Date: April 15th, 2024 10:37 PM
Author: Chestnut Razzle Newt Windowlicker
NPR C.E.O. Faces Criticism Over Tweets Supporting Progressive Causes
Katherine Maher, who took over the public network last month, posted years ago on Twitter that “Donald Trump is a racist.”
Benjamin Mullin
By Benjamin Mullin
April 15, 2024, 4:13 p.m. ET
Katherine Maher, the chief executive of NPR, is facing online criticism for years-old social media posts criticizing former President Donald J. Trump and embracing liberal causes.
The posts, published on the social media platform Twitter, which is now called X, were written before she was named chief executive of NPR in January. They resurfaced this week after an essay by an NPR staff member who argued that the broadcaster’s leaders had allowed liberal bias to taint its coverage.
“Also, Donald Trump is a racist,” read one of Ms. Maher’s posts in 2018, which has since been deleted. Another post, from November 2020, shows Ms. Maher wearing a hat with the logo for the Biden presidential campaign.
“Had a dream where Kamala and I were on a road trip in an unspecified location, sampling and comparing nuts and baklava from roadside stands,” Ms. Maher wrote, an apparent reference to Vice President Kamala Harris. “Woke up very hungry.”
Ms. Maher, who had not worked in the news industry before joining NPR, was the chief executive of the Wikimedia Foundation, a nonprofit that supports the popular online resource Wikipedia, when she wrote many of the posts that were now being criticized.
An NPR spokeswoman, Isabel Lara, said in a statement that Ms. Maher “was not working in journalism at the time and was exercising her First Amendment right to express herself like any other American citizen.”
NPR also said that Ms. Maher had upheld the network’s code of ethics since she was appointed.
“Since stepping into the role she has upheld and is fully committed to NPR’s code of ethics and the independence of NPR’s newsroom,” the statement said. “The C.E.O. is not involved in editorial decisions.”
Ms. Maher said in a statement that in America, “everyone is entitled to free speech as a private citizen.” She heralded the network’s commitment to independent reporting and called on Americans to “listen, watch and read our work.”
“What matters is NPR’s work and my commitment as its C.E.O.: public service, editorial independence and the mission to serve all of the American public,” Ms. Maher said. “NPR is independent, beholden to no party, and without commercial interests.”
Much of the discussion about the posts has emanated from conservative critics after the publication of an opinion column in The Free Press, a popular Substack publication. In the column, Uri Berliner, a senior business editor at NPR, said that “people at every level of NPR have comfortably coalesced around the progressive worldview.”
Mr. Berliner’s essay stunned his co-workers, who were unaccustomed to seeing NPR’s journalism excoriated by a long-serving editor. The essay was addressed internally at a lunch with Ms. Maher and the hosts of NPR’s popular programs, including “All Things Considered,” and more than a half-hour of a “Morning Edition” meeting was occupied by a discussion of Mr. Berliner’s criticisms.
Several NPR employees have taken to Twitter to criticize Mr. Berliner’s essay. Eric Deggans, the public network’s TV critic, faulted Mr. Berliner for not seeking comment from NPR before publishing his essay. Scott Detrow, the weekend host of “All Things Considered,” called attention to Mr. Berliner’s numerous media appearances to discuss his essay.
“Going public to torch your workplace, then doing media hit after media hit to continue torching it, is not a thing you do when you have good-faith intentions,” Mr. Detrow wrote.
Christopher Rufo, a fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute, called attention to many of Ms. Maher’s posts on X and shared a response from Tesla’s chief executive, Elon Musk, who had responded to one of Ms. Maher’s posts that Mr. Rufo highlighted, saying, “This person is a crazy racist!”
“If NPR wants to truly be National Public Radio, it can’t pander to the furthest-left elements in the United States,” Mr. Rufo said in an interview. “To do so, NPR should part ways with Katherine Maher.”
Ms. Maher, who started late last month, pushed back against the accusations of bias at NPR in a memo to employees last week.
“Asking a question about whether we’re living up to our mission should always be fair game: after all, journalism is nothing if not hard questions,” Ms. Maher said in the note. “Questioning whether our people are serving our mission with integrity, based on little more than the recognition of their identity, is profoundly disrespectful, hurtful, and demeaning.”
Shortly after joining NPR, Ms. Maher held a town hall-style meeting with employees to introduce herself and field questions. At one point, Ms. Maher was asked about NBC’s recent decision to give a platform to political figures like Ronna McDaniel, a former chair of the Republican National Committee. NBC cut ties to Ms. McDaniel after her hiring as an on-air commentator caused an internal uproar, with many journalists at the network upset about her handling of Mr. Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was rigged.
“I think that the most effective way that I have seen this play out is, if you’re bringing somebody into a story that is pushing a deliberate distortion, be extraordinarily well-prepared to push back and very prepared with the information necessary, the irreducible facts,” Ms. Maher said.
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5518049&forum_id=2#47586464)