On October 26, NPR chief executive Katherine Maher received Harper’s Magazine’s James C. Goodale First Amendment Award, which honors people for significant efforts to defend a free press and its constitutional protections. It can be easier to champion those protections, though, when your own organization is the one relying on them.
Harper’s praised Maher for defending NPR against President Donald Trump’s effort to end its federal funding. NPR challenged the executive order, and a federal judge ruled in March that the government could not use its spending power to penalize speech it disliked. That First Amendment principle came from the judge, not NPR’s attorney.
Government shouldn’t punish a news organization for its opinions. Still, it’s fair to ask when Maher began to value the right of others to express theirs.
In January 2021, after Trump was removed from major social media platforms, Maher posted that deplatforming fascists must be satisfying—and that it was even better not to give them a platform in the first place. She didn’t mention Trump by name, but the timing made the target fairly clear.
Months later, during an Atlantic Council discussion about online misinformation, Maher called the First Amendment the leading obstacle to government regulation, noting the strong protections it gives to individual rights. In other words, the Constitution could stand in the way of government efforts to address speech.
Maher also recognized that these protections matter when private platforms decide what content to carry. Those are different legal questions, of course. But it’s striking how easily she can celebrate keeping certain speakers off private platforms, then accept an award for resisting government interference with speech. Her commitment seems to shift depending on the circumstances.
That raises some obvious questions. Who gets to define misinformation? Who checks the people doing the fact-checking? And what happens when those entrusted with deciding what is true also believe their political opponents should not be heard?
When Maher took over NPR in 2024, the network’s critics already questioned its political leanings. Her past social media posts did little to reassure them. She could have called the organization something like National Progressive Public Radio and at least spared audiences the appearance of ideological neutrality.
Then Congress asked the free-speech award recipient to account for some of those posts.
At a House hearing on public broadcasting in March 2025, Republican Rep. Brandon Gill of Texas raised a tweet in which Maher had described America as addicted to white supremacy. Maher acknowledged writing it and said her views had changed over the previous five years.
Her thinking had evolved. That may be true, and people do change. Still, it’s notable how old statements can become relics of a former self when a public figure faces questions, while other people’s ill-judged posts are treated as lasting proof of bad character.
Gill also asked about a January 2020 post in which Maher said she had taken a day off to read Ta-Nehisi Coates’ essay, “The Case for Reparations.” At first, she said she didn’t think she had read it. When Gill showed her the post, she said she couldn’t remember writing it. He had the evidence; she seemed not to recall.
The exchange brought to mind Hillary Clinton’s much-discussed “I do not recall” moments: certainty when making public declarations, followed by less certainty when an inconvenient statement resurfaces.
Maher wasn’t leading NPR when it made some of the coverage decisions criticized by congressional Republicans. She is in charge now, though. That makes it reasonable to ask how the network handled Hunter Biden’s laptop, the origins of COVID-19, and allegations linking Trump to Russia—and whether NPR is as open to scrutiny as it is eager to scrutinize others.
Maher is free to criticize Trump, support private companies that deny people a platform, and argue for stronger limits on misinformation. The First Amendment protects her right to do so. It also protects the public’s right to point out apparent contradictions and to question whether taxpayers should fund a network they consider partisan.
The timing of the Harper’s award gives the story an extra edge. One year, Maher was in Washington discussing how her views had changed and struggling to remember old posts. The next, she was at a formal ceremony receiving a prize for defending constitutional principles. It’s quite a career turn.
Barack Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009. Two years later, his administration killed American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki in a drone strike in Yemen. Awards, apparently, don’t always come with lasting guarantees that the principles they celebrate will be followed.
Maher’s honor points toward a promising new class of awards for people who defend constitutional rights only some of the time.
Perhaps there could be a “Silence Is Golden Award” for a prosecutor who objects when suspects invoke the Fifth Amendment, then relies on it himself after being stopped by police for drunken driving. The acceptance speech would be something.
Or how about a “Gun Violence Prevention Award” for someone who campaigns against firearms but keeps a pistol beside the bed and uses it when an intruder appears? A speech calling for fewer guns might get a standing ovation.
Harper’s could also create a trophy for people who find the Constitution inconvenient when it protects their opponents and essential when it shields their allies. There would probably be no shortage of nominees.
The First Amendment isn’t a menu from which public figures can choose only the protections that fit their politics. Maher is entitled to all of them, and rightly so. But she shouldn’t expect praise for exercising her own freedom while avoiding questions about her apparent lack of concern for the speech rights of people she opposes.
Someone might want to make that point to Katherine Maher before she accepts another award.
