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NPR’s Maher Gets the First Amendment Wrong–Again – HotAir

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May 5, 2025
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NPR's Maher Gets the First Amendment Wrong--Again – HotAir

It wasn’t that long ago that Katherine Maher was complaining to The Atlantic Council that the First Amendment presented an unfortunate obstacle to the necessary task of shutting Americans up. 





Maher might be interpreted as lamenting the fact that the elites, who are always right, couldn’t ensure that Americans were spoon-fed only the best information available, but she can’t even resort to that claim. As CEO of Wikipedia, she argued that getting the facts right wasn’t really the point. Misleading people in order to get them to believe the “right” things should be the task of all right-thinking people. 

In other words, don’t let the truth get in the way of getting people to do the “right” thing. Even her defense of NPR’s funding is based on a headspinning argument–that public radio will die on the vine without federal funding–that contradicts NPR’s other constant refrain that they don’t rely on federal funding because it represents so small a portion of their budget. 





Maher, you see, is a big fan of censorship and of lying to people to nudge them in a preferred direction, and the First Amendment presents a problem for attaining that goal. (Although Wikipedia, at least, is big into silencing voices that are a bit too free for the good of the country.) Unless, of course, she needs to pretend that NPR is the key to protecting the First Amendment, in which case it is the best thing ever.  

But now that NPR and Public Broadcasting as a whole are in danger of losing federal funding–let’s see whether that really happens, since an Executive Order alone will not guarantee that outcome–Maher has discovered a use for the First Amendment after all: guaranteeing that she and her employees can continue to suck off the government tit. 





Somehow, according to Maher, NPR has a Constitution-guaranteed right to government funding. Failing to hand money to an organization that promotes cannibalism–I kid you not, they did–is censorship. 

Far be it from me to claim to be a Constitutional scholar, but last I checked, I haven’t gotten a dime from the federal government to ensure my voice can be heard. In fact, unlike NPR, I get taxed quite a bit on the money I make from expressing them. 

I also don’t pretend that I am an unbiased source of information, while NPR insists that they are not just a legitimate news source–they are–but an unbiased one that serves the public interest. Apparently, trashing the Declaration of Independence somehow fits that description. 

NPR’s programming is indeed very popular with a slice of the population, but that slice is the wealthy and hardly representative of the general public. People who can and do throw gobs of money to the organization, and it accepts gobs of money for thinly-veiled advertisements presented as acknowledgement for grants. 





The audience is overwhelmingly white, college-educated, mostly female, and looks very much like Katherine Maher, come to think of it. To suggest that they wouldn’t or couldn’t have a voice without government funding is about as absurd as saying that Stacey Abrams’ $100 NGO is clearly the best place to dump $2 billion in federal money to fight climate change. 

Subsidizing NPR is just subsidizing AWFLs with tax dollars from the hoi polloi, who, you will recall, should be censored by the likes of Katherine Maher and propagandized by Wikipedia, as she outlined in her TED talk. 

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting hides behind Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch to justify its public subsidies, but, ironically, its children’s programming is extraordinarily profitable for PBS. Do you think that all those toys and tchotchkes sold are unlicensed copies from which they make no money? 





In my previous life as a pundit and activist, I spent a lot of time talking with the media and appearing on shows. I’ll let you in on a secret: there is no nicer set of studios than those at Minnesota Public Radio. Always the newest technology, the best offices and studios I have ever seen, and everything seems gold-plated. That’s fine, if tax dollars weren’t paying for it, but it all is. 

I would not like it at all if Trump tried to force public broadcast outlets into becoming propaganda outlets for the Right. I don’t want the government funding propagandistic media for anybody. 

If wealthy, white, older liberals want to keep NPR and other public broadcasters going, they are welcome to fund them. Here in Minnesota, the state, localities, colleges, and other sources pour public money into Minnesota Public Radio. We even have a slice of our lottery money dedicated to keeping public broadcasting fat and happy. 

Most states do something similar. 

Regardless of your opinion regarding the content of public broadcasting, it’s obvious that government subsidies for broadcast media (or any media) are built into the Constitution. The claim is absurd on its face, as is the claim that Katherine Maher is a brave defender of free speech. 





She is unabashed in her support of propaganda, censorship–including that sponsored by the government through grants to “misinformation”-fighting NGOs. 

Congress–defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting ASAP. 







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