NPR is not a monolithic media organization. In my experience, local NPR stations are one of the best sources of interesting and relevant local news. In contrast, most local TV/Radio news is borderline a crime blotter ginned up to keep people outraged.
Regarding the national NPR newsroom, I think this story will provoke positive change, as indicated in the article. There is no media which every person would consider unbiased, and very few media organizations take action to even attempt to reign in biases. The fact that editors will start reviewing coverage more closely to remove tilt sets a higher bar than all but a few news organizations.
I chuckle thinking about a reporter stepping out of another random news room in the country and spreading outrage that the coverage has a bias. The response would generally be: “Yes, duh.”
I think as shown by similar scandals at NYT and WSJ, that the media press do not accept feedback, and instead will rally around extending and furthering their ideological anti-liberal (authoritarian) monoculture, and instead get rid of dissenting voices.
see James Bennet at NYT (who was fired for publishing a op-ed from a sitting American senator) or even Kevin D. Williamson at the Athletic.
I can't see why everybody got so worked up about the op-ed you're referring to. The Times has traditionally been a venue for voices that are not in its constituency, and in this particular case, Cotton wrote such a crazy article that it reduced his credibility significantly in front of the nation.
He proposed using the military to quell protests, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/03/opinion/tom-cotton-protes...
I think if all op-eds published in the Times were inspected for factual accuracies, they'd find plenty in the ones that align with the Times's employees (the Cotton op-ed has a long preface which basically says "we shouldn't have published this because facts")
Regarding the national NPR newsroom, I think this story will provoke positive change, as indicated in the article. There is no media which every person would consider unbiased, and very few media organizations take action to even attempt to reign in biases. The fact that editors will start reviewing coverage more closely to remove tilt sets a higher bar than all but a few news organizations.
I chuckle thinking about a reporter stepping out of another random news room in the country and spreading outrage that the coverage has a bias. The response would generally be: “Yes, duh.”