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It seems that National Public Radio won’t have Uri Berliner to kick around anymore. After having apparently been handed a five day unpaid suspension from his job as editor at the business desk, Berliner issued a statement on Twitter this morning offering his resignation from NPR after 25 years of service.

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This honestly felt inevitable from the moment that Berliner first published his takedown of NPR in the Free Press on April 9th, either NPR executives would find an excuse to fire him, make his professional life so miserable that he’d be forced resign, or he’d preemptively resign to avoid the previous two options. Given his choices, going with option three seems like the smart move.

The funny thing in all of this is that NPR’s reaction to this whole thing has made this story much more than it ever had to be, as National Review Senior Writer Noah Rothman points out:

They’ve more or less Streisand Effected themselves into a real problem, in other words. Presumably the plan on NPR’s part is to try to keep their head down and hope this all blows over, but with Christopher Rufo continuing to mine newly installed NPR CEO Katherine Maher’s long history of left-wing insanity on Twitter for more and more bad and crazy takes the winds don’t seem favorable for things to just ‘blow over’ any time soon.

As to Berliner himself, while he may not have many people feeling friendly towards him back at his now former employer he’s found that as far as Twitter is concerned there are a lot of people who are willing to come out and say ‘Ich Bin Ein Berliner!’

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Would be an interesting avenue to take, although a tricky one certainly.

And while Berliner is gracious in continuing to believe that NPR is worthy of being supported out of the public coffers, many aren’t feeling so generous.

It we’re sure took immense courage, especially when you consider that some insiders in the world of media are pointing out that the whole thing from the get-go was intended as a resignation… but a resignation with an accompanying fireworks show.

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And what a conflagration it’s been!

It’s an important point that’s made here. Uri Berliner doesn’t seem to be a Conservative in any traditional sense, except perhaps what would sometimes be terms a ‘classical conservative’. But what he’s unhappy about has never seemed to be that his beliefs weren’t being reflected in NPR’s coverage but rather that NPR wasn’t fulfilling its journalistic duty to ensure that a fair range of beliefs are being covered… and anyone who’s listened to NPR in the past decade at least should be forced to agree with his assessment. It’s important to stand up for these things even if they don’t directly benefit you yourself, and it’s important to stand with people who have the courage to do it as well. 

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We’ll see where this all ends up, it seems unlikely that someone with Berliner’s experience will stay unemployed for long, but as for NPR this seems like it may be only the beginning of their troubles and not the end.