Katherine Maher, the CEO of National Public Radio, was in San Francisco last week to solicit donations from wealthy Californians after Republicans canceled federal funding for the news nonprofit and its local affiliates.
According to Semafor, Maher last week visited the Menlo Park headquarters of the Hewlett Foundation, one of the largest liberal philanthropies in the country with a history of bankrolling everything from Black Lives Matter to Chinese Communist Party-affiliated green energy initiatives. While NPR has a San Francisco affiliate, KQED, Maher chose to instead address NPR staff from Hewlett's swanky Menlo Park headquarters. Maher is also slated to meet with an unidentified billionaire donor later this week, Semafor reported.
It’s Maher’s first fundraising swing since Republicans voted to claw back $535 million in taxpayer funds earmarked for NPR and its local affiliates. Maher has said the funding cut will be a "big hit" to public radio’s finances, but she has also portrayed it as an opportunity for the news nonprofit to "leave behind the things that no longer serve our mission."
"We are financially independent," she told Status, a media newsletter.
"We will continue to work to serve all Americans—that’s our mission and purpose—but we will no longer have the Congressional funding Sword of Damocles over our heads," said Maher.
Maher’s ideological bent was a major catalyst for Congress’s push to defund NPR. Last year, social media posts surfaced in which she promoted Kamala Harris, called President Donald Trump a "deranged, racist, sociopath," and defended riots and looting in the wake of the death of George Floyd. Weeks after her hiring in March 2024, longtime NPR senior editor Uri Berliner published a scathing essay about the liberal bias inside NPR. Congressional Republicans seized on those revelations last year to end federal funding for NPR over its left-leaning news coverage. That gained steam after Trump took office. He signed a bill last week to rescind funding for NPR and other federal programs.
Maher lobbied aggressively to maintain federal funding and denied allegations that NPR has a left-wing bias. "As far as the accusations that we’re biased, I would stand up and say, ‘Please show me a story that concerns you,’ because we want to know and we want to bring that conversation back to our newsroom," Maher told CNN this month.
Maher's fundraising trip and visit to the Hewlett Foundation suggests that she plans to maintain the status quo at NPR, which reportedly has 87 registered Democrats at its newsroom headquarters and zero Republicans. The Hewlett Foundation funds numerous liberal causes and maintains close ties to Democratic lawmakers. The philanthropy bankrolled California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D.) trip to China in 2023, where the presidential hopeful met with Chinese officials regarding climate change, the State Beacon reported. While on the trip, Newsom also met with several of the Hewlett Foundation's grantees and their green-energy allies, raising questions about how much influence the foundation exercised over Newsom's trip.
Hewlett has also funded the Black Lives Matter Foundation, pro-abortion groups, and is a major donor to the Associated Press’s "sweeping climate journalism initiative" to "infuse climate coverage in all aspects" of the outlet’s reporting.
One of the first tests of Maher’s editorial direction will be in replacing NPR editor in chief Edith Chapin, who announced her retirement from the organization last week. Chapin, a former CNN producer, also oversees production of NPR’s flagship shows like All Things Considered and Up First.
NPR said it will conduct a national search for Chapin’s replacement.
Neither NPR nor the Hewlett Foundation responded to a request for comment.
