Not 'The Onion': Harper's Magazine To Honor NPR CEO Katherine Maher With First Amendment Award

Authored by Jonathan Turley via JonathanTurley.org,

Harper's Magazine appears to be competing with The Onion in satire this week. It is awarding its First Amendment prize to NPR CEO Katherine Maher. It is akin to awarding a Second Amendment prize to Gavin Newsom. Maher has long been the very symbol of advocacy journalism and bias. Ironically, she is being given an award after steering NPR into the rocks to keep her job and its ideological bias.

Many of us have written for years about NPR's biased reporting. Not all of this criticism was made out of hostility toward the outlet - many honestly wanted NPR to reverse course and adopt more balanced coverage. That is why, when NPR was searching for a new CEO, I encouraged the board to hire a moderate figure without a history of political advocacy or controversy.

Instead, the board selected Katherine Maher, a former Wikipedia CEO widely criticized for her highly partisan and controversial public statements. She was the personification of advocacy journalism, even declaring that the First Amendment is the "number one challenge" that makes it "tricky" to censor or "modify" content as she would like.

Maher has supported "deplatforming" anyone she deems to be "fascists" and even suggested that she might support "punching Nazis." She also declared that "our reverence for the truth might be a distraction [in] getting things done."

As expected, NPR's bias only got worse. The leadership even changed a longstanding rule barring journalists from joining political protests.

One editor had had enough. Uri Berliner had watched NPR become an echo chamber for the far left with a virtual purging of all conservatives and Republicans from the newsroom. Berliner noted that NPR's Washington headquarters has 87 registered Democrats among its editors and zero Republicans.

Maher and NPR remained dismissive of such complaints. Maher attacked the award-winning Berliner for causing an "affront to the individual journalists who work incredibly hard." She called his criticism "profoundly disrespectful, hurtful, and demeaning."

Berliner resigned, after noting how Maher's "divisive views confirm the very problems at NPR" that he had been pointing out.

Rather than trying to reverse the long slide in its audience, Maher doubled down. She ultimately made the best possible case for defunding NPR. She refused to resign, effectively killing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Yet, Harper considers her model of media.

In a press release on the awarding of the James C. Goodale First Amendment Award, Harper's declared, "As president and CEO of NPR, Katherine Maher has guided one of America's most important public media institutions through a period of extraordinary political, legal, and financial scrutiny, reaffirming journalism's essential role in a democratic society."

Maher has overseen the continued slide in ratings and revenue. In fairness, NPR's audience has been declining for years. Indeed, that trend has been most pronounced since 2017 - the period when Berliner said the company began to openly pursue a political narrative and agenda to counter Donald Trump. The falling advertising revenue has led to deep staff cuts to deal with budget shortfalls. The shrinking NPR audience remains overwhelmingly white, older, and of course liberal.

Where others see the demise of a once popular and respected outlet, Harper's sees a success story in an audience that has shed itself of conservative, libertarian, and moderate listeners - much like the audience of Harper's.

The award is the latest example of how establishment media has become a ship of fools. Journalists now report for each other as the vast majority of Americans seek alternatives. They then give each other awards and continue to replicate their own views and mistakes. The one thing that they will not do is abandon their bias.

Maher is the greatest example of why these outlets refuse to change. Despite being blamed for killing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting by refusing to resign, Maher and her staff still benefit personally from advocacy journalism. They are lionized by the left even as their influence and audience plummet.

According to Harper's, that record is "reaffirming journalism's essential role in a democratic society." If Maher embodies the essence of American journalism, let alone a democratic society, why do so few people actually want to listen to her brand of journalism?

It is Uri Berliner who deserves this award, not the CEO who hounded him out for seeking greater balance at NPR.