NPR CEO Katherine Maher, who once called America “addicted to white supremacy,” is warning that looming federal funding cuts to her left-wing broadcast organization will disproportionately hurt rural communities.
“The primary impact of this potential rescission is going to hurt communities where they need support most, which are rural stations—stations that serve communities that do not have access to other forms of local news, emergency reporting, emergency alerting,” Maher told CBS News on Thursday morning, just hours after the Senate voted to cut funding to public broadcasting.
“I think that the place where we’re seeing the most traction is senators who represent communities where there are large rural communities, large tribal communities,” she said Wednesday on CNN. “Broadband service is not universal, and heck, cell phone service is not universal.”
Those comments follow Maher repeatedly disparaging white Americans.
“America is addicted to white supremacy and that’s the real issue,” she posted to X in May 2020. That same month, she called President Donald Trump, who has consistently seen strong support in rural America, a “deranged, racist sociopath”—a description she now says she regrets.
“White silence is white complicity,” Maher wrote in June 2020. “Never underestimate the ability of white people to center ourselves,” she posted a few months later.
Maher’s recent media blitz came in response to Republicans’ efforts to defund NPR. Overnight, the Senate voted to rescind $9 billion in foreign aid and public broadcasting funding, sending it back to the House ahead of a Friday deadline.
“I think, unfortunately, this is cutting off their constituents’ noses to spite NPR’s face,” Maher said on CNN ahead of the Senate’s vote. “It doesn’t help anyone to take this funding away.”
“As far as the accusations that we’re biased, I would stand up and say, ‘Please show me a story that concerns you,’ because we want to know and we want to bring that conversation back to our newsroom,” she added.
Sen. John Kennedy (R, La.) pointed to a floor speech he gave calling out NPR headlines like “Christian nationalism’s support is strongest in rural, conservative states.” Sen. Eric Schmitt (R, Mo.) posted a screenshot of an article titled “What ‘Queer Ducks’ can teach teenagers about sexuality in the animal kingdom.”
Maher had already been presented with examples during a March hearing when Republicans grilled her over her past comments and NPR’s bias. She rejected charges of political bias, but acknowledged that the outlet was “mistaken in failing to cover the Hunter Biden laptop story more aggressively and sooner.” She added that “new CIA evidence” indicating that COVID-19 may have stemmed from a Wuhan lab leak “is worthy of coverage.”
Maher became CEO of NPR in 2024 shortly before the unexpected resignation of longtime NPR senior editor Uri Berliner, who blasted the “devastating” bias at the broadcaster and singled out Maher’s “divisive views.” In his accusations, Berliner pointed to NPR having 87 Democrats and 0 Republicans filling editorial positions in the Washington, D.C., area.
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