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NPR Book Unfurls Character-Rich History Of Public Radio, But Doesn’t Spare The “Risk-Averse” Organization
Steve Oney's new book, "On Air: The Triumph and Tumult of NPR," stops well short of the Donald Trump Era but offers a character-rich media story.
Rather than proceeding chronologically, he delivers deeply reported chapters about Ira Glass, who spent 17 years at NPR before creating This American Life; the ouster of longtime Morning Edition anchor Bob Edwards; and the twin scandals in 2010-11 of the firing of commentator Juan Williams and a damaging Project Veritas exposé. One benefit to the structure is that a handful of characters, particularly Edwards, Glass and key personalities including “the troika” of lifers Susan Stamberg, Linda Wertheimer and Cokie Roberts, emerge as flesh-and-blood figures. After Uri Berliner, a longtime senior business editor at NPR, published a scathing critique in 2023 of what he called the organization’s swerve to the political left and abandonment of even-handed newsgathering, many contemporary anchors and reporters declined to speak to Oney.
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