President and CEO of National Public Radio Katherine Maher will receive the James C. Goodale First Amendment Award on Oct. 26. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
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NPR CEO Katherine Maher will receive Harper’s Magazine’s “First Amendment Award” later this month despite her past criticism of the amendment.
“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,” the magazine said in a press release earlier this year about Maher receiving the James C. Goodale First Amendment Award on Oct. 26.
Harper’s Magazine also claimed that Maher led NPR “through a period of heightened scrutiny and challenge” along with “successfully battling” President Donald Trump’s efforts to defund NPR, though Congress still rescinded $1.1 billion in federal funding to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in 2025.
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Although the magazine hailed Maher as an advocate for journalism, Maher has not always been supportive of the First Amendment as a whole.
NPR chief executive Katherine Maher once called the First Amendment a “challenge” in moderating Wikipedia. (Harry Murphy/Sportsfile for Web Summit Qatar via Getty Images)
In 2021, when Maher was the CEO of Wikimedia, which oversees Wikipedia, she discussed efforts to combat disinformation and considered the First Amendment a “challenge” in that goal.
“The number one challenge here that we see is, of course, the First Amendment in the United States. [It] is a fairly robust protection of rights and that is a protection of rights both for platforms, which I actually think is very important that platforms have those rights to be able to regulate what kind of content they want on their sites,” Maher said.
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She added, “But it also means that it is a little bit tricky to really address some of the real challenges of where does bad information come from, and sort of the influence peddlers who have made a real market economy around it.”
NPR has also had a history of questionable journalism. Most notably, NPR declined to cover the Hunter Biden laptop story in 2020 ahead of the presidential election in what many critics saw as an effort to protect then-presidential candidate Joe Biden.
NPR CEO Katherine Maher previously called the First Amendment a “challenge” in the effort to fight disinformation. (Getty Images)
Maher, who was not appointed NPR CEO until 2024, later conceded that the publication “made a mistake.”
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“I do want to say that NPR acknowledges we were mistaken in failing to cover the Hunter Biden laptop story more aggressively and sooner,” Maher said during congressional testimony in 2025.
Digital reached out to Harper’s Magazine for comment.
Tim Graham, executive editor of the media watchdog NewsBusters, told Digital, “Harper’s Magazine is demonstrating the usual liberal impulse, that being fiercely critical of Trump and the Republicans is what the First Amendment is all about. But NPR didn’t hold President Biden accountable. Instead, they insisted that covering corruption in Biden’s family was a ‘distraction.'”
“Their explanation for this pride is that Maher courageously fought off defunding NPR, which, of course, is not true. They are defunded. Liberals believe depriving NPR of taxpayer subsidies is some sort of First Amendment violation. But it’s not a First Amendment violation for NPR to avoid having any Trump-supporting conservatives on their airwaves to push back on all their liberal bias,” he continued.
“These people have no shame that Maher championed aggressive censorship of ‘bad information,’ just as European socialist countries have done. Maher said in a 2021 TED Talk that the First Amendment was a ‘challenge,’ a hurdle, something that makes censorship ‘a little bit trickier.’ How does that deserve a First Amendment award??” he asked.
NPR celebrated Maher receiving the award, pointing to its past statement when reached for a comment by Digital.
NPR has faced backlash for censoring the Hunter Biden laptop story in 2020. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
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“Public media exists to serve the public interest, and I can think of no greater service to the public than the defense of the First Amendment,” Maher said in a comment. “The freedom, imagination, and initiative of all Americans flourish with its protections, so that we may better understand the world and one another. The compact of citizenship asks that we each step up to defend our constitutional rights if they are threatened. On behalf of NPR and the NPR Network, I am deeply honored to accept this award.”
