Colby Hall Says NPR Suspending Uri Berliner ‘Proves His Point’ and is Not In Line With Their Mission of ‘Tolerance’
After NPR business editor Uri Berliner published a column that blew the whistle on the outlet’s increasingly liberal bias — to the near-total exclusion of all other points of view — he was suspended without pay. Mediaite’s Colby Hall appeared on NewsNation to point out that this is directly in conflict with NPR’s own mission.
In a conversation with NewsNation’s Leland Vittert on Tuesday, Hall explained that suspending Berliner for expressing a dissenting opinion flies in the face of everything they supposedly stand for, especially as a liberal-leaning or progressive platform:
I think NPR made a big mistake here. And not for obvious reasons. Look, anyone that’s paid attention to NPR over the last ten years could tell that it’s had a more doctrinaire, progressive bent. I kind of stopped listening to it as a result. And I don’t know the details of Uri Berliner’s contract and what he can say and do. But one of NPR’s sort of programing mission[s] is one of tolerance and acceptance, right? They lament the divided nature of the political world that we’re in, very often from a progressive point of view.
The opportunity here was to not punish Uri Berliner for ostensibly whistleblowing. But, you know, saying, “Okay, great, we heard that. And we, you know, we accept different points of view, and we’re going to have a conversation about this.” That would be the most NPR thing to do. And instead they were angry, and they looked to sort of, like, punish him. Which, you know, almost already proved his point.
Vittert posited that the idea of free speech, in the eyes of the left, did not apply to those on the right:
Vittert: Is it fair to say free speech applies to the left when when applied by the left, but it does not apply to the right? Be it [former President] Donald Trump, who is often turned off on CNN and MSNBC, is often not covered completely unfairly on NPR.
Hall: Well, I think you make a great point. And absolutely, that’s the case. I mean, I used to make fun of some of my super liberal friends here in brownstone Brooklyn. And, you know, they would claim to be so open-minded, but they were so open-minded that they were close-minded about it, in that they would shut off any open conversation.
And, you know, I think Uri Berliner’s point is that there’s a lack of curiosity and openness to sort of, not in social anthropology about Trump fans, but looking at the the broader picture instead of trying to advocate and tell its listeners what they should be thinking, which is precisely what their mission had been since Rodney King. And I think Uri Berliner was wise to point [that] out. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, it’s advocacy journalism. And in many ways NPR is sort of appealing to the same extreme side that we lament Fox News or MSNBC do. You know, it’s become advocacy, and the body politic is is hurt for that.
Watch above via NewsNation.
