Katherine Maher, CEO of National Propaganda Public Radio (NPR), has come under scrutiny after a former employee spilled the tea on the blatant bias exhibited by the government-funded outlet for decades.
Former editor Uri Berliner wrote an eye-opening piece detailing how NPR, even behind the scenes, operated more as a propaganda mill for progressives than an actual news outlet. He confirmed what many already knew: That NPR’s programming isn’t designed to inform as much as influence its audience.
As RedState’s Brad Slager noted:
Maher, hailing from her own admitted whitebread New England upbringing, displays all of the blueprint of white liberal guilt. She hectors whites as benefitting from racist privilege, and therefore, their opinions are discounted — but HER opinions are to be held as sacrosanct, for some reason. Maher is the prototype of the college freshman activist who never grew up, yet this alone is not what disqualifies her from running a media outlet.
In a video posted on X, Maher explained how she wanted to crack down on the “free and open” approach at her previous job as the head of Wikipedia. The reason why is predictable: It supposedly elevated “white male” perspectives.
“I started by talking about the idea of free and open as some of our founding principles, free and open source, coming from the idea of the open source community,” she said. “Well, I have come to the opinion and the perspective that free and open was a way of looking at the world that was inherently limited relative to what we were trying to achieve.”
Maher explains how she realized Wikipedia “was really recapitulating many of the same power structures and dynamics that exist offline prior to the advent of the Internet” and that the website “really rebuilt this idea of knowledge as a whole around … the Western canon,” which supposedly resulted in “the exclusion of communities of languages because of the ways I which Wikipedia is based on reliable sources.”
Maher then asserted that “the ways in which we ascribe notability often really comes from this white male Westernized construct around who matters in societies and who is elevated,” which means that the company “did not end up living into the intentionality of what openness can be.”
EXCLUSIVE: Katherine Maher says that she abandoned a "free and open" internet as the mission of Wikipedia, because those principles recapitulated a "white male Westernized construct" and "did not end up living into the intentionality of what openness can be." pic.twitter.com/Ved9mgGvJH
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) April 18, 2024
In English, Maher is essentially saying that Wikipedia, while touting itself as a “free and open” way of disseminating information, was actually minimizing demographics that might not have the same ideas when it comes to credible sources and other types of guidelines for accuracy.
This clip prompted a friend of mine to pose a rather interesting and important question:
I always wonder who leftist white people who hate being white think they're earning brownie points with, because it definitely ain't black people. At least not this black person. https://t.co/10uHqFS0q4
— IncognegroNeville 🇯🇲🇺🇸 (@FormerlyCBM) April 18, 2024
Ibram X Kendi did guilt a lot white folks into buying a book about being less white, so maybe I'm wrong.
— IncognegroNeville 🇯🇲🇺🇸 (@FormerlyCBM) April 18, 2024
Prolly like 6 black people bought that book. Maybe 7.
The answer to Neville’s question is simple – and unfortunate.
White progressives like Maher don’t say these things to score brownie points with black and brown people. In fact, folks like her tend to make regular minority folks uncomfortable, to say the least.
No, they do not spew this garbage for us, they do it for other white progressives who suffer from white guilt.
Time and time again, white progressives have shown they don’t care about black and brown people. Our approval, or lack thereof, means nothing to them, but appearing virtuous in front of their fellow white progressives is their true objective. They are their own target audience.
Unfortunately, this white guilt always ends up breeding a white savior complex, driving white progressives to push for policies they claim will help minorities but actually do more harm in the end.
Education is a prime example. White progressives have taken to lowering standards and doing away with gifted programs ostensibly to make the playing field more “equitable” for minority students. But, in actuality, what is happening is that they are harming black students who are gifted.
Moreover, they are ensuring that all students, regardless of race or ethnicity, are not being empowered to achieve their full potential. These people would rather push everyone else down instead of lifting black and brown students up.
White progressives are typically opposed to school choice, a policy that helps minority students get higher-quality education by letting their parents have more of a say in where and how their children are educated. This keeps these students in substandard government-run students that are clearly not equipping these students to flourish in adulthood.
Lastly, white progressives are keen on lenient crime policies that they claim are intended to make the justice system more just. However, since they are intent on allowing violent criminals to remain on the streets, this disproportionately creates more black and brown victims of violent and property crimes.
Surely, there is plenty of room for reform in America’s criminal justice system. But placing more people in danger has nothing to do with making the system more just.
Black and brown people have argued against each of these policies – but their pleas have fallen on deaf white progressive ears. Why?
Because they do not care what we think. To them, it does not matter how many minorities are dealing with substandard education and crime. All they care about is putting forth the image of the white ally whose job it is to rescue us from a supposedly white supremacist system that they eagerly support. This is why the Katherine Mahers of the world engage in this type of rhetoric. It was never about us in the first place – it is always about them.
