NPR is usually seen as boring and unabashedly nerdy, so it may come as a surprise that even
an outfit as vanilla as NPR can still frequently find themselves embroiled in scandal.
Here are some of the biggest scandals to impact NPR.
World of Opera consisted of opera performances from all over the world interspersed, with
cultural and historical insights into the composers and performers.
With episode titles like "A Baroque Variety Hour", the program was inoffensive at best.
Airing on 60-odd stations around the country, World of Opera was as popular and as innocuous
as they come, so it surprised many when NPR stopped broadcasting the program in 2011.
When it was reported that the show's host, Lisa Simeone, had been acting as a spokesperson
for a group associated with the then-ongoing Occupy Wall Street protests, NPR decided to
cut ties with World of Opera.
Many listeners accused NPR leadership of caving in to people who claimed the station was taking
a progressive stance.
NPR CEO Joyce Slocum noted that NPR had ceased producing the show over a year prior and that
NPR hosts represent the organization and have standards to uphold.
Simeone responded to NPR correspondent David Folkenflik:
"What is NPR afraid I'll do, insert a seditious comment into a synopsis of Madame Butterfly?"
World of Opera continued to be distributed by WDAV, the new producer of the show, until
its 2016 cancellation.
A conservative non-profit journalism enterprise called Project Veritas released a secret recording
in 2011 of NPR's top fundraising executive Ron Schiller.
He thought he was having a lunch meeting with two representatives of the "Muslim Education
Action Center," which had offered NPR a donation of $5 million.
They were actually working with Project Veritas, and they covertly filmed him calling the then-prominent
Tea Party movement,
"Not just Islamaphobic but really xenophobic...They're seriously racist, racist people."
Tea Partiers and the greater conservative political sphere erupted in fury, but NPR
Chairman Dave Edwards refuted the suggestion of any liberal bias, telling USA Today,
"We take very seriously, and we reject, the comments that were made in that video."
Ron Schiller and NPR CEO Vivian Schiller both resigned immediately - and before you ask,
the answer is no, the two are not related or married.
The following week, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted to end federal
funding of NPR, but it was rescued by the Democrat-controlled Senate.
Originally started as a one-time two-hour special the week of September 11, 2001, On
Point is one of NPR's longer-running and popular call-in shows.
For most of that time, one man was at the helm: Tom Ashbrook.
Ashbrook was well-respected by his peers and known as a fierce and opinionated host, and
hailed as an excellent interviewer.
When he was suspended in December 2017 and investigated by his employer, WBUR in Boston,
for bullying as well as sexual misconduct, it shocked many.
This was at the heyday of the #MeToo movement, and Ashbrook's friends penned an open letter
in his defense signed by some prominent names in the press, arts, and academia.
Ultimately, WBUR fired Ashbrook for creating an abusive work environment.
"I don't deny that people were hurt here, that I wasn't…I wasn't feeling how my behavior
was landing."
Reporting on his dismissal, WBUR itself stated,
"Devoted listeners called and emailed the station urging managers to rethink the decision
and promising to go elsewhere if they didn't."
On Point airs in over 290 stations around the country today, and the podcast is downloaded
over two million times a month.
A Prairie Home Companion was one of the longest-running radio variety shows in American history.
At its height, over four million people every week tuned in to almost 700 public radio stations
around the country to enjoy a live comedy and music show, chaperoned by the mellifluous
voice and terrible dad jokes of Garrison Keillor.
The most successful Minnesota Public Radio star ever, Keillor also wrote several successful
books and even starred in a celebrity-stuffed Hollywood movie adaptation of Prairie.
His 2016 retirement episode was recorded live before 18,000 people and included a telephone
call from President Barack Obama who told Keillor -
"A Prairie Home Companion made me feel better and more human."
A year later, MPR announced they were cutting all remaining ties to Keillor amid an investigation
into his workplace behavior.
Allegations from a woman who worked on Companion claiming that Keillor had been engaged in
sexual misconduct going back over a decade surfaced.
The woman's attorney sent a letter to Minnesota Public Radio's CEO accusing Keillor of unwanted
sexual touching and numerous other inappropriate incidents.
Not only was Keillor fired, but A Prairie Home Companion was renamed.
In addition, rebroadcasts of old episodes ended, and distribution of Keillor's daily
program The Writer's Almanac was dropped.
Keillor restarted The Writer's Almanac on his personal website, which also hosts old
episodes of A Prairie Home Companion.
Some news stories consist of tricky subject matter - the reporting must remain as fair
and balanced as possible while presenting the facts.
Making the story a debatable topic with seemingly no easy answer just adds to the hoops that
must be jumped through to come off as unbiased and fair.
Put simply, covering Israel and Palestine can be an extremely delicate issue for any
news outlet.
NPR has been accused of biased coverage of Israel often, from both sides of the political
spectrum.
In fact, The Baltimore Sun reported in 2003 that NPR's then-CEO attended the annual meeting
of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs in order to stand up against accusations of the
network's coverage.
The progressive media watchdog group FAIR has reported frequently over the years that
NPR's reporting of Israel and Palestine tends to take a default pro-Israel stance.
For its part, in 2014, NPR conducted a self-assessment over 11 years of its coverage on Israel and
Palestine.
They concluded that their coverage lacked completeness, but defended its factual accuracy
and did not find there to be any systematic bias.
A veteran and Emmy award-winning journalist with over two decades experience at The Washington
Post, Juan Williams had been at NPR for ten years when they let him go for comments he
made on a Fox News program.
Williams was a frequent guest on Fox, and in a late 2010 segment, he told host Bill
O'Reilly that
"When I get on the plane...if I see people who are in Muslim garb...I get worried.
I get nervous."
Backlash from Muslim groups, politicians, and fellow media personalities was swift,
and NPR fired him.
In a statement, NPR said that Williams' remarks were -
"Inconsistent with our editorial standards and practices, and undermined his credibility
as a news analyst with NPR."
This wasn't the first time Williams had violated NPR's code of ethics, said NPR CEO Vivian
Schiller in an internal memo reported by Politico, and he'd been, quote -
"repeatedly asked to respect NPR's standards and to avoid expressing strong personal opinions
on controversial subjects in public settings, as that is inconsistent with his role."
Backlash was equally swift against Williams' firing.
Since he was one of the few prominent minority males at NPR, many were concerned with the
optics of it.
NPR's own Alicia Shepard said
"I fear some will look for racial motivations in NPR's decision to fire Williams."
Williams landed on his feet, though.
CBS reported that Fox News signed him to a $2 million multiyear deal.
NPR is public radio and depends on the public to survive.
You can't go too long without hearing the soundbite informing you that the program you
just listened to is made possible with the support of its listeners.
But it turns out that much more of NPR's funding comes from corporations than from listeners
or even from taxpayers.
In 2015, the watchdog group FAIR, conducted a study and concluded that NPR is lopsidedly
funded and directed by corporate interests.
In an article titled "National Plutocrat Radio," FAIR described how NPR's affiliates' boards
are filled with wealthy individuals with corporate ties.
After studying the composition of the governing boards of the top eight NPR stations, FAIR
said that three out of four NPR trustees are corporate executives.
The New York Times pointed out that the majority of NPR funding is in the form of corporate
sponsorship and affiliate fees and not, as is their image, from individual listener contributions.
This is, in large part, strategic.
NPR has made a concerted effort to boost revenues by asking much more from wealthy donors.
The Times reported in 2020 that around one third of NPR revenue comes from corporate
sponsors, although that number is falling.
Michael Oreskes was an old-school journalist.
He got his start in the New York Daily News, before embarking on a 20-year stint with The
New York Times and eventually settling down at NPR in 2015 as Vice President of News and
Editorial Director.
He didn't have a long tenure there.
The allegations against Oreskes stretched far before his time with NPR, all the way
back to the 1990s.
His case prompted a rebellion among NPR staff, reported The Washington Post, in that NPR
executives delayed addressing multiple sexual abuse accusations against Oreskes for nearly
two years.
"This story is now about NPR senior management, what they did or didn't know about these claims
against Oreskes."
According to the Associated Press, Oreskes had already been chastised by NPR for a 2015
incident in which he made a female staffer uncomfortable.
Oreskes was asked to resign.
The New York Times reported that he wrote a farewell letter to NPR staff in which he
apologized, saying -
"I am deeply sorry to the people I hurt.
My behavior was wrong and inexcusable, and I accept full responsibility."
Oreskes received an unusually stiff dismissal, fired without severance or separation benefit,
and WaPo reported that he also reimbursed NPR for expenses after individual meetings
he had with his accusers.
NPR has had a demographic problem for a while.
Their audience skews harshly upward in age, and that trend has been getting more pronounced.
But other demographic problems have been plaguing the organization recently.
NPR's audience is big, around 132 million monthly listeners across platforms they say,
but it's also pretty white.
After the cancellation of one of NPR's few minority-run and aimed programs due to sagging
ratings, NPR's ombudsman, Edward Schumacher-Matos, lamented the lack of diversity at the organization.
He pointed out NPR's audience and staff numbers were not in line with the national averages.
Only ten percent of NPR's staff is black, and it's half that in their audience.
In addition, five percent accounts for the number of Latinos on-staff and only six for
the audience.
NPR's education blogger added inadvertent context when she tweeted out on NPR's official
Education Team account:
"I reach out to diverse sources on deadline.
Only the white guys get back to me."
Schumacher-Matos went on to say that,
"NPR appeals mostly to Americans with a college degree, regardless of race or ethnicity."
If you take this into account, black and Latino listeners are in proportion with broader social
numbers, while Asian listeners are over-represented in the audience.
NPR has made diversity a core mission over the last few years, and staff diversity has
increased, from 77-percent white in 2014 to 71 today.
In the late 2000s, the War on Terror was in full swing.
America was taking prisoner detainees from all over the world and sending them to Guantanamo
Bay where they used methods like waterboarding for information.
But was waterboarding torture?
"This is not controlled drowning, it is drowning in the end."
Glenn Greenwald, an attorney-turned-journalist, accused NPR of banning the word 'torture'
from its descriptions of America's interrogation practices, calling out NPR and ombudsman Alicia
Shepard for avoiding to call the horrific interrogation tactics torture.
NPR wasn't singled out, Greenwald aimed plenty of venom at The New York Times and many other
outlets, accusing them of complicity.
Shepard disputed the characterization entirely:
"NPR did not ban the word 'torture.'
Rather, we gave our journalists guidance about how to avoid loaded language about interrogation
techniques, realizing that no matter what words are chosen, we risk the appearance of
taking one side or another."
In 2014, President Obama candidly admitted that the tactics were indeed torture and The
New York Times rescinded its own policy on using the word torture, prompting NPR to clarify
its own position on the matter:
"Our guidance on use of the word 'torture' comes down to the issue of whether it 'makes
sense in the context of the piece.'"
Check out one of our newest videos right here!
Plus, even more Grunge videos about your favorite news outlets are coming soon.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so you don't miss a single one.