NPR President Expresses Opposition to Wikipedia’s ‘Free and Open’ Mission, Citing Concerns

NPR’s president and CEO said she abandoned the idea of a “free and open” internet as the mission of Wikipedia, which she used to lead, because it is a “white, male, Westernized construct.”

In a newly resurfaced video clip, Katherine Maher, who took over as NPR’s chief executive in January says she found Wikpedia’s “free and open” ethos “inherently limited.” The clip was posted to X by Christopher Rufo, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

Maher served as chief executive at the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that operates Wikipedia, from 2019 to 2021.

“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 says in the clip.

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

EXCLUSIVE: Katherine Maher doesn’t just want to “stamp out bad information” on the internet. She wants to replace it with “good information”—i.e., left-wing narratives—and force the public to “sit within that good information” as “a collective.”

Big Sister has arrived. pic.twitter.com/7kfq8VYHfj

— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) April 18, 2024

EXCLUSIVE: Katherine Maher says the “the number one challenge” in her fight against disinformation is “the First Amendment in the United States,” which makes it “a little bit tricky” to censor “bad information” and “the influence peddlers” who spread it.

NPR’s censor-in-chief. pic.twitter.com/0vY6hIpbmO

— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) April 17, 2024

“‘Free and open’ has the best of intentionality, but in the end what ‘free and open’ often ended up doing, and particularly in the case of Wikipedia, was recapitulating many of the same power structures and dynamics that exist offline, prior to the advent of the internet,” Maher said.

One of the problems with Wikipedia is the way it relies on a “written tradition” and “reliable sources,” Maher said.

“You see the exclusion of communities, of languages because of the ways in which Wikipedia is based on reliable sources. The idea of a written tradition, which is particular to some cultures and not to others,” the former Wikimedia CEO said.

“The ways in which we ascribe notability often really comes from sort of this white, male, Westernized construct around who matters in societies and who is elevated and whose voices. And so some of these ideas of sort of this radical openness really did not end up living into the intentionality of what openness can be,” she said.

X owner Elon Musk responded to the clip, posting, “That’s literally the point of Wikipedia.”

Maher has recently come under fire from conservatives after a former NPR editor blew the whistle on the outlet’s liberal bias. Former editor Uri Berliner resigned Wednesday after NPR suspended him.

In the wake of the NPR editor’s accusations, a slew of since-deleted tweets and previous statements from Maher have surfaced, adding fuel to the outrage.

In another clip posted by Rufo, Maher says she is interested in how we can “immerse ourself in good information,” not just “stamp out bad information.”

In yet another clip, Maher says the “number one challenge” for her in fighting disinformation is the First Amendment, which she calls a “fairly robust protection of rights.”

“It also means that it is a little bit tricky to really address some of the real challenges of where does bad information come from,” she said.

She has been accused of expressing explicitly biased views in her previous tweets.

In 2018, Maher posted, “Donald Trump is a racist.”

In 2020 she wrote, “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.”