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.
“The piece is full of racist dog-whistles”, she wrote. “It’s also based on a false premise that the country is in a state of ‘disorder’, when it’s more correctly in a state of protest (disorder itself being racially coded for anytime white supremacy is challenged).”
In an open letter to her staff last week, Maher defended the organisation’s journalists and their reporting, calling Berliner’s critique of NPR’s diversity initiatives “profoundly disrespectful, hurtful, and demeaning”. Her letter, and a post from NPR, do not directly address the complaints about the outlet’s alleged mishandling of several major stories.
Her online history and her response to complaints from a longtime employee of NPR indicate that she’s unlikely to lead the outlet towards the political centre or prompt an internal reflection on past journalistic missteps. The issue’s sudden dominance of the news cycle suggests Republicans may finally have the momentum they need to defund NPR.
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