On that issue of Media Trust,
there was a bombshell. Today,
a whistleblower in effect, on bias in the media,
one of the most, you know,
the biggest, most respected names in the news.
National Public Radio. Today, senior business editor Uri Berliner published
a story in Free Press Sub stack.
The headline. I've been at NPR for 25 years.
Here's How we Lost America's trust.
Among his claims,
NPR was stacked with like minded people who appealed to
an ever narrow progressive worldview catering to a select audience
and losing
its audience as a result.
He also says stories were ignored,
mistakes made, corrections never issued,
and that it all quote shatters trust and engenders cynicism
about the media.
And when he dug into voter registration at NPR in
Washington,
guess what he found?
87 Democrats, not a single Republican.
Does he have a point?
Yup. Do newsrooms lack diversity?
Well, depends what boxes you want to check.
Political diversity. It's a big reason I'm at News Nation.
We got all kinds here.
The disagreement is organic, and so are the common concerns.
So I want to bring in Brother Berliner because that
was a brave thing he did.
Man, your competition is your critic base
in this business. And you knew when you wrote this
you weren't going to get a chorus of amens.
You were going to get people probably digging through your
garbage
and saying it's not true.
And sure enough, colleagues came forward to do what you
had to expect they were going to do,
which is say we disagree.
Yuri's entitled to his his opinion,
but we disagree about the nature and quality of our
reporting.
What do you make of their response?
What do you make of the attention?
I'm not surprised by the response that you know came
from management and the same managers that I've been making
a lot of these points about
and and they're certainly entitled to that perspective.
I will say I've had a lot of support from
colleagues and
many of them unexpected, who say they agree with me.
Some of them say this confidentially,
but I think there's been a lot of response saying,
look, these are things that need to be addressed.
We haven't. We've been too reluctant,
too frightened, too too timid to deal with these things.
And I think that this is,
this is the right opportunity to bring it all out
in the open.
So for those who are sitting there saying I knew
it,
NPR, those laconic lefties, you know,
with that slow delivery and just feeding us all of
this,
are you saying that's the truth or are you saying
it's something that has evolved?
What do you want people to feel about NPR and
what you feel about the media in general?
I think it's evolved. You know,
I've been at NPR a long time,
25 years. You could say.
I'm a lifer and it's a place I've always loved
working.
But when I started there was a liberal orientation,
but I think we were more guided by curiosity,
open mindedness. You know, you said talked about policy.
We were kind of nerdy and really like to dig
into things and understand the complexity of things that I
think that's evolved over the years into a much narrower
kind of niche thinking. A group think that's really clustered
around
very selective progressive views that don't,
they don't allow enough air,
enough enough spaciousness to consider all kinds of perspectives.
So you use some very powerful words that people kind
of see as sacrosanct,
whether it's, you know, indicating
bias of what people call woke these days
or political correctness or cancel culture.
You know, these are often seen as instruments of the
left.
One, were you worried that I hope you saved up
your money?
You are a business editor,
so hopefully you're good with your own investing because they're
going to kick you to the curb and nobody's going
to want you,
especially as a, you know,
a white guy you know,
who's not 18. So what do you make of going
after these sacred cows?
I'm not worried. You know,
I think. I think. I think people want open
dialogue. I think people want to have honest debates.
And I, I think, you know,
you talked about there's a hunger for this.
Most people are not locked into ideologies and I think
many people are just sick of it.
And and it's one of the reasons people distrust so
much of the media,
whether it's
legacy media, whether it's conservative media,
you know what you're getting.
It's all pre digested and spit out to you,
you know what the take is going to be.
And I think it's ultimately unsatisfying and for a vast
part of this nation they don't want it.
So I think I think there's an opportunity there for
much broader perspectives and how we cover the news.
I'll
tell you what you're it is exactly
what these cats at next door sat down to talk
to me about when they want to be to come
back to cable news.
They were saying, look if you're going to carry water
for the left.
I was like, I've never been a water carrier.
I don't know why I have this reputation
but I said no, it's that's not what I do.
It's not what I want to do.
They were like good because
you know, unless you want to declare it straight up
and say I am Chris Cuomo,
conservative. I am Chris Cuomo,
Democrat. Whatever you want to call yourself,
if you're not going to do it that way we
don't want you here because that's the whole theory of
the case.
I think there is an opportunity
in it here. Now, do you believe that this is
true about all media?
Because I don't, but I I want your take on
it.
Do you believe that the media,
anywhere you go is go left or go home?
No, I don't think so at all.
I mean I think we're seeing a growing number of
independent writers,
sub stackers, people with podcasts
like the Free Press where I published this story,
where there's there's a different perspective that we could call
it heterodox politically homeless where you don't really know what
you're going to take,
you're going to get you're you're there.
There's a lot of surprise,
there's curiosity. You may not like everything you hear but
you're going to get
intelligent, open minded conversations.
I think you know I I looked into a lot
of your work today and it's really great when a
journalist
can mess with somebody's pre-existing perception
by introducing alternative perspective. You do that very well and
I'm sure now
you're going to do it pretty much exclusively and I
think it's what people do want.
So Yuri, I know it's not easy.
I don't envy, you know,
you being in the position you're in,
but you did the right thing.