A 25-year veteran reporter for NPR has called out his bosses at the network, saying they abandoned their journalistic standards in regard to the Hunter Biden laptop story because fair coverage might have aided then-President Donald Trump in his bid for reelection.
Writing in Bari Weiss’ The Free Press on Tuesday, business editor and reporter Uri Berliner took issue with how his superiors at NPR made the network “an openly polemical news outlet serving a niche audience.”
“The laptop was newsworthy,” Berliner wrote. “But the timeless journalistic instinct of following a hot story lead was being squelched.”
Just prior to the 2020 presidential election, news first broke of a laptop that then-candidate Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden had left at a computer repair store in Delaware. The laptop contained information about the Biden family’s alleged influence peddling, in addition to nude photos and email exchanges involving Hunter Biden.
Fifty-one former intelligence officials signed a letter in October 2020 declaring the laptop and its contents “Russian disinformation.” It has since been proven to be authentic.
According to Berliner, NPR’s managing editor for news at the time said, “We don’t want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don’t want to waste the listeners’ and readers’ time on stories that are just pure distractions.”
Berliner wrote: “The laptop was newsworthy. But the timeless journalistic instinct of following a hot story lead was being squelched. During a meeting with colleagues, I listened as one of NPR’s best and most fair-minded journalists said it was good we weren’t following the laptop story because it could help Trump.”
The veteran reporter also cited the Trump-Russia collusion allegations and the origins of the coronavirus as other instances where the news organization failed to offer diverse viewpoints.
“An open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR, and now, predictably, we don’t have an audience that reflects America,” he wrote.
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