Follow this authorErik Wemple's opinions

Berliner’s opus was published by the Free Press, an outlet dedicated to covering stories “ignored or misconstrued in the service of an ideological narrative” — and not by NPR, which requires infinitely greater substantiation for its media reporting, whether the crisis lies in its own newsroom or somewhere else.

The irony there: Berliner has edited many of the stories carrying the byline of Folkenflik, NPR’s media correspondent. He knows better.

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Here’s how Berliner supports his conclusions on NPR’s Russia work: “[Rep. Adam] Schiff, who was the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, became NPR’s guiding hand, its ever-present muse. By my count, NPR hosts interviewed Schiff 25 times about Trump and Russia. During many of those conversations, Schiff alluded to purported evidence of collusion. The Schiff talking points became the drumbeat of NPR news reports.”

Yes, Schiff is a recurring presence in the broadcasts. “Like many broadcast news organizations, NPR interviewed Rep. Schiff often during the Trump administration, as he was a principal figure in the Russian interference investigation — a story we covered with caution and perspective,” says an NPR spokesperson in a statement. “Rep. Schiff’s perspective was only one element of our coverage of the Russian interference story, in no way did he commandeer the reporting of NPR.” According to the spokesperson, NPR did 900 interviews with congressional lawmakers between January 2017 and December 2019 — including Paul Ryan, Jim Jordan, Eric Swalwell and others.

Numbers matter less than the content of those Schiff interviews, which tend toward procedural mishmash, recitation of previously reported revelations and the centrality of oversight. In this interview, Schiff says that if former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort cooperates with authorities, “we could learn a lot more.” In this one, the congressman speaks to his committee’s investigative imperatives: “I think we need to use subpoenas, and we need to stand up and say, we’re going to get the answers here.” In this one, Schiff is asked whether Trump gets “especially agitated” when the topic turns to Russia. “Well, absolutely,” he responds.

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Is this the prejudicial poison of which Berliner writes? We asked him to supply instances of in which Schiff’s talking points suffused NPR’s independent reporting. After several emails and a phone call, Berliner hasn’t responded with supporting material.

Had NPR wished to addle its lefty audience with suggestive reporting about Trump’s alleged criminality regarding Russia, it had a tool at its disposal. The so-called Steele dossier, published in early January 2017 by BuzzFeed News, contained explosive allegations presented by a former British intelligence officer. Various news outlets and commentators bathed the dossier in credibility that it didn’t deserve, as noted in an extensive thread by Drew Holden and a series in this space. Top offenders include McClatchy, which ran stories bolstering the dossier’s claims that former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen had traveled to Prague for collusive business; and dossier believer in chief Rachel Maddow of MSNBC, who cheered for the document throughout Russiagate.

NPR’s dossier work was by no means perfect. “Fresh Air” host Terry Gross, for example, occasionally failed to properly smack down dossier boosters during interviews. Yet the outlet was careful to avoid McClatchy’s “scoops” on Cohen and otherwise to cordon off its descriptions of the dossier with police tape. “NPR has never detailed the document because so much of it remains unproved,” reads a 2019 NPR story. The NPR spokesperson said in a statement: “We were not able to find any examples of NPR corroborating unconfirmed elements of the Trump dossier."

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As further evidence of his employer’s errant ways, Berliner argues that after the Mueller report found “no credible evidence of collusion, NPR’s coverage was notably sparse. Russiagate quietly faded from our programming.” It’s an immutable law of media physics, of course, that coverage peters out when a story comes to an end. Who, after all, is doing continuing coverage of Abscam........

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