NPR Editor Suspended as CEO's Progressive Tweets Exposed

NPR Chief Executive Officer Katherine Maher is under fire for resurfaced social media posts she made that targeted former President Donald Trump and for speaking out for liberal causes years before she was brought in for the organization's top spot in January. 

Senior NPR Business Editor Uri Berliner, whose April 9 essay published by The Free Press, criticized the network for losing the nation's trust with its "progressive worldview," was suspended Friday by NPR.

In the column, Berliner wrote that "people at every level of NPR have comfortably coalesced around the progressive worldview."

In the wake of Berliner's column, The New York Times published a revelations about Maher's controversial posts.

In one of the now-deleted posts from 2018, when X was still Twitter, Maher wrote: "Also, Donald Trump is a racist," and in another tweet, in November 2020, she was shown wearing a hat with the logo for Joe Biden's presidential campaign.

She was also quoted as posting that she "had a dream where Kamala and I were on a road trip in an unspecified location, sampling and comparing nuts and baklava from roadside stands," apparently referring to Vice President Kamala Harris. "Woke up very hungry," she added. 

Maher Monday praised NPR's journalists, stating that "everyone is entitled to free speech as a private citizen" and said that the organization is "independent, beholden to no party, and without commercial interests."

NPR reported early Tuesday that Berliner was suspended for five days without pay, beginning last Friday, after publishing the controversial article, which has led NPR to announce monthly internal reviews and gave ammunition to NPR's critics, including Trump. 

While suspending Berliner, the organization told him he did not secure NPR's approval for outside work and said in a letter that the suspension was his "final warning" and that he would be fired if he violated the company's policy again. 

He said he is not appealing the punishment.

Berliner, commenting to NPR's David Folkenflik, said Maher's posts showed she is not the best person for her job. 

"We're looking for a leader right now who's going to be unifying and bring more people into the tent and have a broader perspective on, sort of, what America is all about, and this seems to be the opposite of that," he said.

In his article, Berliner singled out the coverage of several issues, including trans rights, the Israel-Hamas war, and COVID-19. 

"I love NPR and feel it's a national trust," he told Folkenflik. "We have great journalists here. If they shed their opinions and did the great journalism they're capable of, this would be a much more interesting and fulfilling organization for our listeners."

Several NPR journalists told Folkenflik that they are no longer willing to work with Berliner as they do not believe he will keep their conversations private. 

Christopher Rufo, a fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute, pointed out many of Maher's posts on X, and shared a response from the site's owner, Elon Musk, who responded to one of the posts with, "This person is a crazy racist!" 

"If NPR wants to truly be National Public Radio, it can’t pander to the furthest-left elements in the United States," Rufo said in an interview. "NPR should part ways with Katherine Maher.”

Maher was chief executive of the Wikimedia Foundation, which supports Wikipedia, when she wrote many of the posts. 

NPR spokeswoman Isabel Lara commented in a statement that when Maher made her posts, she "was not working in journalism at the time and was exercising her First Amendment right to express herself like any other American citizen."

Maher pushed back at Berliner's claims in a memo to NPR staffers, stating that "questioning whether our people are serving our mission with integrity, based on little more than the recognition of their identity, is profoundly disrespectful, hurtful, and demeaning."
 

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