The New York Times reports that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) called on National Public Radio (NPR) CEO Katherine Maher to resign before all federal funding for both the CPB and NPR was cut off. As in the past, Maher and the NPR board chose their own agendas over the interests of their institution and public radio.
I have long been a critic of Maher since her inexplicable selection by the NPR board to lead the media organization. Despite years of objections to NPR’s overt bias, many critics genuinely wanted NPR to reverse course and adopt more balanced coverage. That is why, when NPR was searching for a new CEO, I encouraged the board to hire a moderate figure without a history of political advocacy or controversy.
Instead, the board selected Katherine Maher, a former Wikipedia CEO widely criticized for her highly partisan and controversial public statements. She was the personification of advocacy journalism, even declaring that the First Amendment is the “number one challenge” that makes it “tricky” to censor or “modify” content as she would like.
Maher has supported “deplatforming” anyone she deems to be “fascists” and even suggested that she might support “punching Nazis.” She also declared that “our reverence for the truth might be a distraction [in] getting things done.”
As expected, the bias at NPR only got worse. The leadership even changed a longstanding rule barring journalists from joining political protests.
One editor had had enough. Uri Berliner had watched NPR become an echo chamber for the far left with a virtual purging of all conservatives and Republicans from the newsroom. Berliner noted that NPR’s Washington headquarters has 87 registered Democrats among its editors and zero Republicans.
Maher and NPR remained dismissive of such complaints. Maher attacked the award-winning Berliner for causing an “affront to the individual journalists who work incredibly hard.” She called his criticism “profoundly disrespectful, hurtful, and demeaning.”
Berliner resigned, after noting how Maher’s “divisive views confirm the very problems at NPR” that he had been pointing out.
In her disastrous appearance before Congress, Maher sat next to PBS CEO Paula A. Kerger and dismissed criticism. What was not disclosed is that PBS agreed with some of us that, if Maher truly wanted to save federal funding and protect NPR, she would resign.
According to the Times, our calls for her resignation were being repeated internally. Instead, the board that made the foolish choice of hiring Maher chose their ideological and personal agendas over the interests of their institution . . . again.
In the meantime, Maher and others were going public, bewailing the threat to journalism and calling on citizens to do everything that they could to protect NPR. The only thing that they were not willing to do was admit their own failure.
We have seen the same pattern in academia.
The fact is that this academic echo chamber may be killing educational institutions, but the intolerance still works to the advantage of faculty who can control publications, speaking opportunities, and advancement with like-minded ideologues.
We have watched the same perverse incentive in the media where outlets are seeing plummeting readers and revenue. Journalism schools and editors now maintain that reporters should reject objectivity and neutrality as touchstones of journalism.
It does not matter that this advocacy journalism is killing the profession. Reporters and editors continue to saw at the limb upon which they sit due to the same advantage for academics. For reporters, converting newsrooms into echo chambers gives them more security, advancement, and opportunities.
Recently, the new Washington Post publisher and CEO William Lewis was brought into the paper to right the ship. He told the staff “let’s not sugarcoat it…We are losing large amounts of money. Your audience has halved in recent years. People are not reading your stuff. Right. I can’t sugarcoat it anymore.”
The response from reporters was to call for owner Jeff Bezos to fire Lewis and others seeking to change the culture. The Post has been eliminating positions and just implemented another round of layoffs to address the budget shortfalls.
In the meantime, trust in the media is at record lows — paralleling the polling on higher education. The result is the rise of new media as people turn to blogs and other sources for their news.
Turley let’s it be known he’s against punching Nazis in this push piece meant to defocus on DOJ openly breaking the law with Epstein file release. Turley is a con man.
You’re an imbecile.
I second that. Expunge him!
If it’s not being reported on CNN, NPR, ABC, NBC, it never happened. We all know that.
What do we actually know?
We know your two brain cells do not work together at all.
There is a saying for the person who wrote that post. “Stuck on Stupid.”.
It was Wikipedia. Then, NPR. What is next?
When people take up a warlike mentality, this is exactly what happens. Common sense flies out the door. That is my definition of the doorway into zealotry. An institution that tens of thousands built up over 50 years (remember Car Talk, Prairie Home Companion?) is destroyed by a core of selfish zealots. Beware: institution wreckers abound in the Age of Rage, and not just on the left. The tell is departure from common sense, balanced reasoning into unhinged warfare.
“core of selfish zealots.” Na… a public service. What people want. You not, but you don’t count.
Nothing like rushing towards oblivion while screaming “I’m right, I’m right” and “I will protect the truth and advocacy journalism to the death” and then looking down at the abyss and thinking “unh oh, maybe I’m wrong!!!”
NPR and PBS are beyond redemption.
GEB,
Good imagery!
I will occasionally tune in, in the truck to see if NPR has changed course . . . nope. Rather, flank speed right into the rocks.
Imagery? Since when does a pig farmer know the difference between an abyss and a pig pen? Got himself a thesaurus for xmas. It’s a start. Sorta hoped you’d hit a rock. Knock some sense into you.
Queue up hullbooby… 3…2….1… here he comes…
Whatever happened to “We don’t receive any government funding”?
NPR’s strategy is to stay alive until the Dems get control again at which time they expect their funding will be restored. They need listeners like Minnesota daycare centers need children to care for. They may only need to wait for the midterms.
“this academic echo chamber may be killing educational institutions, ”
“Educational” institutions, or any other organizations participating in such an abdication of reason are already the walking dead, ambulating only out of obscene hunger and reflex.
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcS1Y989kUOCUH7YZjxWt9kjogvme6uZeI7vew&s
Public broadcasting was never meant to be advocacy media.
The Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 tied federal support to objectivity and balance on controversial issues and insulated public media from political control so it could serve the entire public. NPR and PBS were created to inform and educate, not to advance agendas or punish dissent.
When leadership refuses to step aside “for the good of public media,” even as audiences collapse and trust evaporates, that’s not courage. It’s capture. The mission didn’t fail the institution. The institution abandoned the mission.
Public funding is a public trust. Once that trust is broken, the subsidy is no longer justified.
“Public funding is a public trust. Once that trust is broken, the subsidy is no longer justified.”
“Public funding” at the Federal level is nearly always in violation of the limitations of power enumerated in the Constitution, and, beyond that, almost invariably produces outcomes contrary to the true interests of the public whose welfare was entrusted to government as its sole justification. We need to get rid of it, writ very large…
If federal public funding is constitutionally suspect, that raises the bar for legitimacy rather than excuses its abuse. Once a subsidy abandons its stated purpose, it forfeits even its conditional justification.
By that reasoning, weather satellites are unconstitutional.
We have yet to find out if profit-driven news media are compatible long-term with intermediating the public square dialog in a free society. For example, audience fragmentation and specialization would seem to be natural consequences of competing for-profit media. The question becomes, who under that system is going to take up unity and cohesion of the polity as part of their mission?
Public Broadcasting strikes out.
Horribly biased, more often than not just a mouthpiece
A recipient of public funds for what should be a privately-owned, self-supporting business.
To arrogant to see the above
I have limited commentary about Katherine Maher except that her vaunted ego transcends that of even that of Nobel prize winners – who earned it. Besides, if she resigned she would be admitting failure, impossible for Maher.
I can think of one Nobel Prize winner who absolutely did not earn it.
Ok. Except for Obama.
Actually I think news media in the US have never been better. No, not the NY Times, Washington Post, MSNBC, NPR, etc. I mean the Internet in general and Substack in particular. Let a thousand flowers bloom!
Maybe not huh? Journalism in it hey day had people who abided to a code of ethics. Nowadays, any fool with a computer and a DSL line can lie all they want and call it journalism. Its simply a money-making endeavor. Think Candace Owens/Erika Kirk.
Amen
I’m staying on for the public good. English translation, I have no where else to go.
Maher’s performance at the congressional hearing was a master class in dismissive arrogance and perceived invincibility. An utterly repulsive diva who would not be bothered to change a single thing about the way she and “her” organization were permanently tacking leftward. A perfect example of the intolerant Left.
If a women obfuscates, its bad. If a male does it, it’s …?
Bad
👍
Isn’t it against the law to lie under oath? And isn’t it illegal to purposely withhold exculpatory evidence? And don’t these laws apply to Democrats as well as to Republicans? If so, why aren’t some of the J6 Subcommittee witnesses and all of the J6 Subcommittee members be wearing orange jumpsuits by now?
Its just a committee hearing, not a court trial. Different rules. The fact is, those folks in front of a committee know is an political event. The object is to score political points. Truth is irrelevant.
Double standards apply here. As they have for years now.
Congressional immunity applies to the House members I believe. The House could take it upon themselves to discipline those persons (possibly censure), but they are immune from criminal actions for any actions such as these.
MSM is slowing melting. Long live…. truth?
Nice opinion piece today.