Last week, Uri Berliner, a decorated senior editor for NPR, stirred the political world when he published an essay criticizing NPR for adopting a biased viewpoint. Berliner argued that NPR had "coalesced around the progressive worldview." The essay has emboldened conservatives who argue that the media is biased. In response to the news, Texas Senator Ted Cruz (R) is now calling on NPR to be defunded.
After Berliner's essay was published, President Donald Trump (R) cited it as an example of the media being biased in its reporting.
Berliner, who's worked at NPR since 1999 and who won a Peabody award, provided examples of where NPR has "faltered" in its reporting, including the COVID-19 lab leak theory and Russiagate. However, Berliner does mention that this alleged bias hasn't always been the case.
Regardless, President Trump called for NPR to be disbanded, and Berliner has been suspended without pay. The reason for the suspension, he argues, is because he hadn't secured approval for outside work as his essay was published on The Free Press.
Others are now echoing President Trump's call as Senator Cruz believes that NPR should be defunded.
Over the weekend, during an episode of his "The Verdict" podcast, Senator Cruz discussed the bombshell essay, calling it "a damning admission."
He questioned why NPR was taxpayer funded while it was "trying to damage [Trump's] presidency, to even find anything we could do to harm him." Cruz noted that the bias "was obvious to any conservative, but it says something for it for a senior editor to go and blow the whistle like this."
In the podcast, Senator Cruz and the co-host Ben Ferguson also discussed an interview Berliner took part in with Bari Weiss. Weiss, a former member of The New York Times' editorial board who resigned and started The Free Press, spoke with Berliner about there being 87 registered Democrats "working in editorial positions" while there were zero Republicans in leadership roles.
As tension between conservatives and the media continues to rise, Berliner, in his essay, appears to share the sentiment that conservatives have been clamoring for - "the absence of viewpoint diversity."
