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.

Bashing National Public Radio‘s leftward bias is a favorite pastime of conservatives, especially since it is funded by taxpayer money, but critics received a boost this week from an unlikely source.

Uri Berliner, a 25-year veteran of NPR who is now a senior business editor there, published a lengthy essay this week that was remarkable because it absolutely blasted his employer’s approach to journalism. It was such a complete takedown that I found myself marveling, “He wrote this while he still works there?”

My next question was, “Will it do any good?”

NPR reporter Uri Berliner wrote an essay for The Free Press arguing that the network has lost chunks of its audience by growing too dogmatically progressive. Some of the evidence supports his claim. Unfortunately, he undermines his case by leading with an example that in no way vindicates the thesis, and actually undermines it: coverage of the Trump-Russia scandal.

Berliner presents the story as a nothingburger that NPR breathlessly hyped and then ignored when it turned out to exonerate the president: