NPR’s new chief broke her silence after her old statements surfaced and a former editor-turned-whistleblower accused the station of having a liberal bias.
The public station’s new chief executive, Katherine Maher, who joined the company last month, faced backlash from critics after an old tweet surfaced calling former President Donald Trump “unhinged.”
Maher also came under fire last week after a video began circulating in which she claims the First Amendment is the “number one challenge” when fighting “bad information.”
In an interview with Wall Street Journal, Maher said he has a “strong belief in the First Amendment and claimed that critics took his comment out of context, explaining that he was referring to a “landscape of constitutional protections and why that limits policymakers’ options in addressing certain issues.”
Maher added: ‘It is by no means a personal perspective; it is a very bad faith distortion of a nuanced perspective on a political landscape issue… All of this, frankly, is a bit of a distraction from the transformation our organization needs to undergo to better fulfill our mandate.’
NPR’s new CEO Katherine Maher broke her silence after her old tweets surfaced and a former editor-turned-whistleblower accused the station of having a liberal bias.
Whistleblowing NPR editor Uri Berliner (pictured), who exposed the network’s liberal bias, has officially resigned after being suspended by the outlet’s ‘divisive’ new CEO.
The NPR chief also addressed claims by whistleblower Uri Berliner, who resigned from the station after being suspended for an essay he wrote for the Free Press accusing the company of having lost its way.
“We have strong conversations across the organization, including in response to the article,” Maher said, citing “clear, well-reasoned articles” from reviewers who “found our journalism to be really strong.”
Berliner, who claimed the publicly funded broadcaster had become an activist organization obsessed with advancing progressive ideals, called Maher “divisive” in his resignation.
He caused a storm when he wrote an open essay for The free presswhere he criticized the outlet for being almost entirely composed of Democrats and, according to him, “lost the trust of the United States.”
In response to the 25-year NPR veteran’s article, the network suspended him for five days for violating its policy on working or reporting for another media outlet without permission.
Berliner announced that he submitted his resignation letter to Maher last week.
“I cannot work in a newsroom where I am belittled by a new CEO whose divisive views confirm the very problems I cite in my Free Press essay,” Berliner said.
Berliner said in his resignation that he cannot work for the “divisive” new chief executive, Katherine Maher (pictured).
‘I am resigning from NPR, a great American institution where I have worked for 25 years. I do not support calls to defund NPR. “I respect the integrity of my colleagues and want NPR to thrive and do important journalism.”
Maher insisted in a statement that the company remains committed to “serving the entire American public.”
“Questioning whether our people are fulfilling our mission with integrity, based on little more than recognition of their identity, is deeply disrespectful, hurtful and degrading,” he said.
Berliner said in an interview that the emergence of old tweets from Maher undermines his message.
The tweets in question included a Veiled shot at the Trump brand. him a ‘deranged racist sociopath’, and shares his support for President Biden by sharing selfies in his campaign hats.
Berliner confirmed his suspension while sitting down for a follow-up interview with NPRand the network said he would be fired if he overstepped again.
But the business editor argued that Maher’s tweets make her unable to run the taxpayer-funded company in a moderate and fair way.
“We’re looking for a leader right now who will unify and bring more people into the tent and who will have a broader perspective on, sort of, what America means,” he said.
“And this seems to be the opposite of that.”
The tweets also included Maher saying, “I wish Hillary wouldn’t use the ‘boy and girl’ language; she’s erasing the language for non-binary people.”
Berliner said the surfacing of old tweets from Maher undermines his message of “serving the entire American public.”
In November 2020, he tweeted: ‘There are a lot of jokes about leaving America, and I get it. But as someone with cis white mobility privileges, I’m thinking about staying and investing in getting rid of this specter of tyranny.”
Amid the BLM riots, Maher also maintained: ‘I mean, of course, looting is counterproductive. But it’s hard to get angry because the protests don’t prioritize private property over a system of oppression based on treating people’s ancestors as private property.’
Before publishing his scathing essay on the state of NPR, Berliner said he tried numerous times to raise concerns about his liberal leanings.
In particular, he said coverage of the issues that dominated recent years had been tainted by NPR’s liberal bias, including the war between Israel and Hamas, transgenderism and Covid-19.
Berliner added that he believes other media outlets have similar problems, but he believes NPR’s public funding and its insistence that it is moderate means it has an obligation to remain impartial.
“I love NPR and feel like it’s a national trust,” he said. ‘We have great journalists here. If they would get rid of their opinions and do the great journalism they are capable of, this would be a much more interesting and satisfying organization for our listeners.’
Writing for The Free Press, a popular Substack site, Berliner said the rise of “advocacy” in journalism emerged especially at the same time as Donald Trump’s political career.
“As in many newsrooms, his election in 2016 was greeted at NPR with a mix of disbelief, anger and despair,” he wrote.
Berlinger argued in his article that NPR has “lost America’s trust” because it was staffed almost entirely by Democrats.
Maher’s tweets included a veiled shot at Trump, calling him a “deranged racist sociopath” and sharing his support for President Biden.
Berliner also uncovered how NPR deliberately withheld information from its audience during the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections.
He says NPR editors were quick to accept claims that Donald Trump was a Russian asset, but much more reluctant to cover his subsequent debunking.
Berliner has since received what NPR called a “final warning,” suspending him for five days but warning him that if he worked for another outlet without permission, he would be out of a job.
He wrote that when he researched staff voting records, he surprisingly discovered that not a single Republican held a leadership position.
“Concerned about the lack of viewpoint diversity, I looked up voter registration in our newsroom,” he wrote.
‘In DC, where NPR is headquartered and where many of us live, I found 87 registered Democrats working in editorial positions and no Republicans. None.’