The American left always congratulates itself as “First Amendment advocates,” even as they campaign to shut conservatives up. The foundation of Harper’s magazine announced they are giving their 2026 “First Amendment Award” to NPR CEO Katherine Maher. She runs a network that won’t give conservatives a right to speak on their formerly taxpayer-funded airwaves.
The invitation to their October 26 ceremony – ticket price “$85-$25,000” – describes the award this way:
Named for James C. Goodale, the former New York Times general counsel who helped secure the Pentagon Papers victory before the Supreme Court, the award recognizes visible and consequential leadership in defense of a free and independent press.
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.
As usual, “journalism’s essential role” is to make society as “progressive” as possible. Harper’s has no embarrassment about the Maher’s notoriously censorious pre-NPR views on freedom of speech, as she proclaimed in a 2021 TED Talk when she was CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation that the internet needed to be stopped from amplifying “bad information.”
Our reverence for the truth might be a distraction that’s getting in the way of finding common ground and getting things done…. The #1 challenge that we see here is, of course, the First Amendment in the United States. So, you know, in a lot of countries—in Europe, for example—there’s a lot more willingness to pass legislation to restrict certain kinds of content. In the United States, the First Amendment makes it a little bit trickier.
And so what we are looking at is how do we continue to, you know, make sure that we are working with platforms, working with governments, working with civil society to make sure that we are not amplifying bad information, that we are not amplifying the influence peddlers who are trying to, you know, shape narratives in ways that are unhelpful…
When they announced their First Amendment award, Harper's offered a misleading claim, that Maher and NPR "successfully" battled against Trump's order to defund NPR and PBS. That is false. They were defunded. NPR did win in court on a much narrower matter, but Harper's is apparently not too careful about facts when their giving out their Free Speech Hero awards:
Maher has led the nation’s most trusted public media institution through a period of heightened scrutiny and challenge, including successfully battling Trump’s 2025 executive order aimed at terminating federal funding for NPR and PBS. Maher’s leadership ultimately resulted in a U.S. district court ruling against the White House, with NPR’s attorney stating, in part, that “the First Amendment draws a line, which the government may not cross, at efforts to use government power—including the power of the purse—‘to punish or suppress disfavored expression’ by others.”
NPR suppresses expression they don't like on a daily basis.
Maher's acceptance of the award obviously avoided her previous fervent advocacy for European-style censorship of the internet, opting instead for the preposterous claim that PBS and NPR serve the "public interest." That's not true unless you consider the partisan interests of the Democrats to be identical to the "public interest."
“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. The freedom, imagination, and initiative of all Americans flourish with its protections, so that we may better understand the world and one another,” said Katherine Maher. “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.”
Maher used to find the First Amendment was an impediment getting the way of "finding common ground and getting things done." That also sounds like the NPR formula. Let's just ditch the "unhelpful" conservative garbage and unite behind a leftist agenda.
