NPR C.E.O. Faces Criticism Over Tweets Supporting Progressive Causes

Katherine Maher, the chief executive of NPR, is facing online criticism for years-old social media posts criticizing former President Donald J. Trump and embracing liberal causes.

The posts, published on the social media platform Twitter, which is now called X, were written before she was named chief executive of NPR in January. They resurfaced this week after an essay by an NPR staff member who argued that the broadcaster’s leaders had allowed liberal bias to taint its coverage.

“Also, Donald Trump is a racist,” read one of Ms. Maher’s posts in 2018, which has since been deleted. Another post, from November 2020, shows Ms. Maher wearing a hat with the logo for the Biden presidential campaign.

“Had a dream where Kamala and I were on a road trip in an unspecified location, sampling and comparing nuts and baklava from roadside stands,” Ms. Maher wrote, an apparent reference to Vice President Kamala Harris. “Woke up very hungry.”

Ms. Maher, who had not worked in the news industry before joining NPR, was the chief executive of the Wikimedia Foundation, a nonprofit that supports the popular online resource Wikipedia, when she wrote many of the posts that were now being criticized.

An NPR spokeswoman, Isabel Lara, said in a statement that Ms. Maher “was not working in journalism at the time and was exercising her First Amendment right to express herself like any other American citizen.”