NEW YORK CITY – Uri Berliner, the veteran NPR editor who was ousted after penning his bombshell essay about the left-wing takeover of the newsroom, knocked CEO Katherine Maher for breaking the “firewall” that is supposed to separate NPR’s journalism from its business side.
Speaking at the Dissident Dialogues festival on Saturday, Berliner revealed that one of the “big factors” that motivated him to go public with his concerns about NPR’s ideological groupthink was Maher’s arrival in March. He hoped the new CEO could “turn a new leaf” for the outlet.
“As I said in my essay, we’re welcoming a CEO, I’ll be rooting for her because I thought, okay, maybe this is the time to bring this up. We’ve got new leadership. Maybe this is the time we could really tackle these things,” Berliner said.
Ex-NPR editor Uri Berliner took a swipe at his former boss Katherine Maher at Dissident Dialogues 2024. (Joshua Comins/Fox News Digital)
Berliner then pivoted to the memo Maher penned to staff publicly rebuking his essay, “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.”
“Supposedly there’s what’s called a firewall in the newsroom,” Berliner said. “There’s the newsroom, the editorial team, and there are people who run the business, the CEO.”
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“And I think basically in one of her first acts, if not her first act, she crossed over that firewall to criticize me as a journalist. And that I found especially troubling given her views on the First Amendment, free expression,” he continued.
NPR did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital‘s request for comment.
Uri Berliner was forced to resign from NPR after he was hit with a five-day unpaid suspension as his bombshell essay sparked turmoil within the liberal news organization. (Joshua Comins/Fox News Digital)
Berliner, an award-winning journalist who had spent 25 years at NPR, authored an explosive essay in The Free Press detailing the far-left transformation of the organization’s newsroom which he concluded impacted its coverage in the Trump era. He was placed on a five-day unpaid suspension for violating NPR’s policy of seeking permission before appearing on another news platform. Berliner ultimately resigned.
Meanwhile, Maher herself faced her own scrutiny for her trove of social media posts featuring pro-Democrat activism and woke ideologies.
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A group of 50 NPR employees signed a letter calling on Katherine Maher and Edith Chapin to publicly rebuke “factual inaccuracies” in Uri Berliner’s essay. (Left: (Photo by Horacio Villalobos#Corbis/Getty Images), Right: (Photo credit should read SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images))
Maher spoke publicly about the controversy, saying she had not met Berliner before his exit and repeatedly insisting she had no editorial control over NPR’s news coverage.
However, when asked whether she should prioritize viewpoint diversity in the newsroom, a concern Berliner prominently raised in his essay, Maher sidestepped the question.
Joseph A. Wulfsohn is a media reporter for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to [email protected] and on Twitter: @JosephWulfsohn.
