NPR Issues Correction After Misquote
Recently, National Public Radio (NPR) faced criticism for misquoting a former government efficiency staff member and misrepresenting comments about government performance before issuing a correction.
On June 5, NPR published an article titled “The former Doge engineer says he was ‘surprising’ at how efficient the government is.” The piece quoted Sahil Lavingia, who remarked on the unexpectedly effective capabilities he discovered among federal officials. Still, it missed his broader message, which likely contributed to the need for a correction issued later that week.
Lavingia reflected, “I didn’t think the federal government was full of waste, fraud, or abuse. I was hoping for an easier victory. I wanted to make a difference. And I believe there’s a minimum amount of fraud. The reason? Well, perhaps it’s because people from the tech industry, where businesses often have investor funding, like Google and Facebook, sit around at times and do nothing.”
A few weeks post-publication, NPR released a correction stating, “An earlier version of this web story and its headlines falsely reported that Sahil Lavingia claimed waste and fraud were ‘relatively absent’ in the federal government. In reality, he suggested that abuse was relatively unregulated.”
Former NPR editor Uri Berliner accused the outlet of compromising its journalistic integrity, referencing a 2024 report on President Donald Trump. Berliner argued that NPR presented claims of Russian corruption while aligning the narrative within a democratic framework. He also mentioned NPR’s hesitation to cover the Hunter Biden laptop story in 2020, suggesting it was dismissed as merely a distraction. He posited that the network’s cultural focus on race and identity overshadowed diverse viewpoints, leading to biased reporting and a strong push for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.
In related news, the White House proposed a $9.4 billion retirement package that includes cuts to funding for public broadcasting, affecting NPR and PBS. The House of Representatives is set to vote on this package soon.
NPR has yet to respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
