Elon Musk: NPR's Maher 'One of Worst Human Beings'

Tesla CEO and X owner Elon Musk called NPR CEO Katherine Maher "one of the worst human beings in America" in connection with comments she made in an interview three years ago while she was with Wikipedia.

"Katherine Maher is blatantly racist and sexist — one of the worst human beings in America," Musk posted on X on Thursday afternoon along with a film clip from Maher's 2021 interview with Trevor Noah, former host of "The Daily Show."

In a post containing the video, X user @Maze commented that the clip was of "current CEO of NPR Katherine Maher in 2021, back when she worked for Wikipedia, literally talking about rewriting history because it currently favors white people."

In the interview, Maher told Noah that "most written knowledge today has been written by white, colonial, European, North American men," and that Wikipedia was focused on "correcting the record."

"How do we think about writing people into history," Maher said. "How do we think about writing people into the present who haven't been represented the same way? When we talk about knowledge for the whole world, it needs to be reflective of the whole world."

Maher added that it was important to "measure the gaps" and determine who was missing on Wikipedia.

"Women are missing. People of color are missing. People from the global south are missing. People from indigenous communities are missing. The history of Black Americans is missing from Wikipedia," she said.

Maher has come under fire in recent weeks after former NPR editor Uri Berliner wrote an article in which he criticized her hiring as CEO this year, and spoke out about what he called the news organization's liberal bias.

Berliner also focused on past political statements and support of Democrats, including President Joe Biden. Berliner resigned Wednesday after he was suspended last week without pay for writing the essay.

Meanwhile, Musk has been criticizing Maher on Twitter, often responding to others who were posting about her.

In one post, Musk called her "certifiably insane" after Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, posted a TedTalk speech from her, where she had said, "Our reverence for the truth might be a distraction that's getting in the way of finding common ground and getting things done."

Musk on Thursday indicated that he'll start an initiative to promote freedom of speech.

"Given the relentless attacks on free speech, I am going to fund a national signature campaign in support of the First Amendment," he posted.

NPR last year said it would no longer post fresh content to its X feeds, becoming the first major news organization to go silent on the platform, after the site labeled the news service as "state-affiliated media," the term used for outlets in countries like Russia and China.

"NPR is a private, nonprofit company with editorial independence," the organization said at the time. "It receives less than 1 percent of its $300 million annual budget from the federally funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting."