An attempt to mop up the self-imposed public relations mess at NPR had the CEO lashing out at the “profoundly disrespectful, hurtful, and demeaning” characterizations.
This week, National Public Radio editor Uri Berliner upset the precariously leaning apple cart of his own organization with an essay calling out the lack of “viewpoint diversity” within the DEI-embracing ranks.
Friday, after even former President Donald Trump had weighed in with a promise to terminate the funding of the “LIBERAL DISINFORMATION MACHINE” upon a potential return to the White House, NPR’s relatively new CEO and President Katherine Maher opted to oppose the premise seen by many as self-evident.
“I joined this organization because public media is essential for an informed public. At its best, our work can help shape and illuminate the very sense of what it means to have a shared public identity as fellow Americans in this sprawling and enduringly complex nation,” she began in part after apologizing ahead of time for the length of the message.
“NPR’s service to this aspirational mission was called in question this week, in two distinct ways,” continued Maher, who previously served as CEO of Wikimedia and as a member of the State Department’s Foreign Affairs Policy Board started under then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. “The first was a critique of the quality of our editorial process and the integrity of our journalists. The second was a criticism of our people on the basis of who we are.”
“Asking a question about whether we’re living up to our mission should always be fair game: after all, journalism is nothing if not hard questions,” she said before lamenting, “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.”
Of course, what the CEO who came on in March left out of her lengthy memo was any substantive rebuttal to Berliner’s points about NPR being driven throughout the 2016 election by their favor for Clinton or how, after the 2020 death of George Floyd while in police custody, they had embraced DEI as a “North Star,” over which Trump had promised to end government support.
Trump vows to cut off funding for NPR ‘disinformation machine’ https://t.co/8rItzaqZxN via @BIZPACReview
— BPR based (@DumpstrFireNews) April 11, 2024
Instead, Maher stood up for the leftists throughout the organization and defended, “It is deeply simplistic to assert that the diversity of America can be reduced to any particular set of beliefs, and faulty reasoning to infer that identity is determinative of one’s thoughts or political leanings. Each of our colleagues are here because they are excellent, accomplished professionals with an intense commitment to our work: we are stronger because of the work we do together, and we owe each other our utmost respect. We fulfill our mission best when we look and sound like the country we serve.”
In fact, she argued, “we succeed through our diversity” yet, after all her pontificating on the subject, noted that they would be implementing quarterly “editorial planning and review meetings” as soon as next week to allow NPR leadership to engage with Member organizations’ editorial leaders.
“Continuing to uphold our excellence with confidence, having inclusive conversations that bridge perspectives, and learning more about the audiences we serve in order to continue to grow and thrive, adding more light to the illumination of who we are as a shared body public,” she concluded, “I look forward to how we will do this work together.”
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Author: Kevin Haggerty
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