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NPR CEO Katherine Maher says viewpoint diversity is critical, defiant when grilled on liberal bias claims
AUSTIN, Texas – NPR CEO Katherine Maher was largely defiant during a rare public acknowledgment of longtime editor Uri Berliner’s claims that the government-funded organization lacks “viewpoint diversity” and caters to a liberal audience.
“I stand here to defend the integrity of the newsroom and to defend the integrity of the reporting and to say that every single day our folks get up, and they want to stand there and make sure that they are serving the American public in the best possible way from a nonpartisan perspective,” Maher said Saturday at the Texas Tribune Festival.
Berliner stunned the media industry earlier this year when he blew the whistle on liberal bias at the organization. Berliner, who was suspended and ultimately resigned over the criticism, penned a scathing takedown of NPR in the Free Press that criticized NPR’s coverage of Russiagate, the COVID lab leak theory, Hunter Biden’s scandalous laptop, embrace of the theory of systemic racism, in addition to saying it downplayed antisemitism following Oct. 7.
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NPR CEO Katherine Maher was largely defiant during rare public acknowledgment of longtime editor Uri Berliner’s claims that the public news organization lacks “viewpoint diversity” and caters to a liberal audience. (Fox News)
Maher was asked about the situation during a lengthy on-stage Trib Fest conversation about the future of public media with former New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan. Maher insisted early in the conversation that she is “not a journalist” and she relies on NPR editors and newsroom leaders to direct coverage.
“My responsibility is ensuring the big picture, and their responsibility is ensuring the integrity,” she said.
“We want to be down the line, we want to serve the American public well,” Maher continued. “We want to serve people from a range of perspectives and backgrounds. And they should feel as though that coverage is meaningful to them.”
Maher said her “strategic view” is that NPR needs to be “really thoughtful about our role as a nonpartisan media organization.”
Maher said that Berliner’s criticism was received inside NPR as an “affront to the individual journalists who work incredibly hard to report the news and report the news well and report the news with integrity … in a nonpartisan way” by his now-former colleagues.
Maher said that Berliner’s criticisms fell flat when she examined the individual stories he publicly complained about, but she recognizes that it opened the door for a larger conversation about NPR.
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Longtime editor Uri Berliner stunned the media industry earlier this year when he blew the whistle on liberal bias at NPR. (Fox News Digital/Getty Images)
“Whether you want to call that sort of selective review or cherry-picking or what have you – it was meant to drive a thesis, and that thesis certainly got legs. Whether or not the criticism itself had validity or not, [the] thesis got legs, which means, at least in part, it tapped into some sort of sentiment,” she said.
“What I would love to disaggregate is the difference between what I think of as, sort of, an agenda-driven critique, which may be in part around broader conversations around public media receiving federal funding. And that is a long-standing conversation that happens in this country, you know, within political discourse,” Maher continued.
Maher said Berliner’s remarks underscore that NPR must ensure that it looks inwards in the face of “perceived criticism” to make sure the company is upholding its mission and serving a broad audience. She insisted that NPR faced criticism from all sides and some listeners even think the organization is too friendly to former President Trump.
“I think it’s important for us to say, ‘If you feel as though NPR was something that was a resource for you, and you no longer feel that it’s a resource for some sort of reason, why is that the case?’ And what is it that we need to interrogate about our own practices, editorial decisions, programming decisions that that makes it feel that way? And some of the answers that we came up with were kind of worthwhile,” Maher said.
Maher said that a constructive critique she has heard is that NPR is “too repetitive” on particular stories, because headlines of the day are cut in throughout various programs and could be heard a variety of times. So, if a listener hears the same story multiple times, it could seem like NPR is “putting our thumb on the scale.”
Maher pointed out that Berliner’s bombshell came only two weeks into her tenure, and everything the longtime editor objected to predates her time running NPR. However, Maher understands that it was her mess to clean up.
“When you step into an organization, you assume the responsibility for all that comes before it. That’s appropriate. That’s fine. It’s my responsibility to do with that criticism what we need to do in order to be able to address it,” Maher said.
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NPR CEO Katherine Maher appeared at the Texas Tribune Festival. (Fox News)
Sullivan asked Maher about a series of her social media posts from before her time at NPR that went viral following Berliner’s remarks. Maher showed support for Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden’s presidential runs while regularly sharing far-left talking points and criticizing Donald Trump on social media before landing the NPR top job.
Maher said that once she assumed the role, she stuck to the same standards that everyone at NPR must adhere to and her only priority is to uphold the organization’s mission to serve the public.
“Those are past positions,” she said.
“I wasn’t a journalist previously, and I work in a journalism organization now. I think it’s fair to have some level of critique around it,” Maher added. “The question is, ‘Was it a disproportionate level of critique?’”
She believes that criticism of her past tweets had “some degree of disproportionate treatment,” because her predecessor, John Lansing, previously oversaw the Obama-era, government-supported Broadcasting Board of Governors but never received such harsh claims of being partisan.
“I never worked for government. I never worked for a partisan organization, I was a private individual with personal beliefs,” she said.
Maher said that “every single thing” in her life was combed through, and her family was doxxed and threatened along the way. She isn’t even sure if she’ll vote in November’s presidential election because her current address would become accessible once she registers, and she’s concerned people still have a bone to pick.
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NPR CEO and President Katherine Maher’s old tweets about looting, her support for Hillary Clinton and Biden-Harris resurfaced earlier this year. ( (Photo by Rita Franca/NurPhoto via Getty Images), Screenshot/X/KatherineMaher)
“It was really ugly,” she said. “There were security questions, I had to change the way I went to work in the morning. It was not a super fun experience.”
Once Maher and Sullivan wrapped up their one-on-one interview, Fox News Digital asked the NPR honcho to address Berliner’s claim that voter registration records in 2021 showed an astonishing disparity between Democrats and Republicans in the NPR newsroom. Berliner said he found 87 registered Democrats and zero Republicans.
Maher said the numbers need to have context, as roughly 600 people work in the newsroom and the stats provided by Berliner represent a “small fraction” of individuals who self-reported their political affiliation. She also said Washington, D.C., does not allow hiring or screening candidates based on political affiliation, so hiring managers would “never” ask if a potential staffer was a Democrat or Republican.
“I do think it’s incredibly important for us to have people of diverse viewpoints in the newsroom, and the totality of the lived experience. It’s one of the things that we also seek to do by expanding the newsroom just outside of D.C.,” she said.
Maher said NPR has been investing in “collaborative newsrooms” across the country to give a voice to staffers from places like the Appalachia region, the Midwest, the Rocky Mountains, Texas and other rural areas.
“That’s a great way for us to start getting out of D.C. and bringing in people who have a variety of different lived experiences and backgrounds,” she said.
“I think it’s important for us to be hiring reporters who are reporting based on their beats and experience, as opposed to looking and screening by political ideology,” Maher added. “Then ensuring that the work that they do is engaging with diverse sourcing and making sure that we’re representing all the stories that we cover in a way that it feels very balanced.”
Fox News Digital’s Joseph A. Wulfsohn and Hannah Lambert contributed to this report.
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TUCSON, Ariz. — A 34-year-old man was arrested late Thursday night outside the Arizona home where Nancy Guthrie went missing earlier this month, the Pima County Sheriff’s Department told Fox News Digital.
Shortly before 8 p.m. Thursday, deputies arrested 34-year-old Antonio De Jesus Pena-Campos in front of Guthrie’s home on misdemeanor DUI charges, the department said.
The arrest is not related to the Guthrie investigation, the Pima County Sheriff’s Department added.
Pima County sheriff’s deputies stopped a blue Chevrolet Equinox compact SUV near Nancy Guthrie’s Tucson home late Thursday night. A man was later taken into custody after what appeared to be field sobriety testing. (Fox News)
Footage shows Pima County sheriff’s deputies shining a flashlight into the driver’s side of what appeared to be a blue Chevrolet Equinox compact SUV parked near the home where Guthrie was last seen Feb. 1.
Moments later, deputies spoke with Pena-Campos near a white canopy tent set up along the roadside as a deputy shined a flashlight toward the man’s face.
In another sequence, Pena-Campos walks in a straight line in what appears to be part of a field sobriety test. In subsequent footage, he is placed in the back of a sheriff’s pickup truck.
The man was detained as investigators continue searching for Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of “Today” co-host Savannah Guthrie, who was reported missing Feb. 1 after authorities said she was taken during a home invasion. Investigators have said her pacemaker last synced with her iPhone around 2:30 a.m. that morning.
Her family has since offered a $1 million reward for information leading to her safe return as authorities continue to pursue leads.
NANCY GUTHRIE’S NEIGHBOR SAW SUSPICIOUS MAN WALKING NEARBY 2 WEEKS BEFORE SUSPECTED ABDUCTION
A deputy shines a flashlight toward a man’s face during what appears to be field sobriety testing outside Nancy Guthrie’s Tucson home late Thursday night. The man was later taken into custody. (Fox News)
The development comes after a Catalina Foothills resident’s street-facing Ring camera captured 12 vehicles passing by between midnight and 6 a.m. on Feb. 1, the morning Guthrie is believed to have been abducted.
Some of the activity occurred around the 2:30 a.m. mark, roughly when authorities said the 84-year-old’s pacemaker last synced with her iPhone.
A man walks in a straight line under the direction of deputies during what appears to be field sobriety testing outside Nancy Guthrie’s Tucson home late Thursday night. (Fox News)
Homeowners Elias and Danielle Stratigouleas told Fox News Digital that police had not canvassed their neighborhood in the 25 days since Guthrie was allegedly taken from her bed in what authorities have described as a home invasion kidnapping.
The couple said they alerted both the FBI and the Pima County Sheriff’s Department to the footage. It was not immediately clear whether the video would prove useful to investigators or whether any of the vehicles had traveled on Guthrie’s street.
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Pima County sheriff’s deputies speak with a man near a white canopy tent set up along the roadside outside Nancy Guthrie’s Tucson home late Thursday night. (Fox News)
The Stratigouleas home sits on a back road that leads out of Guthrie’s neighborhood and avoids major intersections. The property is approximately 2½ miles — or about a seven-minute drive — from the crime scene, according to Google Maps.
One of the videos was recorded at approximately 2:36 a.m., roughly eight minutes after Guthrie’s pacemaker last synced with her iPhone, based on the sheriff’s timeline.
Fox News’ Michael Ruiz and Olivia Palombo contributed to this report.
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The Texas Senate primary for Republicans is a bloodbath, and President Donald Trump isn’t wading in.
Trump, who appeared in Corpus Christi, Texas, to tout his energy agenda Friday, had the opportunity to stake his claim in the contentious race and endorse a candidate.
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, is the longtime incumbent fending off seven challengers.
But the real race is between Cornyn, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Rep. Wesley Hunt, R-Texas.
President Donald Trump stops to speak to the media as he departs from Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House Feb. 27, 2026, in Washington, D.C. ( Heather Diehl/Getty Images)
All three were in attendance at Trump’s rally, reminiscent of the made-for-TV spectacles that dominated his successful 2024 election campaign. Yet Trump didn’t endorse any of them as Election Day in the primary fast approaches.
Trump acknowledged all three — he paired Cornyn and Paxton and mentioned Hunt later in his remarks. He noted that they were all engaged in an “interesting election.”
“They’re in a little race together,” Trump said of Cornyn and Paxton. “You know that, right? A little bit of a race. It’s going to be an interesting one, right? They’re both great people, too.”
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Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and John Cornyn, R-Texas (Getty Images)
Cornyn is running for a fifth term in the Senate and fighting for his political life in a nasty primary election that Trump has time and again refused to weigh in on. He’s got the full weight of Senate Republican leadership behind him, too.
Paxton, who has faced headwinds with scandals over the years, has strongly aligned himself with the president and built a coalition of conservative backers in the House, including Rep. Troy Nehls, R-Texas, who brought him to Trump’s State of the Union earlier this week.
And while the trio duke it out, money is being burned at a record pace. So far, a whopping $110 million has been spent on the Senate primaries, and $88 million of that has been dumped into the GOP contest, according to data from AdImpact.
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Rep. Wesley Hunt, R-Texas, walks up the House steps for a vote on the budget resolution in the U.S. Capitol April 10, 2025. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
Given the crowded field, it’s likely the race will head to a runoff, which will turn into a brutal sprint until late May. Paxton believes he could come out on top with at least 50% of the vote come March 3, while Cornyn is eying the long game.
The coveted Trump endorsement could put either over the top in ruby red Texas. And he may be close to picking his favorite.
Ahead of the event, Trump was asked if he had decided who to endorse.
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“Pretty much,” he told reporters.
But when asked if he would say who, he said, “No.”
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Jasmine Crockett reveals Colbert hasn’t invited her on show since furor over Talarico interview
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Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, revealed Friday she’s still not been asked to appear on Stephen Colbert’s “Late Show,” days after the host claimed pressure from the Federal Communications Commission effectively censored an interview with her Senate primary political opponent, James Talarico.
Earlier this week, Colbert said CBS prevented the broadcast of Talarico’s appearance due to guidance from the FCC requiring shows to provide “equal time” to opposing candidates.
In response, the late-night host criticized the FCC and his own network. The Talarico interview was posted online, where it has garnered more than 8 million views on YouTube alone. The tumult and extra attention to the interview helped raise more than $2.5 million for Talarico’s campaign.
“No, I’ve not been invited on Colbert prior to his interview nor post his interview,” Crockett said on MS NOW’s “Morning Joe” Friday.
Rep. Jasmine Crockett speaks to members of the media following a House Oversight and Accountability Committee deposition in New Albany, Ohio, on Wednesday, Feb. 18. (Dustin Franz/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Crockett explained that while she has appeared on Colbert’s show twice before, she has not been invited since she launched her candidacy for the U.S. Senate.
“The only information that I got was after this debacle took place, I did receive a phone call from the parent company,” Crockett said.
She said that CBS representatives told her they did not tell Colbert he couldn’t air the Talarico segment. Instead, they said that if he had Talarico on, he had to offer the same time to Crockett.
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Texas state Rep. James Talarico, left, and Rep. Jasmine Crockett, both Democrats and U.S. Senate candidates, participate in a debate during the 2026 Texas AFL-CIO COPE Convention in Georgetown, Texas, on Jan. 24. (Bob Daemmrich/The Texas Tribune/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“They just said, if you air it, just make sure that you offer the representative equal time. Now, obviously, I wasn’t engaged in that conversation, so I cannot confirm the veracity of any statements,” she said.
“But I can confirm that I had never been asked to go on as it relates to kind of talking about the Senate race,” Crockett added.
CBS released a statement denying it censored Colbert, insisting the show chose to share the interview on YouTube instead to avoid the equal-time requirement.
‘THE VIEW’ PANEL ERUPTS AS GUEST DEFENDS TRUMP AGAINST RACISM CLAIMS
Texas state Rep. James Talarico appears with Stephen Colbert on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” in New York on Feb. 16. (Scott Kowalchyk/CBS via Getty Images)
However, during Monday night’s broadcast, Colbert insisted he and his guest were being censored, telling his audience, “[Talarico] was supposed to be here, but we were told in no uncertain terms by our network’s lawyers, who called us directly, that we could not have him on the broadcast.”
The media attention and Colbert’s multiple segments this week about the controversy provided a boon to Talarico’s campaign. On Tuesday, Colbert crumpled up the CBS statement denying it had forced the comedian not to air the interview and put it into a dog waste bag before throwing it away.
On Wednesday, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr dismissed the controversy as a “hoax,” stating that Talarico “took advantage of all of your sort of prior conceptions to run the hoax, apparently for the purpose of raising money and getting clicks. And the news media played right into it.”
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A spokesperson for Colbert’s show didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.
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