Politics

Bill Maher Calls For NPR To Be Defunded After Hearing CEO’s Testimony

Published

4 days ago

March 29, 2025

“Real Time” host Bill Maher is on board with conservative calls to pull federal funding from NPR and PBS after listening to testimony from NPR CEO Katherine Maher, who once railed against the First Amendment as a barrier to journalism.

The NPR chief testified before the House Select Committee on the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) earlier this week. She faced relentless questioning from House Republicans on the panel, all of whom have backed President Trump’s plan to pull federal funding from both NPR and PBS.

At one point during the hearing, U.S. Rep. William Timmons (R-SC) revealed that NPR’s editorial staff contains 87 registered Democrats and zero Republicans. Maher called the figure “concerning” but claimed that she does not let any of her personal biases, or those of other employees, affect the outlet’s coverage.

Bill Maher, who has no relation to the NPR CEO, indicated that the hearing was enough for both outlets to be privatized while answering a listener question during his online “Overtime” segment. He repeatedly criticized his “namesake,” Maher, over her claims that the outlet can remain unbiased despite such a massive partisan divide in the newsroom.

“Give me a break, lady,” the HBO host reacted. “I mean, they’re crazy far-left.” He went on to argue that the concept of taxpayer funding going to outlets like NPR and PBS is a dated concept.

“Why do we need to subsidize,” Maher asked. “We’re so polarized. These outlets became popular at a time when Republicans and Democrats didn’t hate each other and weren’t at each other’s throats and didn’t think each other was an existential threat. In that world, you can’t have places like this, I think, anymore. They have to be private.”

Katherine Maher, who served as the CEO for Web Summit and Wikimedia Foundation prior to joining NPR, has found herself at the center of controversy in the past due to numerous partisan political statements she has made in the past. The NPR chief has referred to President Trump as a “racist” and has questioned the validity of the First Amendment.

“The number one challenge here that we see is of course the First Amendment in the United States,” Maher said while speaking with the Atlantic Council. “It is a fairly robust protection of rights. And that is a protection of rights both for platforms, which I actually think is very important that platforms have the right to be able to regulate what kind of content they want on their sites. But it also means that it is a little bit tricky to really address some of the real challenges of where does bad information come from, and sort of the influence peddlers who have made a real market economy around it.”