FIGHTING TALK

New NPR CEO Katherine Maher Strikes Back at Her ‘Bad Faith’ Detractors

Critics have resurfaced Katherine Maher’s past comments and questioned her objectivity.

National Public Radio’s new CEO has hit out at critics questioning her impartiality on the basis of past remarks amid turmoil at the broadcaster triggered by one of its editor’s allegations of editorial bias. Katherine Maher, who took on her role at NPR in March, has come under scrutiny in the wake of an essay by NPR editor Uri Berliner who claimed the network had damaged itself by adopting an overly liberal viewpoint (Berliner was suspended before announcing his resignation last week). One controversy has centered on a clip from a 2021 interview in which Maher spoke about the First Amendment and how it creates challenges for regulating social media platforms. Speaking to The Wall Street Journal, Maher said her comments had been taken out of context and that she was referring to the “landscape of constitutional protections and why that limits options of policymakers taking on certain issues.” “It is by no means a personal perspective; it’s a very bad faith distortion of a nuanced perspective on a policy landscape issue,” she added.