NPR (III): CEO Katherine Maher responds to Uri Berliner's critique

Ms. Maher says very little of substance, and at no point does she directly address Mr. Berliner's specific criticisms. Indeed, if anything, her response helps prove the validity of his criticisms.

A few days ago, Uri Berliner wrote a lengthy critique of NPR’s politically progressive culture and reporting bias. Yesterday (April 12), Katherine Maher, the new CEO of NPR, responded in the form of a rather lengthy (>1500 word) letter to all NPR staff.

Again, in the spirit of the Axios Smart Brevity – I’ll start with this post’s take-aways:

— Berliner’s critique focused on the lack of ideological diversity at NPR, which he claims contributes to a political bias in its reporting. He also noted (with reference to data) that the NPR audience has become smaller and LESS racially and ethnically diverse since its mission officially changed (under previous CEO John Lansing) from objective truth-telling to the promotion of social justice.

— Ms. Maher’s response was (1) defensive, (2) highly complimentary of NPR’s diversity efforts, and (3) replete with platitudes but totally lacking in any direct refutations of Berliner’s criticisms, while repeatedly misrepresenting what he claimed.

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In the pantheon of insubstantial responses by a CEO to criticisms of a company, Ms. Maher’s may go down as one of the least substantial ever. Twenty years from now, consultants may still be referring to it as an example of an ineffective response. But the truth is – it is worse than insubstantial. If it only had said nothing – that would have been an improvement. Her response repeatedly misinterprets, and in doing so to some extent proves, the substance of Berliner’s criticism.

But before getting to some examples that illustrate that point, I want to jump ahead, all the way to the final three-paragraph section of the document, which epitomizes the vacuity of the document as a whole while also having the merit that at least one part of it amuses me every time I re-read it. Here is that final section, in all it’s fridge-magnet platitude-phrase glory:

“Two final thoughts on our mission:

I once heard missions like ours described as asymptotic — we can see our destination and we strive for it, but may never fully meet it. The value is in the continued effort: the challenge stretches on toward infinity and we follow, ever closer. Some people might find that exhausting. I suspect they don't work here. I suspect that you do because you find that challenge a means to constantly renew your work, and to reinfuse our mission with meaning as our audiences and world continues to change.

The strongest, most effective, and enduring missions are those that are owned far beyond the walls of their institution. Our staff, our Member stations, our donors, our listeners and readers, our ardent fans, even our loyal opposition all have a part to play: each of us come to the work because we believe in it, even as we each may have different perspectives on how we succeed. Every person I have met so far in my three weeks here has shown me how they live our mission every day, in their work and in their contributions to the community.

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: I look forward to how we will do this work together.”

First – please note the total lack of any specificity in her airing of somewhat mixed metaphors about how wonderful everyone at NPR is. Perhaps I’m metaphor-comprehension challenged, but I honestly do not knw what it means to be “adding more light to the illumination of who we are as a shared body public”? And in terms of her claim that “Every person I have met so far in my three weeks here has shown me how they live our mission every day, in their work and in their contributions to the community” – one wonders how many people has she met during just three weeks on the job with whom she has had a deep enough interaction to know how well they are living the mission of NPR every day. It can’t have been very many. And what does it mean “to live” the NPR mission (a mission that she does not even describe)?

But it is actually the first of these three paragraphs that is the real gem of meaningless palaver. She says that there is something quite special about the NPR mission in that it is “asymptotic”. Her meaning is explained in the next sentence, where she refers to the idea that “the challenge stretches on toward infinity and we follow, ever closer”. Uh – isn’t that true of most jobs, in the sense that one never actually reaches the end and that there is a continuous striving for improvement in the face of changing conditions? And after reading this, I was left amusingly wondering whether Ms. Maher know what “infinity” means? By definition, one can never get closer to infinity!

OK – now back to her failure to address Mr. Berliner’s criticisms. The theme of Berliner’s essay is that there is insufficient ideological diversity at NPR and that therefore, stories are told almost uniformly from a politically progressive perspective. Among the examples he gives are the cases of the way in which NPR has reported on gender-related issues and the anti-Israel bias that rather obviously permeates NPR’s reporting of the Hamas-on-Israel war. He also claims that when, because of the ideological blinkering at NPR, a story is wrongly reported, the network has failed to make corrections or to apologize for its errors.

Nowhere in Ms. Maher’s response does she directly, or even obliquely, address these criticisms. She does not cite any reports that would falsify Berliner’s claims about NPR’s reporting about transgender issues, or about NPR’s reporting on the war in the Middle East. Ms. Maher makes no mention of times when NPR has openly discussed its own errors in reporting. She does not correct Mr. Berliner by discussing evidence that the reports that Mr. Berliner cites as having involved politically motivated errors were in fact correct, or at least were reasonable given the information available at the time.

Ms. Maher does make some claims in her response that are not consistent with claims made by Berliner, but she provides no evidence to back up her claims. For example, Berliner claimed that the NPR audience has become less diverse and less representative of the population of the U.S. as a whole during the past 5 years. Maher, in contrast states that:

“It is true that our audiences have unquestionably changed over the course of the past two decades. There is much to be proud of here: through difficult, focused work, we have earned new trust from younger, more diverse audiences, particularly in our digital experiences. These audiences constitute new generations of listeners, are more representative of America, and our changing patterns of listening, viewing, and reading.”

I’m not sure what data Ms. Maher is referring to here, because she doesn’t say. But Berliner provided specific evidence that what Ms. Maher says here is not true, noting that the NPR audience has become racially and ethnically LESS diverse since the change in its mission from objective truth-telling to promoting social justice occurred a few years ago.

One also wonders if Ms. Maher fully read Berliner’s critique, because she did not seem to have properly understood it. She wrote, for example:

“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. 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.”

Is it “disrespectful, hurtful, and demeaning” for Berliner to have pointed out that the content of NPR reports on some topics is biased in a manner reflective of the progressive political beliefs of most NPR staff? Berliner did NOT say that NPR reporters are lacking in integrity “based on little more than the recognition of their identity”; he in fact never claimed that they lacked integrity, but that nonetheless, in part because of the change in the mission of NPR, their reporting is reflective at times of their progressive political beliefs. And Berliner did not level this criticism based solely on what he knows of the individual political leanings of the NPR staff. Rather, he chronicles chapter and verse of clear political bias in NPRs culture and in the content of reports. Is Ms. Maher claiming that is NOT the case? If Maher thinks his criticism here is unfair, she should have provided evidence to falsify Berliner’s claim. She doesn’t. Not once. And would it be appropriate to call it “ironic” that Maher repeatedly says that it is fair to criticize how well NPR is now fulfilling its mission while responding with palpable defensiveness?

Maher further writes that:

“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.”

Berliner never says that is the case. On the contrary, it is his claim, supported by evidence, that NPR is lacking in ideological diversity. Is Maher really claiming he is wrong?

And then there’s this incredible statement by Maher (remember — she is writing this in the context of disagreeing with Berliner’s critique):

“We fulfill our mission best when we look and sound like the country we serve.”

OMG. This statement, as part of her argument that Berliner is misguided in his criticisms, is positively bizarre. Berliner would agree with this statement 100%. In fact, this statement by Maher is at the heart of Berliner’s argument. But his point is that NPR simply does NOT “look and sound like the country [they] serve”. Maher would have to be delusional to truly believe that NPR does look and sound like the country NPR serves.

She also wrote:

“… our people represent America, our irreducibly complex nation. Given the very real challenges of covering the myriad perspectives, motivations, and interests of a nation of more than 330 million very different people, we succeed through our diversity. This is a bedrock institutional commitment, hard-won, and hard-protected.”

AGAIN — is it possible that Maher failed to understand that Berliner was calling for MORE diversity, not less? Is it possible that Maher does not understand that one does not accomplish the goal of increasing IDEOLOGICAL diversity simply by hiring more ivy league humanities majors? Basically, Maher is making Berliner’s argument for him, because she is providing no evidence, or even a reasoned argument, that NPR actually is covering the “myriad perspectives, motivations, and interests of a nation of more than 330 million.” Berliner points out that there are huge swaths of the populace whose “perspectives, motivations, and interests” are NOT represented at NPR. Maher’s response does nothing to falsify that claim.

And a comment on one final quote from her letter:

“When we are asked questions about who we serve and how that influences our editorial choices, we should be prepared to respond. It takes great strength to be comfortable with turning the eye of journalistic accountability inwards, but we are a news organization built on a foundation of robust editorial standards and practices, well-constructed to withstand the hardest of gazes.”

But obviously she was NOT prepared to respond with anything but platitudes and defensiveness.

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Disclaimer/Position Statement

My car radio is always tuned to NPR. It’s the ONLY radio station I ever listen to, and I’m a big fan of a number of their shows, including (but not limited to) Science Friday and Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me. I don’t think there is anything comparable to NPR as a source of news on the dial (if there is, I’ve never found it). When I listen to news reports on NPR I factor in my assumption that everything is being filtered through the perspectives of political progressives.

I do not think tax money should go toward supporting NPR, but that belief has nothing to do with my assessment of the political bias at NPR; I believed that even when my views and the views I heard expressed on NPR were almost totally congruent with each other.