I'm happy to inform you that NPR has told NPR that NPR is doing just fine. That includes a doubling down on the DEI regiment that has led the network to reduced viewership and a cratering of its credibility.

NPR's chief news executive, Edith Chapin, wrote in a memo to staff Tuesday afternoon that she and the news leadership team strongly reject Berliner's assessment. 

"We're proud to stand behind the exceptional work that our desks and shows do to cover a wide range of challenging stories," she wrote. "We believe that inclusion — among our staff, with our sourcing, and in our overall coverage — is critical to telling the nuanced stories of this country and our world."

Without realizing it, Chapin has just admitted the primary problem with forcing "inclusion" by way of racially-based diversity quotas. Doing so does not lead to an increased range of viewpoints. Instead, because DEI is exclusively a left-wing pursuit, it leads to an overabundance of the same viewpoints in the newsroom. Far from being "critical to telling the nuanced stories of this country and our world," it has led to NPR having no nuance in its reporting, instead parroting whatever its far-left staffers agree on.

One of Berliner's colleagues provided a heated response on the matter. 

"As a person of color who has often worked in newsrooms with little to no people who look like me, the efforts NPR has made to diversify its workforce and its sources are unique and appropriate given the news industry's long-standing lack of diversity," Alfonso says. "These efforts should be celebrated and not denigrated as Uri has done."

Again, the problem is demonstrated by the misplaced priorities being displayed. The goal of NPR's newsroom shouldn't be for this person to walk in and see people "who look like me." It should be to report the news honestly and fairly, without the bias that left-wing groupthink creates. 

As Berliner noted, his critique was about the lack of viewpoint diversity, not about the number of minorities on staff. It would be conceivable to increase the number of black reporters in the newsroom, for example, without creating a left-wing echo chamber. That would require hiring black reporters who are not died-in-the-wool Democrats, though, and NPR does not have a single Republican on its editorial staff.