A conservative media watchdog has a new top priority — defunding NPR and PBS.
The Media Research Center (MRC) is leading a push to defund both public media outlets, urging President Donald Trump, congressional leaders, and governors to strip taxpayer subsidies to these &#8220;far-left media outlets,&#8221; the group revealed exclusively to The Daily Wire.
The watchdog urged the Trump administration to include the &#8220;complete defunding&#8221; of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and its affiliates, PBS and NPR, in a rescission package that could soon be sent to Congress.
&#8220;Taxpayers should not be forced to subsidize a media entity that has outlived its original purpose and refuses to operate in a transparent manner,&#8221; the MRC wrote in its letter to Trump.
The watchdog is calling on the CEOs of NPR and PBS to subject themselves to public audits and asking members of Congress to refuse to meet with their lobbyists until those audits are done.
The MRC is also calling on congressional leaders to repeal the legislation that created the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Finally, the group is calling on state governors and federal agencies to halt all discretionary grants to PBS and NPR until the outlets are audited.
A coalition of critics joined the MRC in signing letters to elected officials, including Seth Dillon, owner of the Babylon Bee; Mike Gonzalez, senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation; Terry Schilling, president of the American Principles Project; Steven Ertelt, editor at LifeNews.com; and Austin Ruse, president of the Center for Family and Human Rights.
&#8220;This action is in concert with your historic promise and rapid delivery of cutting waste, fraud, and abuse across the federal government,&#8221; the coalition wrote to Trump.
The group argued that the &#8220;original justification&#8221; for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting &#8220;no longer holds.&#8221;
&#8220;In today’s media-rich environment, Americans have unlimited access to news, entertainment, and educational programming,&#8221; they wrote in their letter to Trump.
&#8220;NPR’s and PBS’s demonstrable, documented bias further erodes CPB’s credibility,&#8221; the group wrote. &#8220;NPR’s audience overwhelmingly identifies as liberal, reinforcing the reality that public broadcasting is not a neutral service but a taxpayer-funded ideological platform. Americans should not be forced to finance a network that caters to one side of the political spectrum.&#8221;
Dan Schneider, vice president of the MRC, told The Daily Wire that defunding PBS and NPR is his organization&#8217;s &#8220;top priority right now.&#8221;
The goal is to &#8220;eliminate every dime of taxpayer money that subsidizes these liberal media behemoths,&#8221; Schneider said.
&#8220;This is the most focused and aggressive takedown these outlets have ever faced. It may be the last, best chance taxpayers will ever have to unburden themselves from these leftist propaganda outlets once and for all,&#8221; he said.

In this photo illustration, National Public Radio (NPR) logo

EXCLUSIVE: Media Watchdog Goes Full Throttle On Defunding NPR, PBS With Letters To Trump, Congress

Legacy Media

Mainstream Media

Media

Media Research Center

National Public Radio (NPR)

Politics

Another legal battle is brewing over the deportation of half a million migrants allowed into the United States by Joe Biden. President Donald Trump pulls the federal funding rug out from under NPR, PBS – and Harvard. Will it hold up in Congress and the courts? And, Mark Zuckerberg is back in the hot seat as Facebook is accused of antitrust practices and cozying up to China.
It’s Wednesday, April 16, and this is the news you need to know to start your day. If you’d rather listen to your news, today’s edition of the Morning Wire podcast can be heard below:
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<h2>Trump Blocks Migrant Benefits, Border Crossings At All-Time Low</h2>
<div id="attachment_908237" style="width: 875px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-908237" class="size-large wp-image-908237" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Border-Wall-865x576.jpg" alt="" width="865" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Border-Wall-865x576.jpg 865w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Border-Wall-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Border-Wall-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Border-Wall-1536x1023.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Border-Wall-2048x1364.jpg 2048w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Border-Wall-1800x1200.jpg 1800w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Border-Wall-1200x800.jpg 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 865px) 100vw, 865px" />(Photo by Jorge Salgado/Anadolu via Getty Images)</div>
Topline: Border crossings continue to fall at a historic pace as President Trump takes new steps to prevent illegal immigrants from accessing taxpayer benefits.
In recent years, the Biden administration enacted a controversial humanitarian parole program that offered legal status and two-year work permits to migrants from Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba, and Nicaragua. More than 530,000 people from those countries took advantage and flew directly to the United States. In March, President Trump moved to revoke legal status for those migrants, giving them until April 24 to leave the country or face deportation.
The White House argued these migrants were undermining American workers and faced little vetting before entering the country. But this week, a federal judge appointed by President Barack Obama blocked that effort, saying the Trump administration must instead offer each migrant a case-by-case review before revoking legal status.
However, in general, the Trump administration’s immigration efforts have borne fruit. The latest report from Customs and Border Protection confirmed that border crossings fell 95% in <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2025/04/icymi-illegal-border-crossings-hit-new-record-low-in-march/">March</a> compared to the same month last year, with just 7,100 migrants apprehended across the entire month – that’s roughly the number of migrants that came in every single day during Biden’s term in office. The Trump administration has also continued to go after the roughly 435,000 people living here illegally who’ve been convicted of additional crimes. ICE arrests have tripled in the last three months, and the number of illegal aliens in detention facilities is at an all-time high.
“We did in three weeks what Biden didn’t do in three or four years,” Border czar Tom Homan <a href="https://x.com/RapidResponse47/status/1911893560116592730">said</a>. “Right now as you and I are talking, we have the most secure border in the history of this nation and the data proves it.”
According to The New York Times, the White House is now seeking $45 billion in additional funding to construct new detention facilities so it can expedite its mass deportation effort. The public still broadly approves of Trump’s immigration policy.
<h2>Trump Moves To Cut Funding To NPR, PBS &amp; Harvard</h2>
<div id="attachment_908239" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-908239" class="size-large wp-image-908239" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/NPR-PBS-864x576.jpg" alt="" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/NPR-PBS-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/NPR-PBS-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/NPR-PBS-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/NPR-PBS-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/NPR-PBS-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/NPR-PBS-1800x1200.jpg 1800w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/NPR-PBS-1200x800.jpg 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />(Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)</div>
Topline: President Trump is renewing his push to strip NPR and PBS of their funding while also freezing more than $2 billion in federal grants earmarked for Harvard. The moves have sparked heated debate, with supporters calling it a step toward fiscal responsibility and critics warning it threatens independent journalism and academic freedom.
Conservatives have talked about defunding NPR and PBS for years, but now they appear to have the political winds at their backs. Trust in the media is at an all-time low, and a lot of Americans are sympathetic to the idea that we do not need to spend billions of dollars in taxpayer money on these entities that many view as biased.
President Trump specifically accused NPR of being “a mouthpiece for the radical left.” And he’s calling on Republicans in Congress to introduce legislation that rescinds the funds that had been previously approved. Rescission would require the approval of the House and the Senate, where Republicans control narrow majorities and are already negotiating a major spending package.
Meanwhile: The Trump administration froze $2.2 billion in multi-year grants and $60 million in contracts to Harvard after the university refused demands to overhaul its policies, and as much as $9 billion in funding could be on the table. The White House, through its Joint Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, claims Harvard hasn’t done enough to address antisemitism tied to radical anti-Israel and pro-Hamas campus protests. They demanded changes like banning face masks, which a lot of the protestors wear, and enforcing merit-based rather than race-based admissions.
Harvard’s president, Alan Garber, rejected these demands, calling them a violation of First Amendment rights and academic freedom, saying in a statement “No government — regardless of which party is in power — should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.”
<h2>Facebook Faces Antitrust Lawsuit</h2>
<div id="attachment_908241" style="width: 778px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-908241" class="size-large wp-image-908241" src="https://www.dailywire.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Facebook-dislike-768x576.jpg" alt="" width="768" height="576" srcset="https://www.dailywire.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Facebook-dislike-768x576.jpg 768w, https://www.dailywire.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Facebook-dislike-300x225.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px" />(Photo by Alfieri via Getty Images)</div>
Topline: FTC vs Meta Platforms, Inc. began in court this week. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg sat for his second day of testimony in the trial that risks breaking up his social media empire.
This case was initially brought during President Trump’s first term and has taken more than four years to work through the courts. The FTC says that Meta is a monopoly that has bought its way out of competing. The government argues that when Facebook paid $1 billion for Instagram in 2012 and bought WhatsApp in a nearly $22 billion deal in 2014, Facebook illegally cornered what the FTC calls the “personal social-networking” market. According to the government, the only other major competitors to Facebook are Snapchat and an app called MeWe.
Meta disputes this. It says the market is actually much larger, and includes TikTok, YouTube, and X. For instance, when TikTok had an outage earlier this year, Instagram saw its usage spike, which suggests that people use the sites interchangeably. Meta has also argued that by going after it, the Trump administration is helping the Chinese-owned TikTok even more. TikTok was banned in the United States <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/tiktok-rages-after-u-s-passes-law-requiring-its-sale-from-chinese-parent-company">last year</a>, but earlier this month, Trump <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-extends-tiktok-sale-deadline-by-75-days-as-acquisition-talks-continue">extended</a> the pause on a Congressionally-approved ban on that app that was put into place in January.
This trial is expected to go on for eight weeks, so there will be plenty more ahead. But if Meta loses, it could be forced to sell off Instagram and WhatsApp.

The-White-House-Press-Secretary-Karoline-Leavitt-Had-Press-Brief

Morning Brief: Border Crossings Plummet, NPR Funding Trouble & Meta Antitrust

Anti-Semitism

Anti-trust

Donald Trump

Harvard University

Illegal Immigration

Mark Zuckerberg

Morning Wire

NPR chief exec. Katherine Maher is being likened to “the blonde version of Robin DiAngelo” after an exchange between her and a Texas Rep. went viral on Wednesday, revealing old tweets claiming that &#8220;America is addicted to white supremacy&#8221; and &#8220;How white of me.&#8221;
Maher appeared flustered as Rep. Brandon Gill (R-TX) confronted Maher with several tweets from before her tenure at NPR during a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/anti-american-airwaves-gop-lawmakers-grill-nprpbs-execs-over-institutional-bias">congressional hearing</a> on Wednesday, one of which where she claimed to have taken time off to read &#8220;The Case for Reparations,&#8221; a 2014 essay by woke activist, Ta-Nehisi Coates.
When pressed about the contents of the text, Maher appeared flustered and said, &#8220;I don&#8217;t think I&#8217;ve ever read that book, sir.&#8221;
&#8220;You tweeted about it. You said you took a day off to fully read &#8216;The Case for Reparations.&#8217; You put that on Twitter in January of 2020,&#8221; Gill countered, to which Maher responded, &#8220;I apologize. I don&#8217;t recall that I did. Okay. I&#8217;d no doubt that your tweet there is correct, but I don&#8217;t recall that.&#8221;
The hearing revealed an extensive backlog of controversial tweets from Maher; when questioned about a tweet claiming &#8220;America is addicted to white supremacy,&#8221; Maher acknowledged making the statement but claimed, &#8220;much of my thinking has evolved over the last half-decade.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Catching a Liberal White Lady tweeting in 2020 that she took a day off to fully absorb a v. important book about reparations, and making her admit under oath she probably didn&#39;t read it after all is an all-timer of Liberal White Lady moments. <a href="https://t.co/ErGUfVVN23">https://t.co/ErGUfVVN23</a>
&mdash; Mary Katharine Ham (@mkhammer) <a href="https://twitter.com/mkhammer/status/1904966542712000942?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 26, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Gill pressed on with Maher’s greatest hits, with Maher doing her best to deflect: &#8220;I grew up feeling superior. How white of me&#8221; and another supporting reparations that read: &#8220;Yes, the North, yes, all of us, yes, America, yes, our original collective sin and unpaid debt, yes, reparations, yes, on this day.&#8221;
The exchange intensified when Gill questioned Maher about her views on looting during the 2020 protests. Though she eventually acknowledged looting is &#8220;morally wrong,&#8221; Maher initially described it merely as &#8220;counterproductive&#8221; and had previously tweeted, &#8220;It&#8217;s hard to be mad about protests not prioritizing the private property of a system of oppression.&#8221;
NPR receives approximately $30 million annually in federal funding through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, with taxpayers contributing to an organization now led by an executive whose past statements have raised questions about objectivity in public media.
The congressional hearing revealed Maher appeared unprepared for questions about her digital footprint despite her leadership role at a major media organization.
When confronted with her own words supporting the controversial concept of reparations, Maher attempted to reframe her past advocacy.
&#8220;I don&#8217;t believe that was a reference to fiscal reparations, sir,&#8221; Maher testified when presented with her tweet explicitly supporting reparations.
&#8220;What kind of reparations was it a reference to?&#8221; Gill pressed.
&#8220;I think it was just a reference to the idea that we all owe much to the people who came before us,&#8221; Maher responded, prompting Gill to call her explanation &#8220;a bizarre way to frame what you tweeted.&#8221;
Right-wing commentators praised Gill on X, with Megyn Kelly <a href="https://x.com/megynkelly/status/1904986433581969533">saying</a> that she “could not love this any more,” and Christopher Rufo <a href="https://x.com/realchrisrufo/status/1904933514635862132">dubbing</a> Maher the “the blonde version of Robin DiAngelo.”

Trump Says He Would ‘Love’ To Defund Broadcasters NPR, PBS

In Classic ‘Liberal White Lady Moment,’ NPR CEO Mocked For Old Tweets: ‘How White Of Me’

In Classic 'Liberal White Lady Moment,' NPR CEO Mocked For Old Tweets: 'How White Of Me'

Congress

Woke Culture

Republican lawmakers grilled PBS and NPR executives on Wednesday in a fiery congressional hearing, where NPR&#8217;s chief executive admitted the organization made mistakes in its coverage of the Hunter Biden laptop story and faced accusations of institutional liberal bias.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who organized the hearing titled &#8220;Anti-American Airwaves,&#8221; slammed PBS and NPR as &#8220;radical left-wing echo chambers&#8221; that publish biased news reports with government subsidies and LGBTQ programming intent on “grooming children,” The New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/26/business/media/pbs-npr-congress-hearing-republicans.html">reported</a>.
NPR chief executive Katherine Maher and PBS chief executive Paula Kerger were brought in for questioning by Greene as the chairwoman of the new Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency.
Katherine Maher, who became CEO of NPR last year, backtracked on her organization&#8217;s coverup of the Hunter Biden laptop story during the 2020 campaign prior to her tenure.
&#8220;Our current editorial leadership thinks that was a mistake, as do I,&#8221; Maher testified, facing tough questioning from Republican lawmakers.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
The old tweets are coming out to haunt the NPR CEO: &quot;Why did you call President Trump a &#39;fascist&#39; and a &#39;deranged racist sociopath&#39; in 2020?&quot; <a href="https://t.co/ggcpPCSvzi">pic.twitter.com/ggcpPCSvzi</a>
&mdash; Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) <a href="https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/status/1904935282358751593?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 26, 2025</a></blockquote>
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Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) revealed 2020 tweets from Maher describing President Trump as a &#8220;racist&#8221; and &#8220;sociopath,” which Maher says she now regrets.
When pressed on the tweets by Rep. Greene, Maher expressed regret, saying, &#8220;They represented a time where I was reflecting on something that the president had said rather than who he is.&#8221;
These admissions came as Rep. James Comer (R-KY) stated, &#8220;I don&#8217;t even recognize NPR anymore,&#8221; adding that while he relied on public radio for news growing up in rural Kentucky, he now likens it to &#8220;propaganda.&#8221;
Former NPR senior business editor Uri Berliner, who resigned after publishing an essay critical of the network&#8217;s leftward shift, was referenced by Republican lawmakers as further evidence of the outlet’s bias.
In a text message to The New York Times, he wrote that he believes the organization should &#8220;openly acknowledge and embrace its progressive orientation&#8221; and decline federal support, contradicting Maher’s claims of NPR’s supposed objectivity.
PBS CEO Paula Kerger defended her network, arguing that “there’s nothing more American than PBS&#8221; and describing it as a crucial source of accurate information and educational programming for millions of Americans.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a government-funded company, <a href="https://cpb.org/pressroom/CPB-Statement-Congress-Approval-Continued-Funding-Public-Media">received</a> $535 million from the government this year, with millions of dollars going directly to NPR and PBS.
Representative William Timmons (R-SC) pressed PBS&#8217;s Kerger about a digital segment titled &#8220;Drag Queen Story Hour,&#8221; which featured drag performers reading to children. Kerger responded that the segment never aired on PBS television and was removed after being &#8220;mistakenly added&#8221; to the network&#8217;s website.
Representative Greene pointed to a photograph of drag performer Lil Miss Hot Mess featured in PBS programming, calling the entertainer a &#8220;monster&#8221; and accusing the network of using &#8220;taxpayer funds to push some of the most radical left positions.&#8221;
Kerger rejected these characterizations and defended PBS programming as educational and appropriate for its audiences.

Public Media CEOs Testify To House Committee On Government Reform

‘Anti-American Airwaves’: GOP Lawmakers Grill NPR Execs Over ‘Institutional Bias’

Marjorie Taylor Greene

Media Bias

President-elect <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/donald-trump" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Donald Trump</a>&#8216;s <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/department-of-government-efficiency-doge" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)</a> could set its sights on government-funded media programs like <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/national-public-radio-npr" target="_blank" rel="noopener">National Public Radio (NPR)</a>, Rep. <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/marjorie-taylor-greene" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Marjorie Taylor Greene</a> (R-GA) said on Sunday.
Greene, who has been tasked with <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/new-doge-panel-chaired-by-marjorie-taylor-greene-will-help-slash-government-waste" target="_blank" rel="noopener">heading</a> a new House Oversight subcommittee to work with DOGE leaders <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/elon-musk" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Elon Musk</a> and <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/vivek-ramaswamy" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Vivek Ramaswamy</a>, mentioned the network while discussing how she believes wasteful spending is happening all over the U.S. government during a &#8220;Sunday Morning Futures&#8221; interview with Fox News host Maria Bartiromo.
&#8220;We will be looking at everything from government-funded media programs like NPR that spread nothing but Democrat propaganda,&#8221; Greene said, adding: &#8220;We will be going into grant programs that fund things like sex apps in Malaysia, toilets in Africa, all kinds of programs that don&#8217;t help the American people.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
.<a href="https://twitter.com/RepMTG?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@RepMTG</a> says one of the things DOGE will look at is “government-funded media programs like NPR that spread nothing but Democrat propaganda.”
 <a href="https://t.co/2ni9GkQypS">pic.twitter.com/2ni9GkQypS</a>
&mdash; The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) <a href="https://twitter.com/TPostMillennial/status/1860737016377245894?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 24, 2024</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
She continued: &#8220;I want to talk to the people at the Pentagon and ask them why they can&#8217;t find billions of dollars every single year and why they fail their audit, but not just that, Maria. I&#8217;d like to talk to the governors of sanctuary states and the mayors of sanctuary cities and have them come before our committee and explain why they deserve federal dollars if they&#8217;re going to harbor illegal criminal aliens in their states and their cities.&#8221;
In his first term, Trump <a href="https://deadline.com/2020/02/donald-trump-public-media-pbs-npr-1202856498/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">proposed</a> reining in funding for public media, but Congress did not take him up on the cuts. Earlier this year, while back on the campaign trail, Trump <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-calls-for-cutting-npr-funds-after-editor-accuses-network-of-bias" target="_blank" rel="noopener">demanded</a> that funding be cut from NPR after one of its editors <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/we-lost-americas-trust-npr-veteran-says-network-has-lost-its-way" target="_blank" rel="noopener">accused</a> the network of espousing left-wing bias. That editor, Uri Berliner, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/npr-editor-who-accused-network-of-liberal-bias-resigns" target="_blank" rel="noopener">resigned</a> a short time later.
<a href="https://get.dailywire.com/gift-guide/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">CHECK OUT THE DAILY WIRE HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE</a>
“NO MORE FUNDING FOR NPR, A TOTAL SCAM! EDITOR SAID THEY HAVE NO REPUBLICANS, AND IS ONLY USED TO ‘DAMAGE TRUMP.’ THEY ARE A LIBERAL DISINFORMATION MACHINE. NOT ONE DOLLAR!!!” Trump <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/112248653824267212" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> in a post to Truth Social.
When NPR <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/npr-ditches-twitter-over-actions-that-undermine-our-credibility" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ditched</a> Twitter (now X) last year after being slapped with labels linking it to the U.S. government, the network <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/04/12/1169269161/npr-leaves-twitter-government-funded-media-label" target="_blank" rel="noopener">insisted</a> it &#8220;receives less than 1 percent of its $300 million annual budget from the federally funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting.&#8221; Still, on its website, NPR says federal funding is <a href="https://www.npr.org/about-npr/178660742/public-radio-finances" target="_blank" rel="noopener">&#8220;essential&#8221;</a> and that ending it &#8220;would result in fewer programs, less journalism — especially local journalism — and eventually the loss of public radio stations, particularly in rural and economically distressed communities.&#8221;
In her Fox interview, Greene went on to say: &#8220;We&#8217;re going to look in every single aspect. And we don&#8217;t care about people&#8217;s feelings. We&#8217;re going to be searching for the facts, and we&#8217;re going to be verifying if this is worth spending the American people&#8217;s hard-earned tax dollars on.&#8221;

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA)

MTG Suggests NPR Could Be In DOGE’s Crosshairs: ‘Nothing But Democrat Propaganda’

Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)

Elon Musk

Executive

House Oversight Committee

Trump Administration

U.S.

Katherine Maher, who became the CEO of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/national-public-radio-npr" target="_blank" rel="noopener">National Public Radio (NPR)</a> in March, has turned down an <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/house-republicans-seek-npr-ceo-testimony-about-liberal-bias-allegations" target="_blank" rel="noopener">invitation from House Republicans</a> to testify before Congress this week regarding claims of left-wing bias at her network.
NPR issued a <a href="https://twitter.com/davidfolkenflik/status/1787601110070350115" target="_blank" rel="noopener">statement</a> saying that its board of directors had a previously scheduled meeting on Wednesday, the day the hearing will take place on Capitol Hill. It stressed that Maher would be open to testifying at a future date.
&#8220;This meeting will be Maher&#8217;s first opportunity to review and consult with the Board on the challenges and opportunities facing the organization, including a strategy to lead NPR forward in fulfilling its public service mission to serve all of America,&#8221; the statement said.
&#8220;Maher is therefore unable to attend this week&#8217;s hearing and has communicated that to the committee and proposed alternate dates,&#8221; the statement added. &#8220;Maher will provide written testimony in her absence.&#8221;
Last week, the Energy and Commerce Committee, led by Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), sent an <a href="https://energycommerce.house.gov/posts/e-and-c-republicans-open-investigation-into-allegations-of-political-bias-at-taxpayer-funded-npr-request-attendance-at-hearing" target="_blank" rel="noopener">invitation</a> to Maher, seeking her testimony in response to allegations raised by a longtime editor, Uri Berliner, who has since <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/npr-editor-who-accused-network-of-liberal-bias-resigns" target="_blank" rel="noopener">resigned</a> from NPR.
The invite also raised concerns about Maher&#8217;s comments and social media posts displaying personal views in favor of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/15/business/media/npr-chief-executive-criticized-over-tweets.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">liberal causes</a> and favoring President Joe Biden over former President Donald Trump.
&#8220;It speaks volumes that Ms. Maher has chosen not to appear tomorrow to answer for how her taxpayer-funded news outlet discriminates against the viewpoints of millions of Americans,&#8221; a panel spokesperson told The Daily Wire. &#8220;The Chair looks forward to reviewing her thorough and transparent responses to the Committee’s letter.&#8221;
<a href="https://onelink.to/dwapp" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" aria-describedby="sk-tooltip-9096" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://onelink.to/dwapp&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1715167897594000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0ZhOYl1hUvyplEJT3QwTSU">CLICK HERE TO GET THE DAILYWIRE+ APP</a>
The panel&#8217;s calendar <a href="https://energycommerce.house.gov/calendars?start=2024-05-08&amp;end=2024-05-08" target="_blank" rel="noopener">shows</a> the hearing still being set to take place on Wednesday with testimony from American Enterprise Institute senior fellow Howard Husock; James Erwin, federal affairs manager for telecommunications at Americans for Tax Reform; NewsBusters executive editor Tim Graham; and Free Press co-CEO Craig Aaron.
&#8220;To no surprise NPR President &amp; CEO Katherine Maher is declining to come before the committee I sit on — [the House Energy and Commerce Committee] — to answer basic questions about National Public Radio’s extremely liberal culture and reporting,&#8221; Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) <a href="https://twitter.com/DanCrenshawTX/status/1787902787067498509" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> in a post to X.
&#8220;Republicans have known of NPR’s public biases for years &#8211; a news broadcast that mostly elite liberals listen to, to feel better about ramming their woke agenda down America&#8217;s throat,&#8221; he continued, adding, &#8220;This just confirms NPR is a waste of taxpayer dollars.&#8221;

Katherine Maher

‘Speaks Volumes’: NPR CEO Declines Invite To Hearing on Bias Allegations, Proposes Alternate Dates

'Speaks Volumes': NPR CEO Declines Invite To Hearing on Bias Allegations, Proposes Alternate Dates

U.S. House of Representatives

House Republicans have requested Katherine Maher, who became the CEO of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/national-public-radio-npr" target="_blank" rel="noopener">National Public Radio (NPR)</a> in March, provide testimony to Congress about the allegations of left-wing bias at the network, an invitation that could lead to a high-profile clash on Capitol Hill next week.
Energy and Commerce Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) led a <a href="https://d1dth6e84htgma.cloudfront.net/04_30_24_Letter_to_NPR_with_Hearing_Invitation_2_aa76bcfe12.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">letter</a> that was sent to Maher this week, asking the media executive to appear before the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee on May 8 to address claims related to NPR&#8217;s coverage of topics related to politics, COVID, transgender issues, audience figures, the network’s own level of diversity, and more.
&#8220;The Committee has concerns about the direction in which NPR may be headed under past and present leadership. As a taxpayer funded, public radio organization, NPR should focus on fair and objective news reporting that both considers and reflects the views of the larger U.S. population and not just a niche audience,&#8221; the letter said.
Controversy rocked NPR when a longtime editor, Uri Berliner, went public last month with the bias allegations and lamented how NPR had &#8220;lost America&#8217;s trust&#8221; with an increasingly leftist bent. After being suspended for five days, Berliner <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/npr-editor-who-accused-network-of-liberal-bias-resigns" target="_blank" rel="noopener">stepped down</a>, saying he could not work in a newsroom where he was being &#8220;disparaged by a new CEO whose divisive views confirm&#8221; the problems he cited.
Berliner&#8217;s resignation happened after Maher <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/nprs-new-ceo-scolds-25-year-veteran-for-expose-outing-networks-bias" target="_blank" rel="noopener">condemned</a> what she said was a &#8220;deeply simplistic&#8221; and &#8220;profoundly disrespectful, hurtful, and demeaning&#8221; assessment of NPR. Maher faced more blowback as posts and clips spread on social media, showing her being critical of former President Donald Trump and supportive of President Joe Biden. They also displayed personal views in favor of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/15/business/media/npr-chief-executive-criticized-over-tweets.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">liberal causes</a>. Maher later <a href="https://www.wsj.com/business/media/npr-chief-defends-coverage-accuses-critics-of-bad-faith-distortion-of-her-views-cc5869ac" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told</a> The Wall Street Journal that critics were making a &#8220;bad faith distortion&#8221; of her views.
The House GOP letter noted many of the allegations raised by Berliner, including a claim that all of NPR&#8217;s editorial staffers in Washington, D.C., were registered Democrats. They also highlighted past comments from Mater about dealing with &#8220;bad information,&#8221; striking a balance with the speech protections under the First Amendment, and warning how the &#8220;truth might be a distraction.&#8221;
McMorris Rodgers and her colleagues wrote the committee is &#8220;concerned that your personal views and opinions on matters of public interest heavily influence your decision making at NPR and may cloud objective reporting of the news at NPR.&#8221; In addition to the invite, they posed questions to Maher on internal NPR matters such as employee party affiliation, asking that the information be provided by May 14.
&#8220;In your own words, &#8216;slowing down a little bit and bringing the conversation in, [] listening with sincerity, debating with respect, consulting widely, and weighing difficult decisions with candor,&#8217; might be what NPR needs to rebuild the damage to its reputation and credibility,&#8221; the letter said.
It was not immediately clear whether Maher would cooperate with the House Republicans. The Daily Wire has reached out to NPR seeking comment on the letter.
Although there has been a renewed push to cut funding for NPR, including a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/partisan-propaganda-machine-republicans-push-to-defund-npr-over-political-bias" target="_blank" rel="noopener">proposed</a> measure from House Republicans, Berliner rejected the calls to defund the network. &#8220;I respect the integrity of my colleagues and wish for NPR to thrive and do important journalism,&#8221; he said.

Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers

House Republicans Seek NPR CEO Testimony About Liberal Bias Allegations

If you don&#8217;t remember &#8220;Car Talk,&#8221; it was a radio show that lasted more than three decades on NPR, until it ended in 2012. The idea was that people called in with practical questions and dilemmas relating to their cars, and then the hosts dispensed advice — whether it was about car maintenance or repair or whatever. The show no longer exists, though, because the NPR that broadcast that show for 35 years no longer exists. The idea of a show that actually addresses people&#8217;s problems in real life, based on knowledge of how markets and automobiles or anything else actually works, has been unthinkable to the management of NPR for some time. Shows that cover the news from an objective factual perspective, to the extent possible, are also out of style. Instead, for the past decade, NPR has been controlled by activists who have devoted themselves to two primary pursuits. 
The first pursuit is blanketing the airwaves with identity politics at every conceivable opportunity. That&#8217;s why they run segments on diverse gender representation in <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/06/10/1104266396/lgbtq-communitys-battle-for-the-dinosaur-emoji-key-moments-from-jan-6-hearing" target="_blank" rel="noopener">dinosaur emojis</a> for example. 
The second pursuit has been shutting down stories that are inconvenient for the politicians who are voting to spend your money to finance NPR&#8217;s operation. Infamously, NPR&#8217;s executive editor, Terence Samuel, claimed that the Hunter Biden laptop scandal wasn&#8217;t a &#8220;<a href="https://twitter.com/NPRpubliceditor/status/1319281101223940096" target="_blank" rel="noopener">real story</a>.&#8221; He said it was a &#8220;distraction.&#8221; And instead of firing Samuel, NPR promoted him. American University even invited Samuel to deliver a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFvV24PWfF4&amp;lc=Ugz7bLd9ECugl009UZF4AaABAg" target="_blank" rel="noopener">lecture</a> entitled, &#8220;How Journalism Can Save Itself and Democracy.&#8221;
It&#8217;s harder to think of a better way to summarize what NPR has become. They aren&#8217;t simply bumbling propagandists. They&#8217;re also incredibly self-satisfied and narcissistic. They believe that they alone can save American democracy. And they think that, in order to do that, they need to control what kinds of information you can see. It&#8217;s not that they thought the Hunter Biden laptop story was &#8220;unvetted&#8221; or &#8220;Russian disinformation&#8221; or whatever the excuse was. They always knew it was factually accurate. But just because something is factually accurate, in NPR&#8217;s eyes, doesn&#8217;t make it true. According to NPR, truth is subjective; whatever&#8217;s most expedient politically for them is what&#8217;s true.
For a long time now, this position — which really amounts to nihilism — was unstated at NPR, at least publicly. But now it&#8217;s explicit, thanks to a new CEO and president by the name of Katherine Maher who recently took over at NPR. Maher very clearly does not believe that the truth is objective. She also doesn&#8217;t believe it&#8217;s worth trying to find out what the truth may be. This is an extraordinary position for the chief executive of a publicly funded news organization to have, but it&#8217;s what Katherine Maher believes. 
This is a speech of hers that&#8217;s been making the rounds this week. It&#8217;s from back when she was running Wikimedia, which is mainly known for Wikipedia. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="002 Truth" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WWEiwvNwsGM?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
&nbsp;
This is what passes for good public speaking these days. But she speaks in a robotic, sing-songy voice that makes it sound like she’s a kindergarten teacher lecturing a bunch of 5-year-olds. She has the tone of someone who believes firmly in the superiority of her own intellect, even though what she’s saying is so abjectly stupid. 
She says truth is subjective, and that everyone in the room has his or her own &#8220;truth.&#8221; But here&#8217;s the problem. Truth exists because reality exists. Either something is a part of reality or it isn&#8217;t. To deny objective truth is to deny reality. And you can&#8217;t even deny reality without asserting a reality — the reality that there is no reality. So the relativistic view is not only false, but so false as to be incomprehensible if you think about it for more than two seconds.
Maher&#8217;s remarks are the same idiot relativism that you can hear from any freshman philosophy student, but she goes to great pains to make her take seem nuanced and innovative. She talks in circles and ends back at &#8220;there are many different truths.&#8221; She says this even after acknowledging that the truth exists. Again, those are two contradictory ideas, but that doesn&#8217;t bother Maher for a second. Like most of our overeducated elite class, she&#8217;s incapable of speaking without a parade of cliches while making tedious and absurd ideas sound far more complex than they really are. 
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1350-member-exclusive" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show</a></h4>
Also according to Maher, we have &#8220;glorious chronicles to the human experience in many different cultures&#8221; because we have &#8220;many different truths.&#8221; But that&#8217;s not what these &#8220;glorious chronicles&#8221; show us. Instead, they show us that the truth is objective and eternal. Different cultures and people across time have had different ways of perceiving the truth — talking about it, accessing it, embracing it, or rejecting it, yes. But the truth remains the same. That is what makes the study of history, and different cultures through history, so fascinating. It is precisely because all of these different people across time and space lived in the same reality, and yet had wildly different ways of existing in it, and responding to it. 
Katherine Maher doesn&#8217;t seem to understand this, or at least she pretends not to. She repeats her theory of truth at every possible opportunity. Here&#8217;s some more footage from a conference two years ago. Maher begins by explaining that Galileo was prosecuted for saying that the Earth and planets revolve around the Sun, which is a basically accurate if wildly oversimplified retelling of that historical episode — although it doesn&#8217;t prove what Maher seems to think it does. Then she makes an incredible statement. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="003 Truth is Changing" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/dP5g369_nvs?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
&#8220;The truth, by definition, is malleable,&#8221; says Maher. Really? By whose definition exactly? You can make the case that postmodernists thinkers and their precursors — like Machiavelli, Nietzsche, and Rousseau — might agree with that statement. But you won&#8217;t hear many traditional thinkers (prior to, say, Heidegger) saying that the truth is &#8220;malleable.&#8221; So why should we adopt the postmodern belief and not the traditional one? There has to be some reason to side with one school of thought and not another.
In any event, if truth is merely &#8220;malleable&#8221; — if there&#8217;s no knowable, essential structure to it — then definitions themselves are just language games. There&#8217;s no significance to any of it. It&#8217;s just a power struggle. When you get down to it, that&#8217;s really what Maher is saying. She&#8217;s asserting that &#8220;the truth&#8221; is &#8220;malleable&#8221; as an act of political will because she doesn&#8217;t believe in any objectively true definitions. She keeps saying, over and over again, the words &#8220;the truth,&#8221; only to make it clear that she has no idea what that is.
And from that very shaky foundation, Maher starts to derive some very shaky corollaries. At one point, Maher implies that people don&#8217;t trust the media anymore not because the media lied to them, but because people have different mistaken &#8220;truths&#8221; that they&#8217;re clinging to. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="004 Misinformation" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/IqICz5BBR5A?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
It&#8217;s another revealing statement that Maher makes without any justification. She&#8217;s implying that democracies aren&#8217;t (or can&#8217;t be) xenophobic or nationalist. But the Greeks were both. Greek democracies were very much “xenophobic” — if that’s how you want to put it — and nationalist in nature. There&#8217;s no doubt about that. So why is democracy the goal here? Is that even her goal?
Really, her only given justification for thinking our traditional conception of truth is inadequate, and needs to be reworked, is that the &#8220;truth&#8221; we have now is the product of a history which is also political. &#8220;History is written by victors&#8221; is one of the many cliches she invokes throughout her speeches. And she says that excludes various potential sources of knowledge like &#8220;indigenous&#8221; perspectives and practices, or women with their &#8220;emotional intelligence.&#8221;
But that&#8217;s not incompatible with the reality that &#8220;the truth&#8221; is real, is universal, and many aspects of it have been uniquely uncovered by Western thought, science, and technology. Even if you bought into Maher&#8217;s talking points about a “plurality of perspectives” being better than &#8220;one alone&#8221; for getting at &#8220;the truth,&#8221; the fact remains that it took 2,000 years of Western, Eurocentric, supposedly white supremacist, heteronormative, misogynist history for us to reach the point at which these minor tail-end improvements she&#8217;s suggesting could be made. 
It took 2,000 years of history to create the civilization that Maher is now critiquing. And if she thinks this new approach will cause some kind of &#8220;scientific revolution,&#8221; it won&#8217;t. The more likely outcome is that it will destroy the civilization that was built over thousands of years. That is the point after all. And this is the essence of what we call wokeness. The Left likes to put conservatives on the spot by demanding a definition of “woke.” Well, here it is — the rejection of truth as a category. That’s what wokeness is, when boiled down to its most fundamental parts.
As for Maher, it&#8217;s tempting to dismiss all of this footage as the ramblings of a single woman who has no idea what she&#8217;s talking about. But it&#8217;s a bit more significant than that. Maher was selected to lead NPR, after an allegedly careful vetting process. There&#8217;s no way that NPR didn&#8217;t scrutinize her beliefs, which Maher has expressed many times over the last few years in public social media posts and numerous speeches.
On Twitter, Chris Rufo has exposed some of the more deranged posts from this woman. There are really too many to mention, but suffice it to say, she&#8217;s like a woke AI bot that churns out the least original woke liberal woman talking points you can possibly imagine. She uses the word &#8220;folx,&#8221; with the &#8220;x&#8221; at the end. She says &#8220;Latinx.&#8221; She called Donald Trump a racist and cried with joy when Biden took office, of course. She wrote that she once dreamed of going on a road trip with Kamala Harris eating &#8220;nuts and baklava.&#8221; She expresses her happiness when she logs into the public WiFi at a COVID clinic and the password is &#8220;HeSheThey,&#8221; recognizing the lived experience of nonbinary patients. She calls the Internet &#8220;sexist.&#8221; 
At one point, she apologized for using the phrase “people who identify as women,” because it&#8217;s a form of “trans-erasure.&#8221; She writes about the importance of &#8220;transit justice&#8221; and vegetarian Thanksgiving, and rants about the &#8220;male gaze&#8221; and &#8220;late-stage capitalism,&#8221; even as she drew a salary of $800,000 a year. There are many more examples; Chris Rufo&#8217;s feed has categorized many of them.
To burnish her intellectual credentials even further, Maher even <a href="https://x.com/njhochman/status/1780638504097022442">sat on a panel</a> with Lizzo at a Ted conference where tickets cost more than $10,000. The name of Lizzos&#8217; talk was, &#8220;The Black history of twerking — and how it taught me self-love.&#8221; 
But Maher doesn&#8217;t need lessons on self-love, she has that covered. What she&#8217;s looking for now is power. 
In a video posted by the Atlantic Council and unearthed by Rufo, Maher explains that the First Amendment — which you&#8217;d think journalists would support, since it&#8217;s the one thing keeping journalists out of prison — is not a sacred constitutional principle. Instead, she says, it&#8217;s a &#8220;challenge&#8221; to be overcome. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="005 Katherine Maher Vs First Free Speech" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/MGpZJt5uU2s?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
The only people who view the First Amendment as a &#8220;challenge&#8221; are government censors who want to shut down any dissent by force. And now that she&#8217;s running a state-funded media outlet, that&#8217;s exactly what Maher is. She&#8217;s a state-funded censor.
To that end, she no longer believes in transparency. The irony is that, when she was running Wikimedia, Maher kept talking about the importance of showing people everything that&#8217;s going on inside the company. Every edit on Wikipedia, she said, is public for a reason. Disclosure is sometimes &#8220;painful,&#8221; she said, but it&#8217;s necessary. 
Transparency is key, she said at the time. But apparently this is one of the malleable &#8220;truths&#8221; that Katherine Maher has decided to discard. As you&#8217;ve probably heard, she just forced out an NPR whistleblower who <a href="https://nypost.com/2024/04/17/media/npr-editor-uri-berliner-resigns-after-bombshell-expose-reveals-networks-pervasive-left-wing-bias/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">wrote</a> a damning <a href="https://www.thefp.com/p/npr-editor-how-npr-lost-americas-trust" target="_blank" rel="noopener">column</a> in the Free Press about the organization&#8217;s corruption and overwhelming bias. She <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/npr-suspends-editor-who-accused-network-of-bias-issues-final-warning" target="_blank" rel="noopener">suspended</a> this 25-year veteran of NPR without pay because he pointed out that the organization is now completely one-sided. 
For example, the whistleblower wrote:
<blockquote>Concerned by the lack of viewpoint diversity, I looked at voter registration for our newsroom. In D.C., where NPR is headquartered and many of us live, I found 87 registered Democrats working in editorial positions and zero Republicans. None.</blockquote>
That&#8217;s not the kind of transparency that the new NPR CEO appreciates, apparently. She&#8217;s happy to talk about how NPR employs too many white men. But she definitely doesn&#8217;t want to talk about political bias, or how useless NPR has become. It used to be that NPR at least pretended to be embarrassed about this. In 2011, NPR&#8217;s CEO at the time, Vivian Schiller, resigned after a Project Veritas sting exposed what she thought about conservatives in the Tea Party movement. To summarize: she didn’t like them. Schiller had to resign once her views came to light. Back then, NPR believed that the appearance of fairness was at least a little important.
But that was the &#8220;Car Talk&#8221; era of NPR. Now they believe their CEO can categorically reject the idea that there&#8217;s any truth to report on. This is a belief system that&#8217;s now in vogue in newsrooms all over the country. It&#8217;s a big reason for the rise of transgenderism, COVID hysteria, and all the media&#8217;s lying we had to endure under the previous administration. 
This is the belief system that insists that men can become women, because the meaning of the words &#8220;men&#8221; and &#8220;women&#8221; are subjective. And it will spell the end of Western civilization unless we reject it. That is, of course, the point of everything Katherine Maher is saying. In the absence of truth, there is only a struggle for power. And right now — and hopefully not for much longer — it&#8217;s people like Katherine Maher who have that power.

Day 2 – Web Summit 2019 Lisbon

New CEO Of NPR Is Everything Wrong With The News Media

Activists

Leftism

Progressivism

Readers Pass

NPR&#8217;s president and CEO said she abandoned the idea of a &#8220;free and open&#8221; internet as the mission of Wikipedia, which she used to lead, because it is a &#8220;white, male, Westernized construct.&#8221;
In a newly resurfaced video clip, Katherine Maher, who took over as NPR&#8217;s chief executive in January says she found Wikpedia&#8217;s &#8220;free and open&#8221; ethos &#8220;inherently limited.&#8221; The clip was posted to X by Christopher Rufo, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
Maher served as chief executive at the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that operates Wikipedia, from 2019 to 2021.
&#8220;I have come to the opinion and the perspective that &#8216;free and open&#8217; was a way of looking at the world that was inherently limited relative to what we were trying to achieve,&#8221; Maher says in the clip.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
EXCLUSIVE: Katherine Maher says that she abandoned a &quot;free and open&quot; internet as the mission of Wikipedia, because those principles recapitulated a &quot;white male Westernized construct&quot; and &quot;did not end up living into the intentionality of what openness can be.&quot; <a href="https://t.co/Ved9mgGvJH">pic.twitter.com/Ved9mgGvJH</a>
&mdash; Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) <a href="https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/status/1780929268949614848?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 18, 2024</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
EXCLUSIVE: Katherine Maher doesn&#39;t just want to &quot;stamp out bad information&quot; on the internet. She wants to replace it with &quot;good information&quot;—i.e., left-wing narratives—and force the public to &quot;sit within that good information&quot; as &quot;a collective.&quot;
Big Sister has arrived. <a href="https://t.co/7kfq8VYHfj">pic.twitter.com/7kfq8VYHfj</a>
&mdash; Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) <a href="https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/status/1781009614584381486?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 18, 2024</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
EXCLUSIVE: Katherine Maher says the &quot;the number one challenge&quot; in her fight against disinformation is &quot;the First Amendment in the United States,&quot; which makes it &quot;a little bit tricky&quot; to censor &quot;bad information&quot; and &quot;the influence peddlers&quot; who spread it.
NPR&#39;s censor-in-chief. <a href="https://t.co/0vY6hIpbmO">pic.twitter.com/0vY6hIpbmO</a>
&mdash; Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) <a href="https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/status/1780597079439446250?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 17, 2024</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
&#8220;&#8216;Free and open&#8217; has the best of intentionality, but in the end what &#8216;free and open&#8217; often ended up doing, and particularly in the case of Wikipedia, was recapitulating many of the same power structures and dynamics that exist offline, prior to the advent of the internet,&#8221; Maher said.
One of the problems with Wikipedia is the way it relies on a &#8220;written tradition&#8221; and &#8220;reliable sources,&#8221; Maher said.
&#8220;You see the exclusion of communities, of languages because of the ways in which Wikipedia is based on reliable sources. The idea of a written tradition, which is particular to some cultures and not to others,&#8221; the former Wikimedia CEO said.
&#8220;The ways in which we ascribe notability often really comes from sort of this white, male, Westernized construct around who matters in societies and who is elevated and whose voices. And so some of these ideas of sort of this radical openness really did not end up living into the intentionality of what openness can be,&#8221; she said.
X owner Elon Musk responded to the clip, <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1780962477011796287" target="_blank" rel="noopener">posting</a>, &#8220;That’s literally the point of Wikipedia.&#8221;
Maher has recently come under fire from conservatives after a former NPR editor blew the whistle on the outlet&#8217;s liberal bias. Former editor Uri Berliner resigned Wednesday after NPR suspended him.
In the wake of the NPR editor&#8217;s accusations, a slew of since-deleted tweets and previous statements from Maher have surfaced, adding fuel to the outrage.
In another clip posted by Rufo, Maher says she is interested in how we can &#8220;immerse ourself in good information,&#8221; not just &#8220;stamp out bad information.&#8221;
In yet another clip, Maher says the &#8220;number one challenge&#8221; for her in fighting disinformation is the First Amendment, which she calls a &#8220;fairly robust protection of rights.&#8221;
&#8220;It also means that it is a little bit tricky to really address some of the real challenges of where does bad information come from,&#8221; she said.
She has been accused of expressing explicitly biased views in her previous tweets.
In 2018, Maher <a href="https://nypost.com/2024/04/13/us-news/nprs-new-ceo-katherine-mahers-woke-tweets-arise-as-editor-claims-bias/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">posted</a>, “Donald Trump is a racist.”
In 2020 she wrote, &#8220;I mean, sure, looting is counterproductive. But it’s 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.&#8221;

Web Summit Lisbon 2023

‘White, Male, Westernized’: NPR President Said She Opposed Wikipedia’s ‘Free And Open’ Mission

'White, Male, Westernized': NPR President Said She Opposed Wikipedia's 'Free And Open' Mission

Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI)

First Amendment

Free Speech

Wikipedia

Wokeness

Dozens of National Public Radio (NPR) employees signed on to a letter suggesting that their now-former senior business editor <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/we-lost-americas-trust-npr-veteran-says-network-has-lost-its-way" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Uri Berliner</a> was spot on in his assessment of the liberal bias that has taken over the network.
New York Times media reporter Ben Mullin shared screenshots of the letter, addressed to CEO <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/nprs-new-ceo-scolds-25-year-veteran-for-expose-outing-networks-bias" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Katherine Maher</a> and Editor in Chief <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/npr-chief-hits-back-at-whistleblower-who-says-colleagues-secretly-agree" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Edith Chapin</a>, which claimed that Berliner&#8217;s essay in The Free Press had left many of them feeling as though they&#8217;d been personally attacked.
&#8220;About 50 NPR employees sign a letter to CEO Katherine Maher and top editor Edith Chapin calling for, among other things, a public rebuke of the &#8216;factual inaccuracies and elisions&#8217; in Uri Berliner’s Free Press essay,&#8221; Mullin&#8217;s caption read.
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new: About 50 NPR employees sign a letter to CEO Katherine Maher and top editor Edith Chapin calling for, among other things, a public rebuke of the “factual inaccuracies and elisions” in Uri Berliner’s Free Press essay. <a href="https://t.co/jXc1R4J0G3">pic.twitter.com/jXc1R4J0G3</a>
&mdash; Ben Mullin (@BenMullin) <a href="https://twitter.com/BenMullin/status/1780635242170028359?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 17, 2024</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
&#8220;We&#8217;re writing to urge stronger support for staff who have had their journalistic expertise called into question by one of their own in a public forum,&#8221; the letter read. &#8220;We also urge more transparency regarding the consequences of making unauthorized public comments that seek to change NPR&#8217;s editorial direction.&#8221;
The letter went on to say that while both Chapin and Maher had shared their objections to Berliner&#8217;s claims — namely that the outlet been wholly disinterested in presenting stories that might hurt President Joe Biden or help former President Donald Trump — the employees were concerned that their efforts to spur policy changes through Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives were being undermined by Berliner&#8217;s public comments.
&#8220;Staff, many from marginalized backgrounds, have pushed for internal policy changes through mechanisms like the DEI accountability committee, sharing of affinity group guidelines, and an ad-hoc content review group,&#8221; they wrote, complaining that Berliner was getting more attention and apparent change from a short essay than they had after years of work.
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Their concern on that point, they said, was that others within the network might get the idea that a pointed editorial was more effective at forcing change than going through proper channels.
They also complained that Berliner&#8217;s essay had &#8220;made their jobs harder&#8221; and called on Maher and Chapin to clearly &#8220;offer public support and defense of those individuals whose work was directly undermined by the opinion piece.&#8221;

US-BUSINESS-NPR

Dozens Of NPR Employees Write Letter Proving Uri Berliner Was Right About Everything

Censorship

Senior Business Editor Uri Berliner is resigning from <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/national-public-radio-npr" target="_blank" rel="noopener">National Public Radio (NPR)</a> a little more than a week after he publicly <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/we-lost-americas-trust-npr-veteran-says-network-has-lost-its-way" target="_blank" rel="noopener">accused</a> the network of espousing left-wing bias in an essay.
In a post to X on Wednesday, Berliner shared what he said was his resignation letter to NPR CEO Katherine Maher, who <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/nprs-new-ceo-scolds-25-year-veteran-for-expose-outing-networks-bias" target="_blank" rel="noopener">lashed out</a> at the editor&#8217;s critique and has faced blowback over old tweets.
&#8220;I am resigning from NPR, a great American institution where I have worked for 25 years,&#8221; Berliner said. &#8220;I don&#8217;t support calls to defund NPR. I respect the integrity of my colleagues and wish for NPR to thrive and do important journalism.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
My resignation letter to NPR CEO <a href="https://twitter.com/krmaher?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@krmaher</a> <a href="https://t.co/0hafVbcZAK">pic.twitter.com/0hafVbcZAK</a>
&mdash; Uri Berliner (@uberliner) <a href="https://twitter.com/uberliner/status/1780610524411048183?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 17, 2024</a></blockquote>
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He added, &#8220;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.&#8221;
The Free Press <a href="https://www.thefp.com/p/npr-editor-how-npr-lost-americas-trust?utm_source=direct&amp;utm_campaign=post&amp;utm_medium=web&amp;fbclid=IwAR2BI7aGsLrw5JzADcxw-Ddx9IFpaQzQxVieieHiYiYvBozjQ3W_q8XSMoY_aem_Afb8djuPsGMotINI-8VtH0_ouA2n_5T1rMS3kvz8x_-AGiNOlKuozOh6WEdCnd1xeok&amp;triedRedirect=true" target="_blank" rel="noopener">published</a> the essay on Tuesday last week in which Berliner argued NPR &#8220;lost America&#8217;s trust&#8221; with its increasingly liberal bent.
His critique touched on topics related to former President Donald Trump, NPR&#8217;s COVID coverage, reporting on transgender issues, audience figures, the network&#8217;s own level of diversity, and more.
Berliner additionally wrote about how he tried to make some of his concerns known internally. He said no one ever &#8220;trashed&#8221; him, but he was repeatedly brushed off and nothing changed.
On Tuesday of this week, NPR&#8217;s media correspondent David Folkenflik reported that Berliner had received a letter informing him that he had been <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/npr-suspends-editor-who-accused-network-of-bias-issues-final-warning" target="_blank" rel="noopener">suspended</a> without pay for five days starting on Friday.
NPR told Berliner he failed to follow the network&#8217;s rules and get approval for outside work for other news outlets. Berliner was also accused of publicly releasing proprietary information about audience demographics that <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/npr" target="_blank" rel="noopener">NPR</a> considered confidential.
The letter, billed as a &#8220;final warning,&#8221; said Berliner would be fired for another policy violation. Berliner conceded he did not get permission to speak with Folkenflik, but said he thought it would be &#8220;extraordinary&#8221; if he were fired for speaking to an NPR journalist.
In the backlash that followed the essay, Trump <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-calls-for-cutting-npr-funds-after-editor-accuses-network-of-bias" target="_blank" rel="noopener">demanded</a> NPR&#8217;s funding be cut. And Maher, who has served as NPR&#8217;s chief executive for less than a month, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/nprs-new-ceo-scolds-25-year-veteran-for-expose-outing-networks-bias" target="_blank" rel="noopener">condemned</a> the &#8220;deeply simplistic&#8221; and &#8220;profoundly disrespectful, hurtful, and demeaning&#8221; assessment.
Old tweets from Maher that displayed her personal views in favor of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/15/business/media/npr-chief-executive-criticized-over-tweets.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">liberal causes</a> began to resurface as the fallout over Berliner&#8217;s essay and follow-up interviews began to grow, fueling more criticism, particularly from the Right.
Maher called Trump a &#8220;racist&#8221; in a <a href="https://archive.is/9Egnx" target="_blank" rel="noopener">2018 post</a> that has since been deleted and shared a <a href="https://twitter.com/krmaher/status/1323094291732815872" target="_blank" rel="noopener">photo</a> of herself wearing a hat touting President Joe Biden&#8217;s campaign in November of 2020.
Journalist Christopher Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, posted to X on Wednesday a clip of Maher talking about the First Amendment and platforms dealing with &#8220;bad information.&#8221;
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EXCLUSIVE: Katherine Maher says the &quot;the number one challenge&quot; in her fight against disinformation is &quot;the First Amendment in the United States,&quot; which makes it &quot;a little bit tricky&quot; to censor &quot;bad information&quot; and &quot;the influence peddlers&quot; who spread it.
NPR&#39;s censor-in-chief. <a href="https://t.co/0vY6hIpbmO">pic.twitter.com/0vY6hIpbmO</a>
&mdash; Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) <a href="https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/status/1780597079439446250?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 17, 2024</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Berliner told Folkenflik the posts indicate Maher is the &#8220;opposite&#8221; of the kind of leader NPR needs to be &#8220;unifying and bring more people into the tent and have a broader perspective on, sort of, what America is all about.&#8221;
Maher released a statement that said &#8220;everyone is entitled to free speech as a private citizen&#8221; in America.
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&#8220;What matters is NPR&#8217;s work and my commitment as its CEO: public service, editorial independence, and the mission to serve all of the American public,&#8221; she added. &#8220;NPR is independent, beholden to no party, and without commercial interests.&#8221;
The report from Folkenflik noted that NPR emphasized that &#8220;the CEO is not involved in editorial decisions.&#8221;
Folkenflik wrote that some in the newsroom acknowledge Berliner&#8217;s critique as valid, while others say they are no longer willing to work with him.
NPR&#8217;s chief news executive, Edith Chapin, reportedly announced that Executive Editor Eva Rodriguez would lead monthly coverage review meetings. Berliner reportedly said he welcomed the announcement but would reserve judgment until those meetings happen.

NPR Editor Who Accused Network Of Liberal Bias Resigns

<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/national-public-radio-npr" target="_blank" rel="noopener">National Public Radio (NPR)</a> has suspended Senior Business Editor Uri Berliner after he publicly <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/we-lost-americas-trust-npr-veteran-says-network-has-lost-its-way" target="_blank" rel="noopener">accused</a> the network of espousing left-wing bias with an essay that began a media firestorm.
Last week, Berliner received a letter that informed him of a five-day suspension without pay beginning Friday, according to a <a href="https://www.npr.org/2024/04/16/1244962042/npr-editor-uri-berliner-suspended-essay" target="_blank" rel="noopener">report</a> by NPR&#8217;s media correspondent David Folkenflik.
NPR told Berliner he failed to follow the network&#8217;s rules and get approval for outside work for other news outlets after his <a href="https://www.thefp.com/p/npr-editor-how-npr-lost-americas-trust?utm_source=direct&amp;utm_campaign=post&amp;utm_medium=web&amp;fbclid=IwAR2BI7aGsLrw5JzADcxw-Ddx9IFpaQzQxVieieHiYiYvBozjQ3W_q8XSMoY_aem_Afb8djuPsGMotINI-8VtH0_ouA2n_5T1rMS3kvz8x_-AGiNOlKuozOh6WEdCnd1xeok&amp;triedRedirect=true" target="_blank" rel="noopener">essay</a> for The Free Press and follow-up interviews.
Berliner was also accused of publicly releasing proprietary information about audience demographics that <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/npr" target="_blank" rel="noopener">NPR</a> considered confidential, per the report.
The letter, which was called a &#8220;final warning,&#8221; said Berliner would be fired for another policy violation.
Berliner, a dues-paying member of NPR&#8217;s newsroom union, told Folkenflik that he would not appeal the punishment.
He claimed the figures discussed in his essay &#8220;were essentially marketing material. If they had been really good, they probably would have distributed them and sent them out to the world.&#8221;
Berliner conceded that he did not get permission to speak with Folkenflik, but said he thought it would be &#8220;extraordinary&#8221; if he were fired for speaking to an NPR journalist.
The Free Press <a href="https://www.thefp.com/p/npr-editor-how-npr-lost-americas-trust?utm_source=direct&amp;utm_campaign=post&amp;utm_medium=web&amp;fbclid=IwAR2BI7aGsLrw5JzADcxw-Ddx9IFpaQzQxVieieHiYiYvBozjQ3W_q8XSMoY_aem_Afb8djuPsGMotINI-8VtH0_ouA2n_5T1rMS3kvz8x_-AGiNOlKuozOh6WEdCnd1xeok&amp;triedRedirect=true" target="_blank" rel="noopener">published</a> the essay on Tuesday last week in which Berliner argued NPR &#8220;lost America&#8217;s trust&#8221; with its increasingly liberal bent.
His critique touched on topics related to former President Donald Trump, NPR&#8217;s COVID coverage, reporting on transgender issues, audience figures, the network&#8217;s own level of diversity, and more.
Berliner additionally wrote about how he tried to make some of his concerns known internally. He said no one ever &#8220;trashed&#8221; him, but he was repeatedly brushed off and nothing changed.
In the public backlash that followed the essay, Trump <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-calls-for-cutting-npr-funds-after-editor-accuses-network-of-bias" target="_blank" rel="noopener">demanded</a> that NPR&#8217;s funding be cut. Despite his critique, Berliner said &#8220;defunding&#8221; was not the way to address the &#8220;missteps&#8221; he outlined.
NPR&#8217;s chief executive of less than a month, Katherine Maher, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/nprs-new-ceo-scolds-25-year-veteran-for-expose-outing-networks-bias" target="_blank" rel="noopener">lashed out</a> at the &#8220;deeply simplistic&#8221; and &#8220;profoundly disrespectful, hurtful, and demeaning&#8221; essay without mentioning Berliner&#8217;s name.
After Berliner&#8217;s essay was published, old tweets from Maher resurfaced that displayed her personal views in favor of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/15/business/media/npr-chief-executive-criticized-over-tweets.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">liberal causes,</a> fueling more criticism, particularly from the Right.
Maher called Trump a &#8220;racist&#8221; in a <a href="https://archive.is/9Egnx" target="_blank" rel="noopener">2018 post</a> that has since been deleted and shared a <a href="https://twitter.com/krmaher/status/1323094291732815872" target="_blank" rel="noopener">photo</a> of herself wearing a hat touting President Joe Biden&#8217;s campaign in November of 2020.
Berliner said the posts indicate Maher is the &#8220;opposite&#8221; of the kind of leader NPR needs to be &#8220;unifying and bring more people into the tent and have a broader perspective on, sort of, what America is all about.&#8221;
Maher released a statement that said &#8220;everyone is entitled to free speech as a private citizen&#8221; in America.
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&#8220;What matters is NPR&#8217;s work and my commitment as its CEO: public service, editorial independence, and the mission to serve all of the American public,&#8221; she added. &#8220;NPR is independent, beholden to no party, and without commercial interests.&#8221;
The report noted that NPR emphasized that &#8220;the CEO is not involved in editorial decisions.&#8221;
Folkenflik wrote that some in the newsroom acknowledge Berliner&#8217;s critique as valid, while others say they are no longer willing to work with him.
The report said NPR&#8217;s chief news executive, Edith Chapin, announced late Monday that Executive Editor Eva Rodriguez would lead monthly coverage review meetings.
Berliner reportedly said he welcomed the announcement but would reserve judgment until those meetings happen.

NPR HQ

NPR Suspends Editor Who Accused Network Of Bias, Issues ‘Final Warning’

NPR Suspends Editor Who Accused Network Of Bias, Issues 'Final Warning'

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