Public radio vs. DOGE: NPR CEO Katherine Maher previews her testimony

Note: Transcripts are automatically generated from episode audio, and are not fully corrected for spelling, grammar, and formatting.

BOB SAFIAN: Hey, everyone. We have a special episode today with Katherine Maher, CEO of NPR. Katherine has been called to Capitol Hill tomorrow, Wednesday, March 26th to answer questions before a DOGE subcommittee in Congress, along with the CEO of PBS. You’ll hear an exclusive preview of how Katherine plans to face the congressional grilling and how she hopes to reposition NPR’s liberal brand identity, appealing instead to all Americans, and hopefully, winning not only their trust, but their continuing tax dollars. Whether you’re a regular NPR listener or not, we’re at an inflection point in American society as questions about impartiality, and information, and truth come fast and furious. I’m Bob Safian, and this is Rapid Response.

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I’m Bob Safian. I’m here with Katherine Maher, CEO of NPR. Katherine, great to see you.

KATHERINE MAHER: It’s great to see you again.

Copy LinkFacing Congress and defending NPR

SAFIAN: When you joined NPR last year, the organization faced plenty of business challenges: audience engagement, business model. Since then, the environment just got a whole lot more fraught. There was a high profile criticism about newsroom bias last spring from an editor on the staff. That sounds almost quaint right now though. You’ve been called to testify on Capitol Hill tomorrow to speak before the DOGE subcommittee in a hearing titled “Anti-American Airwaves,” alongside the head of PBS — I’m sure you love that label. What do you expect from that? What should we all expect? How do you prepare for that?

MAHER: Honestly, I view it as an opportunity. I view it as an opportunity to go and talk about all the great work that NPR does, but also the great work that our stations do. I think that that’s something that often gets lost in the conversation about public radio is the overall percentage of funds that go directly to local stations, the importance of the local station network, the fact that when people are listening to public radio, they are not listening to us broadcasting from DC, they’re listening to their local station, which is probably, chances are, attached to a local university, or it’s a community nonprofit, and it’s making the choices about what folks hear on the air. It probably has some call-in public affairs show where you can talk about what’s going on that matters to you as a resident of your town, your city, et cetera.

So, just really getting back to that, that feels like such an important part of what I’m there to do. And, how do you prepare? I mean, you prepare by making sure you know what you’re there to say, and you prepare by making sure you know what it is that you want to be able to communicate about the value of the work, and you prepare by a lot of practice. It’s like trying to go to Carnegie Hall. It’s a lot of practice.

SAFIAN: Over the last year, I’ve reached out to you a few times to see if you’d come on the show, and you’ve been hesitant. You’ve tried to keep a low profile in some ways in all this noise. You don’t have that choice tomorrow.

MAHER: Well, I think trying to keep a low profile has really been about trying to keep my head down and get some work done. As you rightly alluded to, I came into NPR not because I wanted to make a mark from a political standpoint at all. The goal for me coming to NPR was to really take this extraordinary organization and to think about what does our future actually look like? What does it mean to be a broadcaster in an era of digital? What does it mean to think about the next generation of audience? How do we think about what our programming mix looks like? How do we think about how to really strengthen our stations in terms of their service to their communities? And that was where my head has been for the past year. But you’re right, tomorrow is an opportunity for me to go out there, and talk about all the work that we’ve been doing, and all the work that we want to do for the future.

Copy LinkReintroducing NPR to America

SAFIAN: I mean, this label of this session, “Anti-American Airwaves,” today, people view NPR, or a lot of people view NPR, as liberal, regardless of what your content might be. Do you want to change that brand identity? Is that part of what you’re going to talk to them in Congress about, or are you proud of it?

MAHER: Well, I think it’s a misunderstanding, if I’m being honest. For starters, if you look at the data around who comes to NPR’s websites, or uses our app, or downloads our podcasts, it is very representative of the political spectrum of the American public. In fact, it’s almost a one-to-one. And so, we know — where we have data, which is on our digital platforms (it’s harder to get that data for broadcast) — our audiences are coming from all over. The folks who come to the website are perfectly proportional to the states of the nation. That means that in terms of population size, yes, California is the largest, so we get the most traffic from there. But then, it’s Texas, right, in terms of who’s coming to NPR sites. And then, when you look at the sort of cross-referencing of how people identify from a political affiliation standpoint, again, super representative of the nation, conservative, independent, liberal, etc.

So, I think there’s a bit of a misconception as to who we serve. I absolutely think it’s an opportunity for us to reintroduce ourselves to the American public, whether that is in terms of our political reporting or whether it is our science and health reporting, which is a powerhouse desk. And then, veterans and education beats, those are two places where NPR is known for the work that we do, and we cover issues that really matter to Americans. In fact, we’re the only non-paywalled media organization with a robust veterans beat.

Copy LinkRebuffing the idea that NPR is “anti-American”

SAFIAN: I was talking to a friend about doing this interview. He was telling me a story about talking to a colleague who’s a MAGA republican, and he mentioned an episode, he said, “Oh, I’ll send you this episode of This American Life.” And they were like, “Oh, it’s on NPR. Oh, no.” It almost sounds like there are people who are listening to NPR stations that maybe don’t realize they’re NPR stations, or don’t connect it to this conversation about, I don’t know, it being anti-American.

MAHER: I really want to rebuff this idea that in any way that public radio is anti-American. For starters, we are a uniquely American model. We are a public-private partnership. For every single federal dollar we get, local stations raise an additional seven. They rely on their communities, they rely on local businesses. NPR is 25% of what you hear on public radio airwaves on average. In fact, 75% of stations programming is either other shows that they purchase or local shows that they produce. And, This American Life is a great example. We love This American Life. I heard Glass used to work at NPR. But it’s not an NPR program. It is a public radio program. It’s part of the diverse texture of what is actually available.

So, I think about the fact that we have just an NPR alone, 246 member stations. There’s 1,300 public radio stations across the country. They represent their local communities in ways that are hyper unique, whether we’re talking about high school basketball, the price of sorghum wheat. These are the things that I think it’s easy to forget about if you’re just listening to the radio in perhaps a New York or a DC, is that all of this is very much in tune with whatever’s going on in American lives at any particular point in time in this enormous nation of ours.

Copy LinkImpact of losing federal funding

SAFIAN: NPR isn’t a federal agency, as you say. You get money from lots of different places. But, the subtext of this DOGE hearing is that the prospect of losing federal funding or some important part of it. What would the practical impact of losing that funding be? I mean, I can imagine you’ve been preparing for this possibility even well before this hearing came up.

MAHER: I mean, I think we have to be prepared for all scenarios all the time. The thing that I would want everyone to know about federal funding is the impact that loss of federal funding would have on local stations. Again, of the 121.5 million, that’s it, 121.5 million that goes to public radio on an annual basis, it’s a lot of money, I want to acknowledge that. And it’s also not a ton of money relative to the total size of the American public budget, right, the federal budget, a 100 million of that goes direct to local stations.

And, disproportionately, the percentage of those funds goes to support stations that serve rural communities, that serve less affluent communities, that serve communities with really large areas of service, where the infrastructure investment in making sure that broadcast airwaves reach the country is significant. So, I think about my colleagues in Eastern Kentucky who have to put repeaters and hollers in order for Eastern Kentuckians to be able to hear those radio broadcasts. So, the loss of federal funding would directly impact the ability for stations to provide coverage, which is currently 99.7% of the nation has access to airwaves. It would directly affect our ability to be part of the emergency broadcast system, and it would directly affect the ability of local stations to be able to continue to support commission and purchase programming about their communities.

That’s where the harm would be. The harm would be for the local stations, and that’s what we’re trying to avoid, because it’s very easy, again, in DC to forget that we’ve lost a third of newspapers across the country in the last 20 years. One fifth of Americans live in a news desert. Public radio, public broadcasting, your local newsroom is often the only news that folks have that actually cares about their community and covers the issues that listeners care about.

One of the things that we really focus on is not trying to tell the news from DC. It’s trying to tell the news from America to Americans. And without federal funding, we run the risk that only large cities are able to afford newsrooms. What we want to make sure is that large cities, small towns, rural communities have newsrooms, so that when something happens in the country that all Americans need to know about, you’re not having someone parachute in from the coast to tell that story. You’re able to ensure that the local reporter in the local newsroom can go out, report that story, and communicate that back. You can’t do that without a 50 state network, and you can’t have a 50 state network without federal funding.

Copy LinkResponding to FCC’s scrutiny on how NPR acknowledges sponsors

SAFIAN: Beyond the federal funding issue, you’re also facing some scrutiny from the FCC about how NPR acknowledges sponsors on the air. What’s that about? Could that hamper your ability to generate revenue from another channel?

MAHER: On NPR, we receive donations from both private individuals, foundations, and corporations that sponsor or underwrite our programming, and then we give acknowledgments or credits on the air. These are not advertisements. We comply with the FCC guidelines, and we have a team of attorneys who review all of the language that goes out in order to make sure it is in compliance with FCC guidelines. We feel really confident about that process. We’ve been doing it for a very long time. We plan to comply fully with whatever inquiry the FCC wants to engage with. I think as a public broadcaster, scrutiny is always appropriate. It is appropriate for us to be accountable to the public. It is appropriate for us to be accountable to our listeners. We want people to be able to say, “Hey, we want our public radio, our public media to live up to the highest of all standards.”

And so, my view is that when we hear concerns, or criticism, or there’s somebody who gives us feedback, that we need to take that on, we need to evaluate it, and we need to ascertain what are we going to do with that feedback. We want to make sure that whether it’s a listener who feels as though there’s a perspective that’s been missed, or whether it’s someone with a question about how we engage with our sponsorship practices, we’re answering those questions and we’re open to that scrutiny.

Copy LinkWhy public broadcasting matters

SAFIAN: I mean, I guess, there’s some people who say, “Do we need public broadcasting in the digital age?” Right? It started in the 1960s when there was a limit on broadcast airwaves, but now, everybody has plenty of access to plenty of media like, “Do we need this anymore?”

MAHER: Well, of course, the answer is yes, and I’ll give you a bunch of reasons why. For starters, NPR is actually the most trusted news brand in America, which not everyone knows. In terms of the number of people that we reach, we reach more than 10 million people on a weekly basis just on our morning show, which makes us one of the biggest morning shows in media organizations in terms of audience size. 43 million people listen to NPR on a week, or engage with NPR’s website, or app, or podcasts, or broadcasts on a weekly basis. We’re pretty big. Much of the commercial media right now is really attuned to a specific audience. It might be a political slant. It might be a generational demographic that it’s trying to get. That’s not us. We’re here for all Americans. We’re nonpartisan. We seek to report the news.

And so, I would almost make the argument that in addition to being available for all Americans and for free, no paywall — another really important thing here, no paywall — we’re here for connection of our communities, and we don’t take the view that we are trying to hyper serve a specific segment of society. We’re trying to take the view that all Americans should be in conversation about the news that matters, and that we’re here to serve everyone.

Copy LinkRepositioning NPR to better service their audiences

SAFIAN: You’re for all Americans, but you had an editor at NPR say, “No, the news has been biased.” The way you talk about COVID, or the Mueller report, or whatever. There is this impression from certain people in America that NPR is not for all Americans, and obviously, that’s what the hearing’s about tomorrow.

MAHER: Yeah. And that’s one of the reasons that I’m here, is I believe very deeply that that is our objective and our responsibility. I had someone come up to me and they said, “I’m a conservative. I grew up on NPR. I love NPR. And I’m just not sure it’s a home for me right now.” And that struck me, that cut me to the core. I want it to be a home for everyone. I want people to feel as though it’s their home for curiosity, it’s their home for understanding the world. Certainly, that’s the role it played in my life as a young person. It’s what I hear over and over again from listeners is that it broadened their horizons. It was an opportunity to learn about a thing that they wouldn’t have been taught in school, whether it’s science, or exploring the cosmos, or just understanding what’s happening in global affairs, or just down the street, or connecting with the humanity and empathy. That’s what we are here to do.

And so, we’ve done a couple of things since I’ve come in around really rethinking how do we serve our audiences and who are our audiences, which is designed to get at some of these concerns that we’re hearing. So, for starters, we have really reoriented the organization around audience needs. Broadcast radio is not the greatest way to understand audience needs, because we just don’t have that much information about how people are listening.

But as we have more digital data around people who are coming to our websites, or listening to our podcasts, or even just streaming from our app, those linear radio experience, it starts to be able to help us understand how to better serve audiences. We’ve also gone out and done, for the first time ever, and I say this, this surprised me when I came in, I had to ask three times to be like, “Are you really sure?” In the past, the only audience research that we did was with people with college degrees, but only 35% of Americans have a college degree, which meant that we were not listening to the needs of all Americans, which just is like, how do you run a media organization and say, “65% of my potential audience, I’m not going to ask them what they want.” So we’re doing that, which I think makes a really big difference.

The thing that we’ve identified in terms of our audiences is that curiosity is the most common characteristic. And the great news is that curiosity is not a partisan trait. Curiosity exists in every demographic, every age group, every political persuasion. And so, that’s a great place for us to hone in on is curiosity. What’s going on in the world? How do we explain it? How do we give people the information to go a little bit deeper, give them that context that helps them situate themselves? And I think it’s time for us to reintroduce ourselves as if this is what we’re here to do, and yes, we’re here to do it for everyone.

SAFIAN: I admire Katherine’s optimism that curiosity drives a common American perspective. We just have to hope that traits like distrust, or apathy, or in some cases hate, don’t beat out curiosity. We’ll talk about some of that as well as NPR’s DEI strategy, Katherine’s own politically charged tweets, and more after the break. Stay with us.

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Before the break, Katherine Maher, CEO of NPR, shared how she’s preparing to go in front of a DOGE subcommittee in Congress tomorrow. Now, we dig into lightning rod issues that have buffeted NPR, including its DEI strategy and Katherine’s own politically charged social posts, plus how she looks at Jeff Bezos’s influence on the Washington Post coverage and more. Let’s dive back in.

Copy LinkNPR’s DEI strategy

Your predecessor, John Lansing, said that diversifying NPR staff was critical to help attract younger, more diverse listeners, that this was the company’s “North Star,” was his phrase. When your DEI officer retires in May, you said you won’t be replacing the position. Was that North Star mission misplaced?

MAHER: I wouldn’t say misplaced. I think that it was a really important piece of work for us to do. And, we look at our staff today, and we do have a very diverse staff, both in terms of racial and ethnic diversity, but also in terms of generational diversity. That was really important work for us as an organization that was 50 years into our existence. You have to have the ability to have that refresh, to have new voices come in, people from different backgrounds, people who perhaps didn’t have non-traditional approach to their journalistic career. It’s imperative that we continue to do that work, not just in the lens of, say, racial and ethnic diversity or gender diversity, but also in terms of socioeconomic diversity, for example. I think that that is the thing that often gets lost in these conversations.

Political diversity is another important piece of it. I think it’s great when we have people who can sit a round a room in an editorial meeting and challenge one another to see different aspects of a story. Groupthink doesn’t help anyone, and it certainly doesn’t lead to great reporting. That to me is an important piece of the work. So yes, I think that we did good work there. And now, the question is, how do we translate into serving all audiences in a way that feels reflective of the American public as a whole?

SAFIAN: So, not replacing that DEI position I mean, one of the things I worry about, there’s conversations about, is the chilling effects of some of pullbacks or decisions. I wonder how much you have to balance what is practical for you to keep moving forward today, versus whether you’re being impacted by some of these, as you talk about one of your listeners feeling like, “Oh, it’s not safe for me to listen to NPR.”

MAHER: Well, I didn’t say safe. I said that they didn’t feel like they had a home. We want people to feel like they belong in public radio. And now, the truth is, in the past, lots of Americans, perhaps people of color didn’t necessarily feel like they belonged in public radio. So, I think that we have to make sure that as we expand that tent, we’re expanding that tent in a way that we’re keeping everyone in it. I was talking to somebody who said, “It’s not that I want to hear my view all the time. I just want to make sure I hear my view some of the time.” And I’m like, “Yeah, that’s a reasonable thing.”

So we need to make sure that we’re bringing on newsmakers. We need to make sure that we’re interviewing people from across the political spectrum. This administration that we’re covering today, it’s transformative. Americans elected a transformative administration, and it’s our job to cover that transformation, and to do so from a place of awareness and respect for the fact that that’s the will of the American people. And now, we get to see where that transformation takes us. We’ll cover the good, we’ll cover the unintended consequences, we’ll cover the impact on day-to-day. That’s our job.

But, I do want to come back, I think you asked this question about: Where do we go? I want to be very thoughtful about this. We care very deeply about ensuring that our staff represents the nation, to make sure that people feel welcome and that they can do their best work here. I think that it is important as an employer of people that we continue to serve our people well. And, as we think about what does diversity look like in all of its forms, the work that we’re doing is about how do we integrate that into our planning, and our strategy, and our goals so that our audience reflects the full range of the way that we think about diversity in the country as a whole.

And so, as we make this transition with our chief diversity officer retiring, we’re moving some of his colleagues to sit in our chief operating officer’s function, so that all of their work is also incorporated in how we think about, “Well, how do we know that we’re successful when we say we want to reach all Americans? What does that look like? What do we need to know? How do we need to plan and resource for that?”

Copy LinkReflecting on previous tweets about Trump and Black Lives Matter

SAFIAN: Some of your old social media posts from 2018 have gotten attention, supporting Black Lives Matter, calling Trump racist. Now, you run the business side of NPR, not its content, but it seems increasingly risky to have business leaders share opinions in any format, unless your name is Elon Musk, in which case you can say whatever you want. What messages do some of your personal opinions of the past, how does that impact the way you’re trying to reimagine, or I guess, remind people about what NPR stands for now and into the future?

MAHER: Well, I mean, those are tweets that I sent more than half a decade ago. It was a different time. I had a very different role. I was a private citizen at the time. I had no public facing role. Now, NPR has a very strong firewall between my role on the business side, as you rightly note, and our editorial function. So I don’t direct our reporting. I don’t shape our reporting. I’m not involved in the way that we think about reporting in any way. So, my personal views do not enter into my work.

Looking back at sort of something that I may have said nearly more than half a decade ago, feels as though it is trying to muddy the waters around the work that we’re here to do. Would I send those again? I would not. I have a different role now. I would never say something like that. I set aside all of my political views to take on this role, and that, in and of itself, I think, is how I show up every single day, is with the open-mindedness to what does it really mean to be able to be present for the whole nation in this moment.

Copy LinkThe critical difference between the Washington Post and NPR

SAFIAN: What do you think about how Jeff Bezos has impacted content policy at the Washington Post? Should those who fund a media organization have input into the content that’s produced?

MAHER: Well, I mean, the Post is the Post, and so obviously, it’s a private company, and they have the opportunity to do what they want there. I think the big thing about public media and public radio, and what we do at NPR is, for starters, we don’t have opinion programming. So, I think one of the things that was a part of the conversation about the Post was the change in terms of its op-ed pages to a focus on free markets and personal liberties. We don’t do op-eds at NPR. We are not an opinion journalism organization. We are a news organization that reports the news, and does so from a nonpartisan perspective, and our opinions don’t come into it.

Now, that being said, I never would interfere with any of our programming. I would never interfere with a story. I believe that it is imperative that the chief executive of a media organization stays out of the newsroom entirely. I mean, I can walk through the newsroom of course and say hi to folks. But the idea that that would be something that I would do is just anathema to how we operate as an organization, and frankly, the newsroom would have no patience for me if I did even try to have an opinion on that. So, I think that’s a critical thing. I think it’s a critical distinction. I know it’s a hard distinction right now, because so many media organizations do feel as though they reflect their ownership. But I don’t own NPR. NPR is owned by the American public. We are a nonprofit media organization that serves the public interest, and this is a very hard and bright line, in terms of how we operate.

Copy LinkBecoming a trustworthy media organization

SAFIAN: A lot of Americans today say they don’t trust the media or certainly don’t trust parts of the media, right? What can you do about that?

MAHER: First of all, I think that Americans are really smart, and I think that it is important for us to start from a position of respect for our audience. I don’t believe that we have the right to ask that they just trust us blindly. I think that it is our responsibility to wake up every morning and seek to be worthy of their trust. So my word on this is trustworthy, not trusted. I think we have to earn it every single day. I think that when we make a mistake, we have to acknowledge it. I think that we have to be reflexive in taking in criticism and assessing how we continue to adapt and engage with that criticism.

The institutions that people trust most right now are institutions that are agile, and responsive, and can engage with that criticism. Or, they’re not institutions at all, they’re individuals, right? I mean, the role of individual voices in reporting the news is a huge piece of the story right now, in terms of the number of Americans who get their news from influencers on social media. The key piece here is that there’s a personal relationship, whether it’s with the institution, the company, or the individual, and there’s honesty in the transaction of information or the way in which you’re talking to your audience. I think that that’s where you build trust in this moment.

Copy LinkPreparing for the Congress hearing

SAFIAN: I expect that tomorrow you’re going to get versions of some of these questions, although probably posed in slightly more confrontational language. How do you prepare for that?

MAHER: I think that Congress has a right to ask questions, and it’s my obligation to respond. We receive federal funds. We’re a steward of taxpayer dollars. It’s my role to walk in and answer those questions. My hope is that it is an opportunity to talk about some of the things I’ve just talked about with you, in terms of our goals, our values, the bright line between editorial and business, the impartiality or nonpartisan nature of what we do, the importance of local journalism. But ultimately, I will answer the questions that Congress asks, and I will be there to be respectful of their oversight function.

SAFIAN: How’s the mood and morale on your team these days?

MAHER: They’re here to go to work. I just walked through the newsroom to get here to the studio, and everyone’s heads down, they’re working, they’re reporting, they’re producing, they’re getting ready to file their story for All Things Considered, or they’re getting ready for whatever band is coming in for Tiny Desk next. I think that the overall environment right now is that people really want to do the work. There’s a lot of news in the world today, whether we’re thinking about the, as I said, transformative administration, whether we’re thinking about questions of space exploration. We just had four astronauts come back. We have a great science desk who loves to cover that stuff.

So, I think people feel as though, of course, this is a different moment in time, and it is really important that we show up and are responsive to people’s questions about the value of our work. I come back to the fact that when we talk about efficiency, public radio is remarkably efficient. The cost per public media per American is a $1.60. It’s basically when you go to check out at CVS and you’re asked to round up to a good cause, that’s us. That’s what we cost. Public radio costs less than a $1.60, the public media as a whole is a $1.60 per American per year. As I said, for every dollar of federal funding, $7 of private funding. So, I think we’ve got a good story to tell, and 75% of Americans want to see public media maintain or increase its current funding levels. So, again, I think that’s the story we’re here to tell.

SAFIAN: Well, Katherine, this was great. Thank you.

MAHER: Thanks, Bob.

SAFIAN: Katherine seems well-prepared for the DOGE hearing, emphasizing the breadth of NPRs audience and a mission to impartially serve all Americans. But I expect a session titled “Anti-American Airwaves” will be less forgiving about her old tweets than she’d like and more skeptical about her assurances that she and NPR are nonpolitical and nonpartisan, which would be a shame. From a fiscal perspective, a public-private venture that brings in $7 for every $1 in government support is a pretty good model. I’m not a fan of media that’s 100% government-supported, that’s a bit like a propaganda machine to me. But I do see a public interest in local and community coverage that’s predominantly backed by donors and members. Plus, for the business community, any further splintering of media and information might escalate U.S. divisions, which creates more commercial headwind than tailwind. Is all that PBS, and NPR, and other public media do worth a $1.60 a year in taxes? It is to me, but I’m not part of the DOGE Committee. I’m Bob Safian. Thanks for listening.