We missed the first rule of corruption: Follow the money.
Yesterday’s confessional from longstanding NPR insider Uri Berliner, and especially my response to it, largely overlooked an important component of the story about NPR’s corruption. And as luck would have it, we can also observe a related anniversary about it.
Almost exactly one year ago, NPR decided to leave Twitter in a huff after Elon Musk branded them as “state-affiliated media.” Even after Musk suggested he might change the label to “publicly funded,” CEO John Lansing said it was still “inaccurate and misleading,” despite the fact that NPR does receive funds from the US federal government for its operations. Both labels apply literally; NPR was conceived and is operated on the basis of public funding to compete against private news organizations.
NPR insists that it’s a private company now, but even they admit that at least a tenth of their funding comes from “federal, state, and local governments indirectly.” They also operate as a non-profit, allowing them federal tax benefits not accessible to their competitors that act as a subsidy.
Lansing declared that Twitter amounted to a credibility risk for NPR:
By going silent on Twitter, NPR’s chief executive says the network is protecting its credibility and its ability to produce journalism without “a shadow of negativity.”
“The downside, whatever the downside, doesn’t change that fact,” NPR CEO John Lansing said in an interview. “I would never have our content go anywhere that would risk our credibility.”
Ahem. Shall we return to Berliner’s assessment of NPR’s credibility during this period and extending back to at least 2017, as he posited? In fact, Berliner paints Lansing as one of the most corrosive internal elements to NPR, well after the organization had clearly committed to anti-Trump activism rather than news reporting. Not only did Lansing declare DEI as NPR’s “North Star” principle, he forced its reporting to become subordinate to the agendas of “affinity groups” that perfectly aligned with the progressive agenda and especially the incoming administration:
Race and identity became paramount in nearly every aspect of the workplace. Journalists were required to ask everyone we interviewed their race, gender, and ethnicity (among other questions), and had to enter it in a centralized tracking system. We were given unconscious bias training sessions. A growing DEI staff offered regular meetings imploring us to “start talking about race.” Monthly dialogues were offered for “women of color” and “men of color.” Nonbinary people of color were included, too.
These initiatives, bolstered by a $1 million grant from the NPR Foundation, came from management, from the top down. …
But the role and standing of affinity groups, including those outside NPR, were more than that. They became a priority for NPR’s union, SAG-AFTRA—an item in collective bargaining. The current contract, in a section on DEI, requires NPR management to “keep up to date with current language and style guidance from journalism affinity groups” and to inform employees if language differs from the diktats of those groups. In such a case, the dispute could go before the DEI Accountability Committee.
In essence, this means the NPR union, of which I am a dues-paying member, has ensured that advocacy groups are given a seat at the table in determining the terms and vocabulary of our news coverage.
Does this happen at other news organizations? Maybe, and perhaps probably. The staff revolts at the New York Times in 2020 and NBC News this year seem to indicate a grassroots effort to impose these didactics, a phenomenon that Berliner describes at NPR too. But other news organizations don’t get taxpayer funding for such propagandistic output, either.
The news coverage Berliner describes (in his limited timeline, which I disputed yesterday) makes clear that NPR ceased being a news operation years ago. It has transformed into a propaganda outfit, not even for the broader American value set but for the narrow interests of the radical Left and the elite governing and economic class. The American government has no business manufacturing politicized propaganda, especially that for internal consumption. Private companies are free to produce such content, if they choose, but they should not get taxpayer funding in any amount — 1%, 10% , or 100%.
We can choose not to watch NBC/MSNBC and deny them our financial support. If governments subsidize NPR, that choice is stripped from us. We are forced to support their propaganda to no benefit whatsoever to those who oppose that political agenda.
Berliner argues against defunding despite his exposure of the ideological hijacking of NPR:
Despite our missteps at NPR, defunding isn’t the answer. As the country becomes more fractured, there’s still a need for a public institution where stories are told and viewpoints exchanged in good faith. Defunding, as a rebuke from Congress, wouldn’t change the journalism at NPR. That needs to come from within.
Why do we need a “public institution” for those purposes? By Berliner’s own admission, NPR is just as bad at “good faith” as any private outlet is, and arguably much worse. This is where Berliner’s constricted timeline comes into play; he thinks the last eight years are anomalous. They aren’t. The last eight years just made the nature of state-affiliated media so obvious that Berliner could no longer keep quiet about it.
It is long past time to defund NPR and all other public broadcasting in the US. If that funding is as negligible to NPR as its defenders pretend, it won’t matter. Their consistent and organized opposition to defunding efforts — Trump proposed defunding in each of his first three budget proposals — tells the real story of NPR’s reliance on taxpayer funding. And even if one embraces Berliner’s claim that reform has to come from within, it’s time to strike down the public-funding struts that buffer NPR from the consequences of its corrupt operations and propaganda production.
Defund NPR. Now.
Here are just a few links to the issue from the past, including efforts that precede Berliner’s timeline:
Also, the latest episode of The Ed Morrissey Show podcast is now up! Today’s show features:
- How was the total eclipse in central Texas? Andrew Malcolm and I have a lot of fun with that question, as well as with the old film Capricorn One.
- We took a less lighthearted look at Joe Biden’s policies in the Middle East, the desperation of his handlers, and the Protection Racket Media.
The Ed Morrissey Show is now a fully downloadable and streamable show at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, the TEMS Podcast YouTube channel, and on Rumble and our own in-house portal at the #TEMS page!