The woke, anti-Trump tweets of NPR’s new CEO are coming back to haunt her after she struggled to refute bombshell charges of journalistic bias lodged this week by a veteran editor.
Award-winning NPR business editor Uri Berliner’s lengthy essay in The Free Press was “profoundly disrespectful, hurtful, and demeaning,” Katherine Maher, the radio network’s 42-year-old president, complained in a letter to staffers.
“Our people represent America, our irreducibly complex nation,” Maher wrote Friday, in a response that did not address Berliner’s evidence of the news organization’s relentlessly leftist slant.
“We succeed through our diversity.”
But in January, when Maher was announced as NPR’s new leader, The Post revealed her penchant for parroting the progressive line on social media — including bluntly biased Twitter posts like “Donald Trump is a racist,” which she wrote in 2018.
That hyper-partisan message was scrubbed from the platform now known as X, but preserved on the site Archive.Today.
It’s unclear when Maher deleted it, or if its removal was tied to her new gig.
Other woke posts remain on Maher’s X account.
In 2020, as the George Floyd riots raged, she attempted to justify the looting epidemic in Los Angeles as payback for the sins of slavery.
“I mean, sure, looting is counterproductive,” Maher wrote on May 31, 2020.
“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.”
The next day, she lectured her 27,000 followers on “white silence.”
“White silence is complicity,” she scolded.
“If you are white, today is the day to start a conversation in your community.”
The NPR job is Maher’s first position in journalism or media.
She was previously the CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation, the San Francisco-based nonprofit that hosts Wikipedia, after holding communications roles for the likes of HSBC, UNICEF and the World Bank.
Maher earned a bachelor’s degree in Middle Eastern and Islamic studies from New York University, according to her LinkedIn account, and grew up in Wilton, Conn. — a town that her mother, Ceci Maher, now represents as a Democratic state senator.
Everything you need to know about the NPR political bias scandal
- Veteran NPR editor Uri Berliner wrote a bombshell essay that claimed the broadcaster allowed liberal bias to affect its coverage. The senior business editor also said the internal culture at NPR had made race and identity ”paramount in nearly every aspect of the workplace.”
- Berliner slammed NPR for ignoring the Hunter Biden laptop scandal, and claimed a co-worker said he was happy the network wasn’t pursuing the story because it could help Donald Trump get re-elected.
- Berliner was suspended without pay following the essay and announced his resignation Wednesday.
- Berliner blasted NPR’s controversial new CEO, Katherine Maher, who previously posted hyper-partisan tweets, saying that she is the “opposite” of what the embattled radio outlet needs.
- After the essay was published, Berliner said, he received “a lot of support from colleagues, and many of them unexpected, who say they agree with me.”
- Berliner’s essay prompted new calls from Republican lawmakers to strip NPR of government funding.
- COLUMN: NPR, New York Times are in immense turmoil with the world on the verge of global conflict
On Tuesday, Berliner made waves with an essay slamming the left-leaning broadcaster for ignoring the Hunter Biden laptop scandal in 2020 for fear it could have helped Donald Trump get re-elected — calling out his bosses for turning NPR into “an openly polemical news outlet serving a niche audience.”
He also took his longtime employer to task for its coverage of the since-debunked Russia collusion saga — saying NPR “hitched our wagon to Trump’s most visible antagonist,” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.).
Berliner did some investigative journalism on his workplace to understand the reason for its coverage choices, he wrote.
“In DC, where NPR is headquartered and many of us live, I found 87 registered Democrats working in editorial positions and zero Republicans,” he reported.
“None.”
Maher’s Friday letter did not mention this finding, or debunk any of Berliner’s bias claims.
NPR did not immediately respond to a request for comment.