each other internal messages disagreeing with Berliner’s points “about a lack of ideological diversity” and said “efforts to recruit more people of color would make NPR’s journalism better,” according to the Times.