NPR CEO Katherine Maher says diversity of opinion is crucial, reacts defiantly when asked about allegations of liberal bias

AUSTIN, Texas – NPR Executive Director Katherine Maher responded with a largely defiant tone when, in a rare public statement, she acknowledged longtime editor Uri Berliner’s claims that the government-funded organization lacks “diversity of opinion” and caters to a liberal audience.

“I stand here to defend the integrity of the newsroom and the reporting and to say that our people want to get up every day and make sure they are serving the American public in the best way possible from a bipartisan perspective,” Maher said Saturday at the Texas Tribune Festival.

Berliner shocked the media industry earlier this year when he denounced the organization's liberal bias. Berliner, who was suspended and eventually resigned following the criticism, wrote a scathing critique of NPR in the Free Press, criticizing NPR's coverage of Russiagate, the COVID lab leak theory, Hunter Biden's scandalous laptop, and its embrace of the systemic racism theory. In addition, he said NPR downplayed anti-Semitism after Oct. 7.

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Maher was asked about the situation during a long conversation onstage at Trib Fest about the future of public media with former New York Times editor Margaret Sullivan. Maher began the conversation by emphasizing that she is “not a journalist” and relies on NPR's editors and editorial directors for reporting.

“My responsibility is to ensure the big picture and their responsibility is to ensure integrity,” she said.

“We want to be there across the board, we want to serve the American public well,” Maher continued. “We want to serve people with different perspectives and backgrounds. And we want them to feel like this reporting matters to them.”

Maher said her “strategic view” is that NPR needs to “really think about our role as a nonpartisan media organization.”

Maher said Berliner's criticism was perceived by his former colleagues at NPR as “an insult to individual journalists who work incredibly hard to report the news, and to do so well and with integrity … and in a nonpartisan manner.”

Maher said Berliner's criticism had no effect on examining the individual stories he publicly complained about, but she recognized it opened the door to a broader discussion about NPR.

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Longtime editor Uri Berliner shocked the media industry earlier this year when he denounced liberal bias at NPR. (Fox News Digital/Getty Images)

“Whether you want to call this kind of selective review cherry-picking or whatever, it was intended to support a thesis, and that thesis undoubtedly prevailed. Whether the criticism itself was valid or not, [the] “The thesis has prevailed, which means that it has at least partially stimulated a certain mood,” she said.

“I would like to break down the difference between what I see as a kind of interest-led criticism, which might be partly about broader discussions about federal funding of public media. And that's a long-standing discussion that's been going on in this country as part of the political discourse,” Maher continued.

Maher said Berliner's comments underscore that in the face of “perceived criticism,” NPR needs to make sure it looks inward to ensure the company stays true to its mission and serves a broad audience. She stressed that NPR faces criticism from all sides, and some listeners even think the organization is too friendly toward former President Trump.

“I think it's important for us to say, 'If you feel like NPR was a resource for you, and for some reason you no longer feel that it's a resource, why is that?' And what do we need to question about our own practices, editorial decisions, programming decisions that makes it feel that way? And some of the answers we've found have been quite worthwhile,” Maher said.

Maher said one constructive criticism she's heard is that NPR is “too repetitive” on certain stories because the day's headlines are fed into different shows and are heard multiple times. So if a listener hears the same story multiple times, it might seem like NPR is “putting its finger on the scales.”

Maher pointed out that Berliner's bombshell came just two weeks after she took office and that everything the longtime editor complained about happened before she was NPR's head. But Maher understands that it was her job to clean up the mess.

“When you join an organization, you take responsibility for everything that comes with it. That's right. That's fine. It's my responsibility to deal with that criticism, what we have to do to be able to address it,” Maher said.

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NPR CEO Katherine Maher performed at the Texas Tribune Festival. (Fox News)

Sullivan asked Maher about a number of her social media posts from before her time at NPR that went viral after Berliner's comments. Maher showed support for the presidential candidacies of Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, regularly shared far-left talking points on social media and criticized Donald Trump before she landed the top job at NPR.

Maher said that since assuming her role, she has held herself to the same standards that apply to everyone at NPR and that her sole priority is to uphold the organization's mission of serving the public.

“These are past positions,” she said.

“I wasn't a journalist before and I now work in a journalists' organization. I think it's fair to hear some level of criticism about it,” Maher added. “The question is, 'Was it a disproportionate level of criticism?'”

She believes criticism of her earlier tweets was treated “to some extent disproportionately” because her predecessor, John Lansing, headed the government-funded Broadcasting Board of Governors during the Obama era but never faced such harsh accusations of partisanship.

“I have never worked for the government. I have never worked for a partisan organization, I was a private citizen with personal beliefs,” she said.

Maher said “every single thing” in her life has been scoured, with her family being the victim of doxxing and threats along the way. She's not even sure if she'll vote in November's presidential election, since her current address would be exposed after she registers, and she fears people will have a bone to pick.

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NPR CEO and President Katherine Maher's old tweets about looting and her support for Hillary Clinton and Biden-Harris resurfaced earlier this year. ( (Photo by Rita Franca/NurPhoto via Getty Images), Screenshot/X/KatherineMaher)

“It was really ugly,” she said. “There were safety issues, I had to change the way I went to work in the morning. It wasn't a particularly fun experience.”

After Maher and Sullivan finished their one-on-one interview, Fox News Digital asked the NPR chief to address Berliner's claim in the NPR newsroom that voter registration records in 2021 showed a staggering discrepancy between Democrats and Republicans. Berliner said he found 87 registered Democrats and zero Republicans.

Maher said the numbers need to be put into context because there are about 600 people working in the newsroom and the statistics provided by Berliner represent only a “small fraction” of people who self-reported their political affiliation. She also said that Washington, D.C., is not allowed to hire or screen candidates based on their political affiliation, so hiring managers “never” ask whether a potential employee is a Democrat or Republican.

“I think it's incredibly important for us to have people in the newsroom with diverse views and the totality of lived experience. That's one of the things we're trying to accomplish as well by expanding the newsroom a little outside of DC,” she said.

Maher said NPR has invested in “collaborative newsrooms” across the country to give a voice to employees from places like Appalachia, the Midwest, the Rocky Mountains, Texas and other rural areas.

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“This is a great opportunity for us to get out of Washington, D.C. and attract people with different life experiences and backgrounds,” she said.

“I think it's important for us to hire reporters who report based on their issues and experiences, and not search and filter by political ideology,” Maher added. “Then we need to make sure that their work is based on diverse sources and that we're presenting all the stories we cover in a way that seems very balanced.”

Joseph A. Wulfsohn and Hannah Lambert of Fox News Digital contributed to this report.