NPR’s Hunter Biden Blunder: A Late Admission with Explosive Fallout
Washington, D.C. — In a stunning moment of reckoning, NPR’s chief executive Katherine Maher finally admitted on Wednesday that the left-leaning broadcaster made a critical misstep in failing to cover the Hunter Biden laptop scandal aggressively or in a timely manner. The confession came as NPR fights tooth and nail to maintain its federal funding while facing a relentless grilling from Republican lawmakers, particularly the firebrand Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.).
“I do want to say that NPR acknowledges we were mistaken in failing to cover the Hunter Biden laptop story more aggressively or sooner,” Maher conceded before a congressional subcommittee. But the mea culpa may be too little, too late.
NPR and its progressive counterpart PBS are now locked in a battle for survival as the GOP pushes to slash federal funding, citing overt left-wing bias. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which doles out funds to both, was allocated a whopping $535 million for fiscal year 2024–25. Though NPR directly receives less than 1% of its budget from government grants, its member stations, especially those in rural areas, lean heavily on public money to stay afloat. For some, CPB funding makes up as much as 30% of their operations, making the government’s support an undeniable lifeline.
The network’s glaring omission of the Hunter Biden scandal—a bombshell originally broken by The Post—has fueled accusations of journalistic malpractice. Former NPR editor Uri Berliner had already blown the whistle last year, exposing the organization’s deliberate refusal to touch the damning story before the 2020 election. The infamous laptop, abandoned at a Delaware repair shop, contained explosive emails exposing Hunter Biden’s murky international business dealings with Ukraine and China during his father’s tenure as vice president. Yet, NPR downplayed and dismissed the revelations, even falsely claiming in 2021 that U.S. intelligence had debunked the laptop’s authenticity.
Only when a federal investigation was underway and the laptop’s contents were authenticated did NPR finally begin its reluctant coverage—long after public trust had eroded. With Hunter Biden now facing felony charges (though conveniently spared jail time thanks to his father’s last-minute pardon), the scandal continues to reverberate through Washington.
Maher, a former Wikipedia boss, found herself in the GOP’s crosshairs over not just NPR’s bias but also her own controversial past statements. Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) confronted her about a tweet in which she called former President Donald Trump a “racist” and “sociopath” during the 2020 election. Under pressure, Maher admitted, “I regret [them] today.” Yet, the damage was done.
Greene took no prisoners, lambasting Maher’s leadership and questioning why taxpayer dollars should bankroll an organization with such an evident ideological slant. “America deserves journalism, not activism,” Greene snapped, drilling down on Maher’s past remarks about white supremacy and gender terminology.
As the media landscape faces seismic shifts, NPR’s credibility hangs by a thread. The broadcaster’s sudden admission of error might be a desperate bid to salvage its reputation, but for critics, it’s proof of a systemic rot that has long plagued publicly funded journalism. Whether Congress pulls the plug on NPR’s taxpayer-backed lifeline remains to be seen, but one thing is certain—this scandal isn’t going away anytime soon.
