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“Did I suffer discrimination at NPR? Truthfully? Yes. The truth is that as far as being a reporter, No. They were perfectly fine with me. Sometimes they thought I could cover religion, sometimes they thought I couldn’t. Basically, they allowed me to pretty much be myself. The problem came the few times I applied for host positions. Because if you think about what a host in a news organization is, they’re an eye. They represent the company in the way that Dan Rather represented CBS. Where as a reporter is sort of a he-said she-said, they’re not quite in that same relationship. And people did get scared.” (Quote taken from http://wnpr.org/post/margot-adler-being-wiccan-and-npr-discrimination)
Despite encountering certain amounts of apprehension in her professional circles through the years, Adler paved the way for us pagans and wiccans to be open about our beliefs. She showed the world we don’t have to hide in the shadows, being ashamed of who we are. She showed pagans and wiccans that we have the same legitimacy, even an older legitimacy, as the dominant systems of belief and scientific materialism that are more accepted by society at large. She helped others learn that the world has no reason to fear us. Perhaps, this is Adler’s greatest legacy - that she legitimized us as a people. As occultists, pagans, wiccans, re-constructionists, and neo-pagans of all stripes, we are forever in her debt.
In Memory of Margot Adler
By Matt Kramer
This summer, the pagan community lost a major public voice when, on July 28, Margot Adler passed away at the age of 68. Adler is best known as the New York Bureau Chief for NPR and author of the widely acclaimed book Drawing Down The Moon (1979). She was perhaps one of the most visible pagans and one of the first to be open about her Wiccan affiliation.
From interviewing occultist Grady McMurtry to being the first person in the U.S. to interview J.K. Rowling, Adler had the opportunity to interact with fascinating people at the forefront of pagan and pop culture movements. Giving a professional face to witchcraft and paganism wasn’t always easy. The stigma and misinformation wicca and paganism still carries on to this day. Adler describes the difficulties of being simultaneously NPR’s New York correspondent and a Wiccan High Priestess: