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April 16, 2024 - 7:00pm
Commentators are calling for US media company NPR to lose its government funding, in light of resurfaced tweets from the outlet’s new leader.
CEO Katherine Maher expressed support for racial reparations, claimed that the planet was “burning”, and discussed at length her own feelings of privilege on the basis of being white in various social media posts dating back several years. Conservative activist Christopher Rufo drew attention to these posts in an hours-long social media campaign on Monday evening, earning a mention in the New York Times.
Elon Musk, Republican senator Ted Cruz and numerous other politicians and commentators called for the outlet to be defunded, a longtime pet issue for the GOP’s fiscal hawks.
While NPR often claims that public funding accounts for only a small portion of its budget, the outlet’s parent company, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, received $525 million this year, $126 million of which went to public radio stations. Because much of NPR’s public funding is indirect, channelled through member fees paid by local stations, it is able to claim financial independence.
Maher’s social media had entered the spotlight in the days after NPR veteran Uri Berliner wrote a scathing critique of the outlet in The Free Press. NPR, he wrote, has a strong liberal bias and lack of viewpoint diversity, which has hurt its popularity and led to the mishandling of several key news events, including the Hunter Biden laptop story. The piece welcomed Maher, viewing her appointment with optimism, but the outlet’s response, including the suspension of Berliner, suggests his recommendations will not be heeded.
Her posts have given some hints about her views on journalistic ethics, including after the New York Times published an op-ed by Sen. Tom Cotton calling for the use of the military to maintain order during protests in the summer of 2020. She opposed the outlet’s platforming of the article.
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SubscribeConservatives should demand ‘diversity’ of political opinion in leadership positions of NPR and the BBC, for example.
It’s a much better tactic.
And when they refuse?
And when they refuse?
Cower in the corner and apologise, obviously. Accept your serfdom and move on. Subscribe to the Guardian and move on even further.
They should change their name to Pravda.
Can’t see my previous comment so I’ll post a different reply.
And when you refuse to accept their refusal?
I agree with you. It’s becoming increasingly clear that we are dealing with a millennial cult hell-bent on civilizational suicide that has no qualms using coercion and fear to bully people. Even on the comments boards of Unherd we have the usual suspects who use spite and vitriol to get their viewpoints across (if they even have any).
Dawn French, the British comedienne recently stated that it’s making cowards of us all.
‘It’s becoming increasingly clear that we are dealing with a millennial cult hell-bent on civilizational suicide’
Not suicide. The people in power are increasingly minorities, or from the third-world. Conquest, in other words.
As they will.
Good point. Republicans can demand all they want, NPR won’t change.
I would like to see a Congressional hearing where someone with the tenacity of Rep. Elise Stefanik goes after CEO Katherine Maher the way she shredded the Presidents of Penn, MIT and Harvard.
Then, please, in the next budget cycle, zero out NPR.
This is easily negated by accusations of ‘bothsidesism’, e.g. covering diverse viewpoints is a threat to woke hegemony and therefore evil.
If the police in a City are overwhelmed by continuing violent demonstrations, like in 2020, then bringing in the National Guard to back up the police makes sense. Tom Cotton’s column where he recommended same, that the NYT and NPR can’t tolerate, was reasonable. Recently the New York State Governor deployed the National Guard to reinforce local Police to reduce subway crime in NYC. I’m surprised we haven’t seen Troops brought in to help Police deal with the pro-Hamas rallies in American Cities and London.
It’s appalling that the Editorial Boards of NPR and NYT can’t even handle a discussion of this issue on their Op Ed Pages.
The National Guard is separate from the military. Governors can call the Guard up , and the president can also call them up (like during the Iraq war). But it violates the Constitution to use the military against the American people.
What part of the constitution does it violate? It’s only 4 pages I’m sure you’ll have no problem figuring it out!
I was sort of wrong. It’s the Posse Comitatus Act, which says federal troops can not participate in civilian law enforcement unless authorized by the Constitution or an act of Congress. My apologies.
Incorrect. The National Guard is a part of the US Military which the Governors and the President can deploy to restore order.
But not a problem for this administration to violate the constitution since they have weaponized the justice system for their own political ends. If you deny there’s a two tier justice system in the U.S. with leftists and Democrats driving it, then you support this distortion and are cognitively dissonant.
Republicans have a slim majority in the House, while Democrats control the Senate. How are Republicans going to force defunding of NPR? That might be possible only if Republicans win the November election.
I supported NPR for many years, but stopped about a decade ago when it veered so far to the left. Sad, because it once provided valuable news and documentaries.
I supported NPR for many years, but stopped about a decade ago when it veered so far to the left.
Agreed. The fascists who veered it to the far, far, left are the problem. They are the enemy. Not NPR.
I‘m old enough to remember objective media. Then Time & Newsweek began to shift left leaving US News & World Report as the objective source. Today’s younger generations have had bo such halcyon days. From biased media to biased school districts, their brains are under siege. Bring back the classics and genuinely inquisitive thought.
In the linked article regarding Berliner’s reprimand by NPR (on NPR) the reporter states “The Free Press is a site that has become a haven for journalists who believe that mainstream media outlets have become too liberal. (emphasis mine): The FP is Not a reaction to liberalism it is a reaction to progressive ideology and conformity. The FP is Clasicalliy Liberal at its core. I suspect this statement was made to dismiss The FP as just another right-wing outlet… Me thinks NPR protests too much… I hope The FP eats its lunch…
“mainstream media outlets have become too liberal”
Except, they have become less liberal. They have only become more liberal if you think a snake calling itself a butterfly is indeed a butterfly.
The first casualties of the fascist left were the liberal left.
So Maher called Berliner’s critique of NPR’s diversity initiatives “profoundly disrespectful, hurtful, and demeaning,” but, tellingly, not “false.” Classic liberal-media critique: feelings trump truth. A telling indictment of the education system.
PBSNewshour is extremely biassed, so should have no public funding.
Pravda was publicly funded too!
Assume the white privilege exists. This is a white privileged woman holding on to her privilege, telling others to give it up. Her dad was a banking executive. Assuming she has an inheritance let’s see if she gives it to a black or Hispanic, poor person. Will her husband lawyer give up his great job so a black or Hispanic person can get it? Not sure if they have kids. But, if they do will they take them out of good schools and transfer to not so good ones, to create vacancies for poor black or Hispanic students? Of course not. America is full of white, well off, liberals like this. Hypocrites.
She’s a World Economic Forum young global leader: https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/expert/katherine-maher/
These people all have the same marching orders.
NPR was not as overtly liberal in the seventies and eighties. There was more of a mix and more interesting stories. It became more liberal in the nineties to the present. I’m a liberal, but I like a mix of stories, like Unherd, that make me think more deeply about issues. Anyway, after the car guys quit their show, I lost interest in NPR.
The “Car Guys” were the best. I used to record their shows on cassettes (still got them). Check out their 1999 MIT Commencement Address on YouTube.
A strong case can be made that this woman is anti-white. Blacks dismiss them as “saviors” out to celebrate their own virtue. There are a lot of them in the circles that dominate the legacy media.
Maher is AWFL, and AWFLs gonna AWFL.
This is really very sad.
I spent some time in the US around 30 years ago and found NPR to be an excellent and politically neutral radio network (NPR made programs broadcast by local affiliate radio stations). At that time they were “poor but honest”. As far as I know, they didn’t receive government funding then.
They also broadcast the hilarious “Car Talk” show.
I had no idea who the head of NPR was or what their political views were. Not did I ever need to.
Something’s clearly changed since then. And not for the better.
PR and PBS are one sided and special people news media…They focus on strife and minorities and thrive on progressive far left life and art that is for the unknown. They were the kids in class that cried a lot…
Just another hack whose folks had money, and as they say, the rest is history. Typical “visionary” who sold out a long time ago to achieve status and bucks. They permeate the world and are basically inept, amoral, and really, really boring. She is clueless about operations, just a hairdo.
She’s a shill for the Democrats, nothing more. She is not a journalist, never has been a journalist and never will be. She was put in there to support the woke, progressive leftist ideology of NPR and the Democratic Party.
I say that as one who financially supported NPR and PBS back in the 90s. Until I finally saw the light and their despicable bias. I finally gave it up when I realised the only program I could stomach was Car Talk, which was masterful and never got political.
They have destroyed what could have been a great journalistic outlet, and exposed their hypocritical, petty, elitist and bourgeois ways.
I used to listen to NPR for many years, but a while back I noticed that their chronically irritating tone of smug superiority was now be used to convey stories that inevitably had a marked left-wing, progressive, woke bias that not only made them questionable as information, but also made them both predictable and uninteresting. Now that NPR has clearly become a political platform – and the CEO’s comments make it unabashedly clear that this is the case – it is unreasonable to ask the tax payors to support it. Let the left wing of the Democratic party fund this outlet, along with those listeners who still enjoy the programming enough to donate to their endless fundraising drives and let the rest of us find less partisan uses for our money. Isn’t that fair?
It can switch between being a convenient suit of armor, offensive weapon, and caustic agent all without creating anything new.
What a massive overreaction! NPR has a lot of excellent programming. Maybe she’s a bit of a nut job and not well placed to lead the organization. That’s a debate worth having. But shutting down funding for the entire organization because you don’t agree with a few old woke tweets from one employee. Enough with all the fake drama.
“Excellent” is a point of view, Anakin.
It’s pretentious drivel. I already know their journalistic stance before I read any of their news articles.