(LifeSiteNews) — National Public Radio’s (NPR) new CEO Katherine Maher is facing a deluge of old comments coming back to haunt her, with the far-left leanings on display intensifying long-running complaints about the credibility of the publicly-funded news organization.
Last week, longtime NPR senior editor Uri Berliner excoriated the outlet for having “lost America’s trust” via a combination of “default[ing] to ideological story lines,” an “absence of viewpoint diversity,” obsession with identity politics, and general abandonment of journalistic principles.
Berliner closed his piece by saying he was “‘rooting for” Maher, whose lack of a news background “could be an asset given where things stand.” However, within days of publication critics began publicizing old tweets and video clips of Maher indicating that she was more than a fit for NPR’s status quo.
Among them, she framed the First Amendment as a “challenge” to fighting disinformation, complained about 2016 Democrat presidential nominee Hillary Clinton inadvertently “erasing language for non-binary people” by referring to boys and girls, sympathized with looters on the theory that private property is linked to a “system of oppression,” expressed confusion at objections to politically-motivated violence, and more:
EXCLUSIVE: Katherine Maher says the "the number one challenge" in her fight against disinformation is "the First Amendment in the United States," which makes it "a little bit tricky" to censor "bad information" and "the influence peddlers" who spread it.
NPR's censor-in-chief. pic.twitter.com/0vY6hIpbmO
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) April 17, 2024
I do wish Hillary wouldn't use the language of "boy and girl" – it's erasing language for non-binary people.
— Katherine Maher (@krmaher) October 10, 2016
I mean, sure, looting is counterproductive. But it’s hard to be mad about protests not prioritizing the private property of a system of oppression founded on treating people’s ancestors as private property.
— Katherine Maher (@krmaher) May 31, 2020
Getting a COVID test and love this little prompt of inclusion. pic.twitter.com/Pz1QJvPH9n
— Katherine Maher (@krmaher) June 12, 2020
In 2022 Maher, then the CEO of Wikipedia, delivered a TED Talk in which she suggested that “our reverence for the truth might be a distraction that is getting in the way of finding common ground and getting things done. That is not to say that the truth doesn’t exist or to say that the truth isn’t important,” but “one reason we have such glorious chronicles to the human experience and all forms of culture is because we acknowledge there are many different truths.”
NPR CEO Katherine Maher tries to explain truth: pic.twitter.com/ACrEs0VvhI
— Steve McGuire (@sfmcguire79) April 17, 2024
In light of such comments, Berliner, who was suspended without pay following publication of his essay and subsequently resigned Wednesday morning, called Maher the “opposite” of the kind of leader he thinks NPR needs, someone “who’s going to be unifying and bring more people into the tent and have a broader perspective on, sort of, what America is all about.”
Maher characterized Berliner’s critique as questioning “whether our people are serving our mission with integrity, based on little more than the recognition of their identity,” which she said was “profoundly disrespectful, hurtful, and demeaning.” NPR has stressed that Maher is not involved in editorial decisions.
Conservatives remain skeptical in light of the degree of Maher’s leftist bent and NPR’s long history of corresponding bias, including promoting narratives on Trump-Russia “collusion” claims, Hunter Biden’s laptop, and COVID-19’s origins that were favored by liberals but turned out to be false, not to mention its longstanding left-wing bias on political issues such as abortion.
“It’s not easy to get a set figure of how much taxpayer money actually flows to NPR, but it’s a sizable sum,” writes USA Today columnist Ingrid Jacques. “While NPR likes to say that just a fraction of its funding comes directly from the federal government, that belies how much it gets indirectly from local stations who pay in part with federal grants for NPR’s flagship content.”
“The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which provides the grants, gets about $500 million a year from Congress,” she continues. “That should end.”