Meghan Blonder writes for the Washington Free Beacon about disturbing comments from the head of National Public Radio.
NPR’s new CEO, Katherine Maher, shrugged off widespread looting and property damage during the 2020 riots, saying it was “hard to be mad” about the destruction.
“I mean, sure, looting is counterproductive. But it’s hard to be mad about protests not prioritizing the private property of a system of oppression founded on treating people’s ancestors as private property,” Maher wrote in a May 2020 social media post. “White silence is complicity. If you are white, today is the day to start a conversation in your community,” she wrote one day later.
The Black Lives Matter riots, which took place in the summer of 2020 following George Floyd’s death, caused a historic level of damage to private property and businesses. A September 2020 report found that damage caused by demonstrations from May 28 to June 8 of that year cost insurance agencies anywhere from $1 to $2 billion—more than any other event of civil unrest in U.S. history.
The riots had human costs, too. David Dorn, a 77-year-old retired St. Louis police captain, was killed on June 2, 2020, while defending a local pawn shop from looters. That same day, four St. Louis officers were shot and wounded while responding to riots in the city.
Maher’s posts are emerging as NPR battles claims that it suffers from a left-wing bias that has gotten a lot worse over the past 10 years.
On April 9, senior editor Uri Berliner wrote an op-ed for the Free Press titled, “I’ve Been at NPR for 25 Years. Here’s How We Lost America’s Trust,” in which he lamented how the outlet developed a “devastating” bias over the years. …
… Berliner, a senior editor “on the business desk,” admitted to having a liberal bent himself. Still, he argued that the publicly funded outlet lost its “open-minded spirit” over time, leading to an audience that he said does not reflect the United States.
