Despite years of shaking its own report, National Public Radio (NPR) CEO Katherine Maher unhesitantly told lawmakers in Congress on Wednesday that the outlet is a “non-partisan organization” with no political bias.
Maher testified on NPR’s government funding before the House Supervisory Subcommittee and worked with Government Efficiency (DOGE) to address unnecessary spending. When Republican Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan was pressed about whether he believed the outlet was biased, Maher denied that political bias would affect editorial decisions, claiming that NPR would remain “non-partisan.”
However, NPR has repeatedly refused to approve it or has had to amend its own report, and it has always been accused of leftist bias in its report.
In April 2024, veteran NPR editor Uli Berliner blew whit through the internal mechanisms of the outlet, revealing that NPR had actively tried to defeat President Donald Trump in response to allegations of corruption in Russia. (Related: “It’s Burche*T!”: Jasmine Crockett screams at GOP to cut NPR, PBS funds)
The president and CEO of National Public Radio, Katherine Maher, arrives to testify at a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing at the U.S. Capitol. (Photo: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
1. NPR has published a false report on Don Jr.
In November 2018, NPR allegedly lied to the Senate Judiciary Committee in testimony about the Trump Tower plan in Moscow, based on a contradiction with former Trump Attorney General Michael Cohen’s plea deal.
The report came into view in widespread corporate media speculation that Trump’s first campaign had conspiracy with Russia.
However, the outlet was unable to recognize that the quote they cited from Trump Jr.’s testimony referred to another project. NPR issued a large editor’s note five hours later, but they piece.
“An earlier version of this report mischaracterized Senate investigators in 2017 by Donald Trump Jr. to Senate investigators about future projects his family was negotiating with the people of Moscow,” the memo says. “Trump Jr. has not addressed what Cohen is currently acknowledging. This continues until at least June 2016, and has been a long way from presidential elections before, longer than previously known.”
2. NPR refuses to cover Hunter Biden laptop stories
In October 2019, NPR announced that it would not cover Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop after the New York Post defeated the story. At the time, Terrence Samuel, managing editor of outlet news, explained the decision by saying, “I don’t want to waste time on a story that isn’t actually a story,” and “I wasted time on the listeners and readers of the story, which is a pure distraction.”
“And frankly, it’s just we’re done and this is… a politically driven event and we decided to treat it that way,” added Samuel.
Corporate media was late in covering laptops and social media platforms, but social media platforms at the time censored the story, but former President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice later approved the legitimacy of laptop data in January 2024.
3. Seattle Area NPR will air community press conference
After the US was locked down due to Covid-19, outlet Seattle-area stations have decided to suspend press conferences for the first Trump administration’s coronavirus task force. The White House at the time called for Seattle Regional NPR for “failure of their obligations to the American people,” but claimed that the station had remained in a pattern of “false or misleading information.”
“After two weeks of live broadcast of White House briefings, there has been more and more that the patterns of misinformation and exaggeration have questioned whether these briefings are the best service of our mission, creating and providing more informed publics. I wrote it.
Seattle area NPR said at the time they would continue to cover them while they cut their daily live briefings, but noted that they were “a challenge during live broadcasts” only when they were “fact-checked.”
4. NPR downplays the Covid Lab Leak theory
In a question about the origins of Covid-19, NPR was one of the outlets of companies that quickly released reports that dismissed the idea that the virus came from a Chinese lab.
The outlet at the time had published two articles entitled “Scientists Theory of Laboratory Accidents in the Emergence of the Pandemic” and “Virus Researchers Question Theory of Coronavirus Laboratory Accidents.” Both reports cited scientists who dismissed how Covid-19 came from the lab.
“They believe that close interactions between people with wildlife around the world are far more likely perpetrators,” one of the articles said.
In 2021, the outlet later hosted the director of the Center for Global Health Policy J. Stephen Morrison, the Center for Strategy and International Studies, who admitted that scientists rejected lab theory because they hated Trump.
5. NPR will be fact-checking itself while trying to own Trump
In January, NPR contradicted its own reports of astronauts stranded on the International Space Station (ISS) while attempting to fact-check Trump.
In a post about the Truth Society, Trump wrote billionaire Elon Musk that he asked American astronauts Butch Willmore and Snie Williams to “go” after being “essentially abandoned.” In response, NPR released a headline claiming that the astronauts were “not left behind.”
But while denying that they were stuck, NPR has returned to its own report stating that space travelers are actually stuck.
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