NPR CEO Katherine Maher is set to receive Harper’s Magazine’s James C. Goodale First Amendment Award on Oct. 26, an honor drawing scrutiny because of comments Maher made years earlier describing the First Amendment as a “challenge.”
Harper’s Magazine said in a press release earlier this year that Maher had guided NPR “through a period of extraordinary political, legal, and financial scrutiny, reaffirming journalism’s essential role in a democratic society.” The magazine also credited Maher with “successfully battling” President Donald Trump’s push to defund NPR. That claim comes with an asterisk: Congress voted in 2025 to rescind $1.1 billion in federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
The award has reopened debate over Maher’s record on free speech. Before joining NPR, Maher led Wikimedia, the organization behind Wikipedia. In 2021, discussing efforts to curb misinformation, Maher called the First Amendment an obstacle to that work.
“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 at the time.
She continued: “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.”
Maher did not become NPR’s CEO until 2024, after those remarks. Her tenure has also followed a period of criticism over NPR’s editorial choices, including its decision not to cover the Hunter Biden laptop story in 2020 ahead of that year’s presidential election — a decision many critics argued shielded then-candidate Joe Biden from scrutiny.
During congressional testimony in 2025, Maher acknowledged the outlet’s handling of that story fell short. “I do want to say that NPR acknowledges we were mistaken in failing to cover the Hunter Biden laptop story more aggressively and sooner,” she said.
Tim Graham, executive editor of the conservative media watchdog NewsBusters, was sharply critical of the award. “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,'” he told Fox News Digital.
Graham also disputed the magazine’s framing of Maher as having fended off defunding efforts. “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 said.
He pointed again to Maher’s earlier comments on misinformation. “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 said.
NPR, for its part, embraced the honor. Reached for comment, the network pointed to a statement Maher had previously issued about the award.
“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. “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.”
Fox News Digital said it reached out to Harper’s Magazine for comment.
