One among NPR’s most distinguished hosts requested the corporate’s prime editor on Thursday to reveal the identification of an nameless funder who helps pay for a brand new layer of enhancing a number of weeks after the radio community confronted a distinguished accusation of getting a liberal bias in its protection.
Michel Martin, a number of NPR’s “Morning Version,” pressed Edith Chapin, NPR’s chief content material officer, to determine the supply of the funding in an editorial assembly on the community’s Washington headquarters, in keeping with 4 folks with data of the change.
Ms. Chapin declined to elaborate on the supply of the cash however mentioned that it wouldn’t be a shock to NPR’s editorial workers. Ms. Martin replied she wouldn’t settle for that reply from a supply, the folks mentioned.
The assembly was held to debate the brand new layer of enhancing, known as the Backstop, that was introduced to the total workers on Wednesday. The group, to be made up of six senior editors, will assessment all of NPR’s journalism earlier than it’s launched.
In current weeks, NPR has been coping with the fallout from an essay printed in The Free Press by Uri Berliner, then a senior editor at NPR, who argued that the community had allowed progressive politics to skew its journalism. A lot of the workers has pushed again in opposition to his accusations, calling them factually inaccurate, however conservative critics have latched onto his argument and Republican members of Congress have requested NPR’s chief government to testify on accusations of bias.
The announcement of the brand new initiative angered many NPR staff, who see the Backstop as an pointless bottleneck that can lavatory down the nonprofit’s reporting with a redundant layer of enhancing. Others have expressed concern that it might be considered as a defensive response to Mr. Berliner’s essay — a premise that Ms. Chapin has rejected in conversations with staff.
NPR declined to remark past Ms. Chapin’s observe to staff. The observe known as the brand new adjustments — together with periodic workers evaluations of NPR’s ethics handbook — to make sure “that every one our work meets the very best requirements.” The initiative will even embrace an growth of NPR’s requirements and practices group, off-the-record editorial briefings with newsmakers and a content material evaluation of NPR’s journalism.
In a smaller workers assembly earlier within the week, Ms. Chapin mentioned that the initiative was supported by Katherine Maher, the corporate’s chief government, NPR’s board of administrators and exterior funders, in keeping with an individual acquainted with the change. She didn’t specify the supply or quantity of exterior financing, including that she couldn’t present extra specifics till the funding settlement was finalized.
When Ms. Chapin was requested within the assembly about how she would separate the choice so as to add a brand new enhancing layer from Mr. Berliner’s critique, she mentioned that it was about journalism and that she felt fortunate to get the extra sources.
“We must view that as a very good factor,” Ms. Chapin mentioned. “We’re not taking part in protection and having issues imposed upon us that make zero sense and are put upon us by individuals who know lower than zero about journalism.”
One other level of rivalry amongst NPR staff is the transfer so as to add a panel of editors lower than a yr after the corporate laid off roughly 10 p.c of its workers.
However some NPR staff defended the choice to rent the editors. Eric Marrapodi, NPR’s vice chairman for information programming, mentioned in the course of the assembly that the brand new group of editors can be useful for accuracy for the entire division, although he would have put the brand new sources to make use of otherwise if he was spending them on his personal groups solely.
“If it have been as much as simply me on the exhibits and the 160 individuals who work for me, I might have spent this cash in a different way, however that is about your entire content material division and what’s greatest for all of us,” Mr. Marrapodi mentioned.
Different information organizations have comparable processes. CNN has a system known as the Triad, a three-pronged inner assessment that features shut authorized scrutiny.
Ms. Chapin mentioned in the course of the assembly that she would by no means enable a donor to dictate editorial phrases. She has known as the group a “new story sign-off course of” that creates “a proper system to make sure that all of NPR’s content material will get a ultimate editorial assessment.” Based on paperwork reviewed by The New York Occasions, the group will report back to her.
