NPR Joins PM4A

John F. Lansing, President & CEO of NPR, and Keith Woods, Chief Diversity Officer of NPR, offered the following about why they decided to pledge to participate as an organization.

“As a news and cultural organization serving millions of people across the country and around the world in partnership with hundreds of Member stations, NPR embraces the responsibility and power we have to reflect the fullest truth of our diverse nation in our content, and to live up to the highest ideals of inclusion in our company.

We support the call for transformative change behind this “day of activism and education” and pledge to sustain the sense of urgency and purpose that has driven us to make the diversity of our audience the centerpiece of NPR’s 3-year strategic plan.

We acknowledge that diversity of staff is not enough; that we must concentrate on diversity in leadership. We are committed to holding our top people accountable for meeting our goals. We will continue to work together, leadership and staff, to dismantle structures that impede true equity and inclusion, and continue our drive to bring the voices of all Americans to our air and online. That means recognizing the role white privilege and unconscious bias have played in creating today’s challenges and actively working to combat them.

Our definition of diversity notes that it is “the unending pursuit of meaningful inclusion in the face of historic and present-day exclusion. It is a value that must live in all that we are and all that we do, beginning with the Board of Directors and cascading down to every corner of the enterprise. It must live in our content, hiring, audience and workplace; in our business deals, our partnerships, and our collaborations with stations across the network.”

Diversity at NPR is not a project or initiative. It is our work. And on this day and all the days to come, we pledge to treat it as such.”