00:02:26.020In recent years, however, that has changed.
00:02:28.600Today, those who listen to NPR or read its coverage online find something different,
00:02:33.000the distilled worldview of a very small segment of the U.S. population.
00:02:37.000If you're conservative, you will read this and say, duh, it's always been this way.
00:02:41.160but it hasn't. So Berliner paints 2011 as this rosy golden age of trust at NPR,
00:02:48.520you know, before things like DEI and wokeness ruined everything. He writes,
00:02:53.360an open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR. And now, predictably, we don't have an
00:02:59.140audience that reflects America. So Berliner argues that Trump really changed a lot of NPR's culture
00:03:06.080and trust and standards. He uses things like NPR not really reporting on the Hunter Biden
00:03:11.860laptop story and not reporting more on the COVID lab leak theory. He uses these as examples
00:03:17.960that show that since the rise of Trump, NPR is basically like in the bag for the Democratic
00:03:23.940Party. He also talks about how in 2020, when many of us were having like a national conversation
00:03:29.120about race, NPR's former CEO, John Lansing, published a piece that prompted staffers to
00:03:34.720really do some self-analysis in their own roles in things like systemic racial issues.
00:03:40.120So apparently NPR's CEO writing a piece suggesting that NPR staff, you know, think critically
00:03:45.940about their own biases and the way they might impact their reporting, rather than that being
00:03:50.040just like thoughtful guidance for anyone whose job it is to help people understand the world0.73
00:03:54.640around them, Berliner acts like this was a terrible sign of wokeness run amok.
00:04:00.460Quote, and we were told that NPR itself was part of the problem.
00:04:04.720In confessional language, the CEO said that leaders of public media, starting with me, must be aware of how we ourselves have benefited from white privilege in our careers.
00:04:13.360We must understand the unconscious bias we bring to our work and interactions, and we must commit ourselves, body and soul, to profound changes in ourselves and our institutions.
00:04:22.400He declared that diversity on our staff and in our audience was the overriding mission, the, quote, North Star of the organization.
00:04:30.040Phrases like, that's part of the North Star, became part of meetings and more casual conversation.
00:04:35.820Now, y'all do not really believe that the former CEO of NPR said that diversity was now the most important mission of NPR.
00:04:46.520More important than any other part of NPR. Y'all don't actually believe that, do you?
00:04:50.940You obviously don't because he didn't say it. I actually went back and read the piece that Berliner is referring to.
00:04:56.580It never even suggests anything of the sort. It is the most basic, toothless, like, we care about diversity, yay diversity message that you can imagine. But Berliner says that the CEO basically said that diversity now matters more than our journalism, which he just flat out never said. That just, like, doesn't appear in that piece.
00:05:15.360Berliner goes on to complain about what are frankly pretty fairly humdrum inclusion efforts
00:05:34.340That is how standard these practices are.
00:05:36.620Even the shoestring startup podcast that I work for do and always have done this.
00:05:43.660it is a very common thing. Berliner, in his piece, he makes it sound like this is like the identity
00:05:49.600police grilling everybody about their race and ethnicity and identity, rather than just having
00:05:54.040it be something that makes sure that your guests aren't like, oops, all white men talking about
00:05:58.220different issues, right? So NPR also got some funding to do work highlighting specific
00:06:03.600underrepresented groups through things like affinity groups for staff, like Jewish NPR staffers
00:06:09.120or women, gender expansive, and transgender people in technology throughout public media,
00:06:13.980right? And what Berliner does in his piece is basically just assume that all of this is like
00:06:19.280progressivism. All of this is like synonymous with the Democratic Party. And this is his big
00:06:23.980gripe. Quote, and this, I believe, is the most damaging development at NPR, the absence of
00:06:30.200viewpoint diversity. He says that he doesn't think there are enough Republicans working at NPR.
00:06:34.880And apparently he tried to actually get a meeting with NPR's former CEO to discuss all of this, but that meeting never happened, which is why he is breaking NPR's rules and publishing this piece in free press.
00:06:48.620So one quick note that I feel like I have to add for context is that he published this piece in free press.
00:06:54.900I don't really enjoy talking about this particular subset of like soft media grifter types because I think it quickly gets into like a who's who of who's the worst.
00:07:04.880And these people are all so boring that I just, like, cannot stand to think about them.
00:07:09.180But basically, all you need to know about Free Press is that it is a substack media
00:07:21.380And, you know, everybody who is writing is, like, just asking questions.
00:07:25.720We honestly could do an entire episode on Bari Weiss, but basically, you know the type.
00:07:31.000These are not people that I would say are operating in good faith.
00:07:34.280And their entire thing is branding themselves as these brave, free speech truth tellers who are the only ones who think for themselves and are being punished for it.
00:07:43.940And they continue to say that as they get these huge platforms and lots of money to demonstrate just how unlistened to they are.
00:07:50.820Again, I'm being glib, but you know the type.
00:07:53.140So it is really hard for me to see Berliner publishing this piece in free press as anything other than this really calculated move to turn himself into a martyr persona who is canceled for telling the truth about woke.
00:08:08.700Like, be real. Had you ever heard of the name Uri Berliner before he published this piece and everybody started talking about it?
00:08:17.360Exactly. So the exact right wing conservative voices in media that you would expect are completely lapping this piece up.
00:08:24.600And remember, he is not sharing this piece in a vacuum.
00:08:28.180It is being used as yet another data point in the ongoing conversation about defunding NPR and sowing distrust in our public institutions in general.
00:08:37.400Like Senator Ted Cruz is renewing calls to defund NPR.
00:08:41.940And again, I think a reason why he published this piece was to tap into that particular
00:10:04.800get bell pure fiber internet with crave netflix and disney plus from 94 a month price guaranteed
00:10:15.600for two years on internet with a two-year term and auto pay credit visit bell.ca for details
00:10:20.640and to check availability bell connection is everything run a business and not thinking
00:10:26.040about podcasting think again more americans listen to podcasts than ad supported streaming
00:10:30.940music from spotify and pandora and as the number one podcaster iheart's twice as large as the next
00:10:36.120two combined so whatever your customers listen to they'll hear your message plus only iheart
00:10:40.940can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio think podcasting can help your
00:10:45.400business think iheart streaming radio and podcasting call 844-844-iheart to get started
00:10:52.100that's 844-844-iheart if your bookshelf and your for you page are equally important to your
00:10:58.040personality welcome home this is prose society the weekly podcast that's part book club part
00:11:05.660group chat for thought daughters pop culture obsessives and anyone who thinks pride and
00:11:09.820prejudice and love island deserve the same level of discourse i'm eli rallo and every week we're
00:11:15.100connecting the dots between books the internet and the conversations everyone can't stop having
00:11:20.000i'm gonna have to look up this story i'm obsessed so obsessed from best-selling authors and your
00:11:25.480favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments nothing is off the table it's
00:11:30.420like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters and that is a trojan horse
00:11:37.420whether you're looking for literary deep dives smart pop culture conversations or a community
00:11:42.580of readers who love to think a little too much you're in the right place listen to pro society
00:11:48.080on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts see you between the pages
00:11:55.480and we're back so after his piece came out 50 npr staffers wrote an open letter to npr's new ceo
00:12:08.700katherine marr who we'll talk about more in a moment demanding that she issue a public rebuke
00:12:13.580of the quote factual inaccuracies and elisions in his piece so right here is where i was going
00:12:19.360to do an entire segment kind of responding to and pointing out the various factual inaccuracies
00:12:25.960in his piece, but it just kind of doesn't even seem worth it. Like, Berlin are suggesting that
00:12:32.680it is DEI efforts in media that have run amok, and that is the reason why media and institutional
00:12:39.940trust is suffering. It's just ridiculous. And at some level, it gets really exhausting and0.86
00:12:45.680repetitive to keep pushing back against this stuff. When I was putting together this segment,
00:12:50.180I was like, yeah, this is just me repeating the same things I've said already about this kind of
00:12:54.060stuff. It almost doesn't seem worth it to keep pushing back against this stuff. You know, it's
00:12:57.840like, why are planes falling out of the sky? Black people. Why can't my kid get into Harvard?1.00
00:13:03.660Black people. Why don't people trust journalism? Black people. So after a while, it does get a1.00
00:13:09.140little tiring. So I'm not going to include the bit where I really pushed back on his claims,
00:13:14.260But I'll just cut to the chase and tell you what I actually think.
00:13:17.500You know that meme tweet where it's a bird saying,
00:13:20.780I feel uncomfortable when we are not about me.
00:13:23.260I think that's kind of what's going on here.
00:13:25.160I think that what Berliner is actually saying, if you read between the lines,
00:13:28.720is I liked it better when journalism was about white men like me.
00:13:33.080I think he's somebody who's been in this business a long time.
00:13:35.580He's been in this business for 25 years.
00:13:37.440I think in that time, he has seen journalism go from mostly white to fairly white.0.52
00:13:42.660And I don't think he likes it. I think that what he's actually saying, reading between the lines, is we need to go back to the times when this whole thing was about white men like me. I don't want to have to compete with the talents and interests and audience of people who are not white men. And that is the problem.
00:13:58.260I honestly, like, don't think it is really that deep. And I'm kind of surprised to see so many media outlets responding as if he, like, did raise some very deep existential issues and questions beyond, like, why is everything no longer exclusively about me?
00:14:14.420Like the fact that as a business editor, he clearly felt some kind of a way that the big boss boss at NPR, like the CEO, the main guy, did not feel the need to meet with him to discuss the gripes that he was trying to get on this guy's calendar and this guy was like, nah, I'm good.
00:14:31.440Like, what kind of person feels entitled that they can just meet with the CEO to discuss whatever their gripe is as opposed to meeting with their direct manager or whatever?
00:14:39.460On top of Berliner probably not liking the fact that the CEO did not feel the need to make time for his complaints, when that CEO left, NPR then goes and hires a young woman to replace him.
00:14:51.920And I bet Berliner didn't like that and saw a young woman getting hired as yet another sign of wokeness run amok at NPR.0.51
00:23:33.760So probably what I found to be the most interesting part in her response
00:23:37.500is when she talks about NPR's sometimes clunky handling of race. She says, if anything,
00:23:43.260that would be the real symptom of like wokeness run them up. In one anecdote,
00:23:47.280she talks about how there was resistance to covering the violent ms-13 gang after it had
00:23:52.380become a major talking point in trump's anti-immigrant rhetoric but this was while the
00:23:57.100gang was like murdering people in dc pretty close to npr's headquarters just miles from where many
00:24:03.340of the staffers actually lived she writes i think a lot of critics would consider that wokeness
00:24:08.380pussyfooting around an issue because it might offend people of color i saw it as a low-key
00:24:13.180racial bias because MS-13's victims were mostly poor Central American immigrants, the kind of
00:24:18.780people we didn't think our affluent white listenership would pay attention to. So if you
00:24:23.000want to talk about times where politics or, quote, wokeness was actually dictating coverage in a
00:24:28.940concerning way, this sounds like it would be like a fruitful conversation to have, right? But that
00:24:33.420is very different from what Berliner is doing and calling NPR out for, which is just like too much
00:24:38.640diversity. It is such a lazy, easy accusation that gets us away from the issues that might
00:24:44.680actually be meaty or substantive. Another example along those lines is when we were having a
00:24:50.040national conversation about police killings, there was a sort of side question about like,
00:24:54.500oh, well, police also kill white people under shady circumstances too. What about that?
00:25:00.000And Alicia writes that it seemed like nobody at NPR really wanted to talk about that. She talks
00:25:04.540about how the team at the race-focused podcast Codeswift, which is one of my favorite podcasts,
00:25:09.420was the only team within NPR to cover a police killing of an unarmed white teenager named
00:25:14.360Zachary Hammond. She suspects the reason why none of the other units within NPR covered it
00:25:19.140is kind of political in a sense, because it would have complicated this dynamic of getting to smugly
00:25:24.740think of themselves as being on the correct side of the issue. Her entire piece is worth reading,
00:25:30.360but ultimately she gets at this point that I want to highlight. She writes,
00:25:34.520And that's what the core editorial problem at NPR is, and frankly has long been, an abundance
00:25:39.600of caution that often crossed the border to cowardice.
00:25:43.120NPR culture encouraged an editorial fixation on finding the exact middle point of the elite
00:25:48.560political and social thought, planting a flag there and calling it objectivity.
00:25:52.720That would more than explain the lack of follow-up on Hunter Biden's laptop and the lab leak
00:25:57.520theory, going full white guilt after George Floyd's murder and shifting to indignant
00:26:02.320white impatience with racial justice now. And I think anybody who reads mainstream reporting or
00:26:09.000media knows exactly what she is referring to, right? This kind of safe, middle-of-the-road
00:26:14.900reporting that is going out of its way to not give any whiff of bias to the point that it's not
00:26:20.480actually useful in terms of informing an audience anymore. I remember when I was working in news
00:26:26.340media, we had to walk back calling things that were objectively, obviously racist, racist. Like
00:26:33.200you couldn't just call something racist. We had to bend over backward to use these weird phrases
00:26:39.140that like evoked race, but were not the word racist. And I remember there was a story where
00:26:44.980it was some frat and there was a video of these members of the frat on a bus where they were
00:26:50.620singing this chant about how there would never be an N word in their frat. And so we were writing
00:26:55.700up that story. And I called it a racist chant. And my editor was like, no, no, we can't say it's
00:27:01.960racist. And we had to walk it back to, I think the phrase that we used was like, racially tinged,
00:27:07.520which like, what does that mean? If somebody is on camera singing about how there'll never be an
00:27:11.780N word in their fret, I feel comfortable calling that objectively racist. But we had to be like,
00:27:16.740ooh, it's like racially infused. Like we're not talking about chili oil here. We're talking about
00:27:21.920race. So Berliner's free press piece, calling out NPR for being too woke, is one piece of it.
00:27:28.940But now enter our old friend, enemy of the show, Chris Rufo of the Manhattan Institute,
00:27:35.820who openly manufactures disingenuous right-wing panics using the New York Times. He's the man
00:27:42.820that brought us the critical race theory panic, the DEI panic, the Claudine Gay is a plagiarist0.60
00:27:47.440panic. And I guess now it's the CEO of NPR is bad panic. And of course, guess who is helping him do
00:27:54.700this? The New York Times. So Catherine Maher was named CEO of NPR recently. She does not have a
00:28:02.280journalism background. She was most recently the head of Wikimedia Foundation. So after Berliner's
00:28:07.680piece, old tweets of hers were resurfaced by Chris Rufo. Now, keep in mind, these tweets were things
00:28:15.600that she tweeted before she ever worked at NPR. She wasn't a journalist when she tweeted them.
00:28:20.100It's things like, quote, Donald Trump is a racist, which she tweeted in 2018.
00:28:25.820She was photographed wearing a Biden hat in 2020. And she tweeted about this dream that she had
00:28:31.040where she went on a road trip with Vice President Kamala Harris, and they both got nuts together as
00:28:35.500a snack. Honestly, that is really it. Like, pretty shocking stuff, I know. So now people
00:28:41.780are coming out of the woodwork, close reading every public talk, every panel that she's ever
00:28:47.640given, even in the years before her tenure at NPR, to paint her in a bad light. And this is such a
00:28:54.100familiar strategy here, to make Catherine Marr look foolish and embarrassing, and to try to make1.00
00:29:00.000any kind of association with her look like it's toxic, because she is that foolish and that1.00
00:29:05.300embarrassing. They want people to be embarrassed to stick up for her, to make sure that none of0.99
00:29:09.920her allies publicly come to her defense. They want NPR's leadership and board to think that
00:29:14.880she is somebody who is too risky to be associated with. Just like Claudine Gay and CRT, Rufo is
00:29:21.340very explicit that the point here is to make her toxic and synonymous with negativity, even though
00:29:26.820she didn't do anything wrong. And the articles are already pouring in, helping Rufo do exactly that.
00:29:32.020Here's one headline. NPR's new CEO, Catherine Marr, haunted by woke, anti-Trump tweets as veteran editor, claims bias.
00:29:42.960The New York Post even published a piece today with the headline, NPR's new CEO, who was called out by whistleblower over pervasive left-wing biased, recently purchased a $2.7 million NYC townhouse.
00:29:56.460The piece talks about how she bought a three-bedroom townhouse that is almost 2,000 square feet, which, like, yes, okay, as someone who lives in a one-bedroom shithole, that sounds like a palace, but, like, how is it news that the CEO of NPR, who was formerly the CEO of Wikimedia Foundation, who was married to somebody who was formerly a lawyer at Lyft, how is it news that she has a nice house?0.88
00:30:21.380Like, it's just so ridiculous and disingenuous.
00:30:23.600In response to all this, an NPR spokesperson said that Marr was, quote, not working in journalism at the time and was exercising her First Amendment right to express herself like any other American citizen.
00:30:35.660NPR also said that she has upheld the network's code of ethics since she was appointed, saying, since stepping into the role, she has upheld and is fully committed to NPR's code of ethics and the independence of NPR's newsroom.
00:30:47.100The CEO is not involved in editorial decisions.
00:30:50.360So listen to how the New York Times writes about how Marr's old tweets came to be in the news.
00:30:57.180Quote, Christopher Rufo, a fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute,
00:31:01.420called attention to many of Ms. Marr's posts on X and shared a response from Tesla's CEO,
00:31:06.820Elon Musk, who had responded to one of Ms. Marr's posts that Mr. Rufo highlighted saying,0.99
00:31:11.800This person is a crazy racist. If NPR wants to truly be national public radio,0.85
00:31:17.540It can't pander to the furthest left element in the United States, Rufo said in an interview.
00:31:22.900To do so, NPR should part ways with Catherine Marr.
00:31:26.480And now he has gone from, oh, she should be fired, to calling on NPR to be defunded and for the staff to have mass layoffs.
00:31:35.980So the NPR piece makes it sound like Christopher Rufo was just this random person that we should care what he thinks.
00:31:44.800Don't you think it might be useful for readers to know who this guy is?
00:31:49.000Like, why should this random guy from the Manhattan Institute, why should anybody care
00:31:52.580what he thinks about this lady's old tweets?
00:31:54.860Or maybe it'd be great context for readers to have that the New York Times has actually
00:31:58.580mentioned Christopher Rufo quite a few times during their breathless recent coverage of
00:32:02.880Claudine Gay's tenure at Harvard University, which led to their coverage.
00:32:06.860Or the fact that Christopher Rufo specifically said that it would be important for him to
00:32:11.640get pickup on that story from the New York Times specifically to launder the fact that it was an
00:32:17.060attack coming from the right wing to make it seem like a more left wing or moderate attack. Again,
00:32:22.220I don't know this because I'm some media savvy person. I know this because I can read and
00:32:27.780Christopher Ruffo says it over and over and over again in plain unambiguous terms. And the New
00:32:33.260York Times just pretends that that is not the case. When Ruffo is not even pretending. Just
00:32:38.880yesterday, he tweeted out the New York Times story about the NPR CEO, Catherine Marr, saying,
00:32:44.180the New York Times is directly quoting the NPR tweets I dug up over the last 24 hours.
00:32:49.400We are driving the narrative. If you dream about sampling nuts with Kamala Harris,
00:32:53.960we will make sure America hears about it. So he's not even pretending that he's not trying
00:32:59.020to drive this narrative. And my question is, why is the New York Times allowing this? Why
00:33:03.360has the New York Times decided that this one person gets to dictate their editorial coverage?
00:33:07.660And Neil Dash put it very well on threads. He wrote,
00:33:10.900The New York Times explicitly lets its editorial decisions be made by Chris Rufo, even as he admits it's an intentional bad faith campaign.
00:33:18.820The story here is nothing to do with NPR. It's the Times not caring that it's getting gamed with what it chooses to emphasize.
00:33:26.100An exercise. Find media executive faces criticism over supporting fascist causes in their coverage.
00:33:32.140You won't because they think it's news when Rufo says it, not when you or I do.
00:33:36.880Now, I absolutely agree with him for the most part.
00:38:32.240If you want to help us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts.
00:38:35.580For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, check out the iHeartRadio app,
00:38:38.760Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:38:44.580I survived nine months in captivity and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive
00:38:53.620what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart and these are the Survivor Files.
00:38:59.220Every week I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable, abducted, stalked, controlled,
00:39:05.040and nearly silenced. These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:39:10.240Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:39:18.600If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:39:24.380Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:39:32.680Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture
00:39:36.160with your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions.