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(LifeSiteNews) — National Public Radio’s (NPR) new CEO Katherine Maher has been facing a torrent of old comments coming back to haunt her which betray a significant hard-left world view amidst running complaints about the credibility of the publicly-funded news organization.
In a newly released video clip, the former CEO of Wikipedia appears to classify the necessity of “reliable sources” as “inherently limited” to the intentions for what the “free and open source” community was trying to achieve.
EXCLUSIVE: Katherine Maher says that she abandoned a “free and open” internet as the mission of Wikipedia, because those principles recapitulated a “white male Westernized construct” and “did not end up living into the intentionality of what openness can be.” pic.twitter.com/Ved9mgGvJH
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) April 18, 2024
“Wikipedia really rebuilt this idea of knowledge as a whole around… the Western canon. You see the exclusion of communities, of languages because of the ways in which Wikipedia is based on reliable sources,” she said, as “the idea of a written tradition… is particular to some cultures and not to others.”
Maher’s analysis continued with a taint of racism and sexism stating, “[t]he ways in which we ascribe notability often really comes from sort of this white male, Westernized construct around who matters in societies and who is elevated and whose voices.” And, thus, “some of these ideas of sort of this radical openness really did not end up living into the intentionality of what openness can be.”
In other statements which have recently surfaced, Maher framed the First Amendment as a “challenge” to fighting disinformation, complained about 2016 Democrat presidential nominee Hillary Clinton inadvertently “erasing language for non-binary people” by referring to boys and girls, sympathized with looters on the theory that private property is linked to a “system of oppression,” expressed confusion at objections to politically-motivated violence, and more.
Last week, longtime NPR senior editor Uri Berliner excoriated the outlet for having “lost America’s trust” via a combination of “default[ing] to ideological story lines,” an “absence of viewpoint diversity,” obsession with identity politics, and general abandonment of conservative principles.
Berliner closed his piece by saying he was “‘rooting for” Maher, whose lack of a news background “could be an asset given where things stand.” However, within days such clips and social media posts surfaced indicating that Maher was more than a fit for NPR’s status quo.
Yet Maher also appears to acknowledge some of the same perspectives as other critics of Wikipedia arguing that while the “free and open” online encyclopedia had “the best of intentionality” what it ended up doing “was really recapitulating many of the same power structures and dynamics that exist offline prior to the advent of the internet.”
In an interview last summer, Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger assessed that the platform was “obviously biased” towards left-wing and establishment views while also being heavily influenced by U.S. intelligence services.
Those who now run the popular site “take their cues from, basically, CNN and MSNBC and the New York Times and whatever those outlets feel comfortable saying.”
Additionally, Sanger reported how it was discovered in 2008 that “the CIA and FBI computers were used to edit Wikipedia.”
Other sources have uncovered significant Zionist initiatives to rewrite entries on Wikipedia with an aim “to make sure that information in the online encyclopedia reflects the worldview of Zionist groups.”
Yet, even while Maher’s assessment of Wikipedia in this regard aligns somewhat with other reliable perspectives, Berliner believes her overall disposition leaves her unequipped to make necessary changes at NPR.
Following his being suspended without pay after the release of his essay, and his subsequent resignation on Wednesday morning, the former senior editor of the organization said Maher is the “opposite” of the kind of leader he thinks NPR needs, which would require someone “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.”
Maher characterized Berliner’s critique as questioning “whether our people are serving our mission with integrity, based on little more than the recognition of their identity,” which she said was “profoundly disrespectful, hurtful, and demeaning.” NPR has stressed that Maher is not involved in editorial decisions.
Conservatives remain skeptical in light of the degree of Maher’s leftist bent and NPR’s long history of corresponding bias, including promoting narratives on Trump-Russia “collusion” claims, Hunter Biden’s laptop, and COVID-19’s origins that were favored by liberals but turned out to be false, not to mention its longstanding left-wing bias on political issues such as abortion.
“It’s not easy to get a set figure of how much taxpayer money actually flows to NPR, but it’s a sizable sum,” writes USA Today columnist Ingrid Jacques. “While NPR likes to say that just a fraction of its funding comes directly from the federal government, that belies how much it gets indirectly from local stations who pay in part with federal grants for NPR’s flagship content.”
“The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which provides the grants, gets about $500 million a year from Congress,” she continues. “That should end.”
Send an urgent message to Canadian legislators urging them to stop more online censorship laws