NPR Defends Far-Left CEO Who Has Questioned First Amendment, Condemns ‘Bad Faith Attacks’

NPR issued a statement in defense of its new CEO, Katherine Maher, on Wednesday as she continues to face scrutiny over her radically left-wing social media posts. The taxpayer-funded outlet released a statement in which it came to Maher’s defense against “bad faith attacks.”

Maher, who served as the CEO for Web Summit and Wikimedia Foundation prior to joining NPR last month, has referred to former President Donald Trump as a “racist” and questioned the validity of the First Amendment.

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

During the Black Lives Matter riots in 2020, Maher tweeted that while “looting is counterproductive,” it was “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. In a follow-up post, Maher stated that damage to private property is “not the thing” America should be focused on.

After President Biden’s victory in 2020, Maher wrote that she couldn’t “stop crying with relief.” She has also advanced a number of thoroughly debunked hoaxes such as the lie that former President Trump was elected thanks to support from the Russian government.

Current CEO of NPR Katherine Maher in 2021, back when she worked for Wikipedia, literally talking about rewriting history because it currently favors white people. pic.twitter.com/9oEJlomJrF

— MAZE (@mazemoore) April 17, 2024

Critics have questioned how somebody with Maher’s radically partisan views could be tasked with heading up a publicly funded, supposedly non-biased outlet.

In response to the criticism, an NPR spokesperson released a statement in which it accused Rufo of “targeting” Maher by simply highlighting her own posts and statements. “This is a bad faith attack that follows an established playbook, as online actors with explicit agendas work to discredit independent news organizations,” an NPR spokesperson said in a statement to Fox News.

“In this case, they resorted to digging up old tweets and making conjectures based on our new CEO’s resume,” the spokesperson continued. “Spending time on these accusations is intended to detract from NPR’s mission of informing the American public and providing local information in communities around the country is more important than ever.”

On Wednesday, NPR’s Uri Berliner announced his resignation after he was suspended for questioning the organizations hyper-partisan tilt.  While speaking with former New York Times editor Bari Weiss on her podcast, “The Honestly Pod,” Berliner shared his observations of NPR’s transformation from a liberal-leaning entity into what he describes as a “knee-jerk,” “activist,” and “scolding” newsroom with a rigidly progressive agenda.

He was soon suspended over his comments and announced that he would be leaving the network on Wednesday. “I am resigning from NPR, a great American institution where I have worked for 25 years. I don’t support calls to defund NPR. I respect the integrity of my colleagues and wish for NPR to thrive and do important journalism,” Berliner wrote in an X post.

“But I cannot work in a newsroom where I am disparaged by a new CEO whose divisive views confirm the very problems at NPR I cite in my Free Press essay,” the statement continued.