NPR chief admits dismissing Hunter Biden laptop story was a mistake
NPR CEO Katherine Maher conceded during her congressional testimony on Wednesday that her organization missed the mark in its lack of serious coverage of the Hunter Biden laptop story during the 2020 election.
Maher and PBS CEO Paula Kerger were grilled by House Republicans on the newly formed Delivering on Government Efficiency (DOGE) subcommittee regarding accusations of biased news coverage backed by federal funding.
"I do want to say that NPR acknowledges we were mistaken in failing to cover the Hunter Biden laptop story more aggressively and sooner," Maher told Rep. Michael Cloud, R-Texas.
She later reiterated "we made a mistake" about not covering the laptop in a separate exchange with Rep. Brian Jack, R-Ga. Maher was named CEO of NPR in 2024, so she wasn't with the taxpayer-backed outlet at the time the story first broke.
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The New York Post's bombshell reporting on the laptop was released in the heat of the 2020 election where then-Democratic nominee Joe Biden faced off against President Donald Trump. The story shed light on Hunter Biden's overseas business practices and his father's possible involvement, and the laptop also had shocking videos and photos of drug use and lewd acts.
Many mainstream news outlets disparaged the story at the time and even credulously repeated suggestions the laptop was a Russian disinformation operation. At the time, NPR public editor Kelly McBride addressed a listener's question about the news outlet's blackout of coverage. She said the Post's reporting had "many, many red flags," including its potential ties to Russia, and the assertions within the story weren't significant.
"We don't want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don't want to waste the listeners’ and readers’ time on stories that are just pure distractions," NPR managing editor Terence Samuel told McBride. "And quite frankly, that's where we ended up, this was … a politically driven event, and we decided to treat it that way."
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In a stunning tell-all essay published last April, then-veteran NPR editor Uri Berliner recalled the attitude of his liberal colleagues to the laptop revelations.
"The laptop was newsworthy. But the timeless journalistic instinct of following a hot story lead was being squelched," Berliner wrote. "During a meeting with colleagues, I listened as one of NPR’s best and most fair-minded journalists said it was good we weren’t following the laptop story because it could help Trump."
"When the essential facts of the Post’s reporting were confirmed and the emails verified independently about a year and a half later, we could have fessed up to our misjudgment. But, like Russia collusion, we didn’t make the hard choice of transparency," he continued.
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During her exchange with Cloud, Maher also acknowledged the legitimacy of the Wuhan lab-leak theory by the CIA after NPR previously dismissed speculation about the COVID pandemic's origins at the time.
Maher remained adamant that NPR is a "nonpartisan" news organization despite her admissions.