2024 has not been kind to American journalism. Mainstream news outlets — including NBC News, CBS, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, TIME and Business Insider — have laid off hundreds of staffers. Publishers and media analysts have been casting about for possible explanations, whether difficult economic headwinds, the collapse of ad revenue or Americans’ “news fatigue” ahead of another presidential election.

But we can thank Uri Berliner, a senior business editor at NPR, for revealing the main reason for journalism’s dire situation: Americans these days just don’t trust the news.

Berliner’s first-person account of the past near-decade at NPR – from Donald Trump’s first presidential campaign through the present – reveals a litany of reasons for this loss of faith. Berliner argues that NPR’s increasingly leftward tilt, lack of transparency, ideological groupthink and prioritization of diversity of identity and physical appearance above other values have led the organization astray.