Former president Donald Trump has demanded a complete end to the funding for leftist media outlet NPR after one of their top editors admitted they sidelined the Hunter Biden laptop story to help Joe Biden get elected.
As we highlighted on Wednesday, NPR’s top editor has openly admitted that it refused to report on the Hunter Biden laptop story because it would have helped President Donald Trump win the election.
Uri Berliner said a Free Press op-ed that the 2016 election of Trump encouraged NPR journalists to find ways to “damage or topple” his presidency.
He added that the “Trump Russia” narrative “became the catnip that drove reporting” and that “we hitched our wagon to Trump’s most visible antagonist, Representative Adam Schiff.”
Trump responded to the reports on Truth Social, writing:
“NO MORE FUNDING FOR NPR, A TOTAL SCAM! EDITOR SAID THEY HAVE NO REPUBLICANS, AND IS ONLY USED TO ‘DAMAGE TRUMP.’ THEY ARE A LIBERAL DISINFORMATION MACHINE. NOT ONE DOLLAR!!!”
Berliner claimed that Trump’s ascension to the presidency caused NPR to change course.
“Like many unfortunate things, the rise of advocacy took off with Donald Trump. As in many newsrooms, his election in 2016 was greeted at NPR with a mixture of disbelief, anger, and despair. (Just to note, I eagerly voted against Trump twice but felt we were obliged to cover him fairly.),” he wrote.
“But what began as tough, straightforward coverage of a belligerent, truth-impaired president veered toward efforts to damage or topple Trump’s presidency.”
He also admitted that NPR repeated claims about Trump allegedly concluding with Russia until the Mueller investigation proved he didn’t.
Berliner also said that the repeated interviews it did with Schiff helped push the Russian collusion narrative.
Schiff did at least 32 interviews with NPR from 2016 to 2019, specifically about Russia.
“Schiff, who was the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, became NPR’s guiding hand, its ever-present muse,” Berliner recalled.
“The Schiff talking points became the drumbeat of NPR news reports.”
Berliner concluded:
“But when the Robert Mueller report found no credible evidence of collusion, NPR’s coverage was notably sparse. Russiagate quietly faded from our programming.”
Berliner also preempted critics’ calls to defund NPR following his piece, stating that it receives “less than 1 percent of its $300 million annual budget” from the federally funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
However, NPR also receives fees from federally backed partner stations.
“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,” he wrote.
“Defunding, as a rebuke from Congress, wouldn’t change the journalism at NPR. That needs to come from within.”
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