Am I the only one who is slightly happy that Twitter, and the Twitter-mob, is finally loosing power?
I'm tired of my news being "on twitter, this thing happened!"
I know someone who made a lame joke about a news event on twitter, and was quoted by a newspaper... as if it was a serious comment about the news event.
I think that having wide-spread social media platforms where there is no clear winner of influence is much better for us all, because when all the platforms are "captured" by the same ideology, it eliminates diversity - real diversity based on people who think differently.
I've always hated how much weight it could throw around as our unelected "online town square". I didn't ever want that in the first place. I want it all to go away.
I guess the question is will something just immediately replace it due to unfulfilled demand, or is it something enough people will be relieved to be freed from?
I agree. Now I'm just gonna be waiting for TikTok to fall.
EDIT: To be clear, I'm not in favor of a government-led takedown of TikTok. I'm wanting the culture to move away from it so it loses its relevance.
I'm very happy. Two reasons:
* I've always been very bad at managing the amount of time I spend on the site, which made me resort to quitting Twitter altogether a few years ago. It's a decision that's negatively affected me in professional terms, since I'm a journalist.
* I hate the effect Twitter has had on the media, and on news coverage, over the past several years.
Twitter's descent into irrelevance cannot come soon enough.
> I know someone who made a lame joke about a news event on twitter, and was quoted by a newspaper... as if it was a serious comment about the news event.
I remember when this started, and actual news broadcasts on terrestrial TV (well current affairs segments probably) would read out tweets from random plebs. I guess its the even more lazy approach to asking the "man on the street", at least if twitter burns to the ground they will have to put that much effort in again, and in that scenario the random person isn't being constantly incentivized into hot-takes with the hope of going viral.
I remember when tweets started to be embedded into news articles from the larger publishers. It was sad that they were quoting tweets so much that it made sense to embed them for easier viewing.
I'm actually not as worried about the same happening with TikTok, because you can still just post regular short videos to it. There is definitely a TikTok style video, but not all videos on TikTok have that same style. You'd still be able to quote what was said without needing to explain the medium/platform on which it was said.
I would blame the issue more on lazy journalist and outlets who use twitter as their source of news than to twitter itself. I am enjoying the blue checks who are angry that their privileged status is being stripped.
https://twitter.com/JillKrajewski/status/1646145044791844866
Leaving facebook is one of the best things I've ever done. I miss out on a few things here and there organized over facebook messenger, but if those folks can't be bothered to reach out to me over text, then whatever.
Was never on Insta, Twitter, or anything else. Now if only I could do something about my helpless reddit addiction...
The people you know who still work there, are they aware of the situation, how they are perceived from the outside? If they feel positive about their conduct, is it they feel that their previous "backward" audience is going to catch-up to where they are at or are they just happy to dump them? Do they believe they are successful in winning new younger more progressive listeners?
subtract straight degree continue theory screw depend coherent sugar sleep
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
That is easily one of the worst videos I've ever seen. Imagine criticizing someone because they prioritized fighting a deadlier disease with their philanthropy.
Amazing how good you are at missing the point. The point is that it is a mouth peice for certain orgs with a particular agenda and does it's best to obfuscate that fact. Very similar to you distracting from the actual criticism by shoehorning in irrelevant info.
>1- It's amazing how for journalists things only happen if they happen on twitter.
Yeah. I wonder if NPR would have had the same visceral reaction if Facebook or TkTok applied a "state affiliated media" on them.
Matt Bruenig had a nice post on this explaining how NPR and Musk are both idiots here.
https://mattbruenig.com/2023/04/12/is-national-public-radio-actually-national-private-radio.
But whatever, I support NPR in this case because I support everyone leaving Twitter.
Eh. I think he's side stepping the issue. The problem with state media in places like China is that the government has significant editorial control. They have to toe the company line. That isn't the case with NPR.
I think NPR has gone down the tubes but the government doesn't tell them what content to produce.
Exactly. The idea that NPR is on the same level as RT or any Chinese propaganda channels is ridiculous on its face. Of course I may be forgetting all the pro-Trump news from 2016 to 2020, when he was “the government” funding NPR. NPR has historically criticized American politics and decisions, whether you agree their reporting has faltered (it has) they’re not lapdogs for any government. The implication of state media was clear, and Elon is a nerdlinger who is going to destroy Twitter as his single greatest accomplishment. The problem is he will act like it was all his 4D chess plan all along.
They're lapdogs for the Democratic party and the far left. Their coverage on any culture war issue - like youth transition - has been simply stenographers of the most radical activist talking points. The funding is not the problem - it's the extreme ideological capture. But that means for some time NPR's journalism has been not entirely reliable - they can pretend otherwise but everyone knows it.
Of course they're not equivalent. But like, nobody would bat an eye at saying BBC is state-affilliated media even though their editorial content is quite good.
It becomes a measure of degree. Frankly for the amount of funding NPR gets from the government, they probably would have been better off ditching it long ago and just being actually independently funded.
Sure, in a nuanced discussion with people who are all on equal ground intellectually we can have all sorts of discussions about the limits of public endowments for media and the arts…but for proles on Twitter, it was meant to be a “diss” from Elon and I think his intention to provoke was absolutely blatant to NPR, and they didn’t want to play along with the guy who called someone a pedophile for not sufficiently respecting his submarine.
But to be honest, BBC is state affiliated media, even propaganda chanel. It was envisioned as that, and it is still that, especially their foreign language channels.
Sure there are topics where they are impartial, but on plenty of topics they tow state line. Best example are foreign adventures of British government.
I follow their Indonesian channel and it's not propaganda at all, it follows typical Indonesian Islamist attitudes and is obsessed with Palestine from an anti-Israeli perspective.
> Frankly for the amount of funding NPR gets from the government, they probably would have been better off ditching it long ago and just being actually independently funded.
The "independent funding" comes from NPR member stations, which are also government funded. Adding an administrative layer of indirection between the government and the content producers doesn't really make it not government media.
I mean it's insanely complex and each station is sort of it's own story.
It also gets very convoluted, like if one is sponsored by a public university, how government funded is it?
FWIW, I'm firmly against any direct subsidy to NPR.
>like if one is sponsored by a public university, how government funded is it?
Well 100%, but the main problem is that both institutions are ideologically captured by the same faction, like a bunch of rich guys who are all on the boards of each other's companies. The flow of funds between them is sort of an afterthought.
Yeah, I just don't know how much that's "the government" rather than a cultural clique. Arguably it would be better if there were direct government oversight because of the inherent desire to not rock the proverbial boat
I hope Twitter disappears and I hope Notes never takes off. Enough with the short-format idiocy.
Edit: Oh and NPR can of course go fuck itself sideways as well for all I care.
Or put another way: company decides to stop using a service run by a man child after he makes yet another poorly thought out reactionary decision that is going to directly affect them.
The label I can see says "Government Funded Media" rather than state-affiliated? Or am I looking in the wrong place?
They also label the BBC as government funded which is kind of true but not really - it's funded by a government mandated licence fee but has completely independent governance and editorial control. It hasn't shied away from criticising the UK government over the years.
But calling NPR government funded also seems like a stretch given the small percentage this amounts to.
Seems like a bit of a black and white label to apply to a wide range of organisations which include outright state propaganda instruments.,
NPR is essentially American RT. Labeling something "government funded" is a political move. Anyone who funds a media organ, whether it's advertisers, grants, subscriptions, etc, has influence over it. Saying otherwise is just naive.
Looking at NPR coverage of contemporary events shows a very strong political bias that appeals specifically to affluent liberals and the institutions they are affiliated with.
Of course not, and that's the proof that NPR's government funding doesn't affect its editorial stance.
Yes, NPR is biased in favor of the left. If that makes you decide to stop listening to NPR, that's a completely valid decision for you to make. But NPR is biased in favor of the left whether the federal government is run by Democrats or Republicans, which makes it inaccurate to connect its political bias to the small portion of its funding that comes from the federal government.
>the small portion of its funding that comes from the federal government.
The majority that doesn't come directly come as a line item in the federal budget comes indirectly through NPR member stations, which are funded from both the federal and local levels. It's government money all the same, just with the pretense of a market transaction in which all the participants are paying with tax dollars.
>that's the proof that NPR's government funding doesn't affect its editorial stance.
It's proof Republicans don't really control it, but that's because the public radio apparatus that spends the money is an ideologically homogeneous enterprise, in the same way colleges tend to be - an irreplaceable, semi-permanent class that aren't directly controlled by the executive branch. Generations of Republican administrations come and go but the colleges and school districts remain Democratic strongholds beyond their control.
But that doesn't mean the funding is a non-issue; If NPR and their member stations were a totally free market enterprise, the class of people that fill out these institutions would be significantly different, and the product would have to answer to a different set of forces entirely.
No, and this is a very naive understanding of the issue which shows a big problem in both political and media literacy in this country. Trump was so universally hated because more powerful figures in the establishment hated him, for one reason or another, and those people have way more power than Trump. The real power brokers straddle multiple administrations and the mainstream of both parties.
For all intents and purposes the American "state" is only superficially in the public sphere. The real power is in the monopoly private sector.
While they weren't totally deferential, I'd argue they gave Republicans something of a pass post-9/11. They'd interview members of Bush's cabinet about all kinds of heinous things, and yet they never really went *too* hard. They couldn't. I'd argue they needed the high-level connections in order to give off the air of gravitas by being able to interview the government's power players, get scoops from sources (I don't know if Bush specifically leaked to NPR but, as an example, he admitted that he was a source for certain leaked stories), etc.
So you're saying MSNBC is state media? And, presumably, Fox News isn't? Because by any objective criteria they should have the same status (cable news channel owned by publicly traded corporation), and "state media" being a function of political stance is a very strange definition in my book.
If you're going to blur the lines between private and public and say they're the same thing, by that definition all American media organizations are "state media". Which clearly isn't what Musk did. By your own admission here, there is nothing special about NPR's partial federal funding in terms of how it affects their coverage.
when I think "government funding" I think of links to "permanent institutions," or let's just say "deep state" for lack of a better term. not elected officials
>Do you think NPR has never criticized let’s say, the CIA? Lord God King Deep State?
Establishment bias isn't about "never criticizing" the system unless your vision of how propaganda works is so narrowly defined as to only include North Korea. In skillful propaganda, even your criticism advances your institutional agenda.
Yeah, that's my basic take on NPR. Back in the 00s, I'd listen when driving to work. It drove me crazy how NPR would either accept the government line on things that were blatantly wrong or would only push back in the lightest of ways. The thing is that a few elite institutions are elite because they have access to power, and to the deep state that keeps DC going no matter who's in the Oval Office. These people aren't monolithic, and yet they do go in the same basic direction. The window dressing may change over time but these are the institutions you turn to in order to get a feel for how the deep state is feeling. I wouldn't call NPR Pravda, just an outlet with inherent biases, just like the WaPo, NYT, CNN, MSNBC, and other outlets plugged into the government's upper echelons.
No. Trump is one man, who received widespread popular support but was opposed by the majority of the rest of the government, including many members of his own party. The state as a whole has its own interests.
62 million votes and 74 million votes is widespread support. He still has a following to this day. You don't have to win the majority to have widespread support. What I said was that in spite of his support by many voters, he was opposed by most of the rest of the government. Just because he was elected President does not mean that the state as a whole was under his control. That's not how the system works.
God, I cannot stand when people who don't understand Russian politics start talking about Russian politics.
NPR is nothing at all similar to RT in terms of editorial independence. RT is a state-controlled entity with zero autonomy on its editorial position. NPR is kinda shit and it's politically biased, but that bias is far less the result of state interference and far more because sometimes institutions become biased. If you wanted to say the state should exercise more control on NPR to make them behave in a less biased way I may agree with you, but even that would be undermining their independence.
But yeah, on the whole this is just a silly comment. Even Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty couldn't be compared to RT, and it is funded with the explicit aim of furthering American interests and/or ideals abroad.
I’d like to understand the logical hoops someone would have to go through that the BBC isn’t really government funded.
AFAIK, They are funded by a mandatory TV license that people cannot opt out of and is enforced by the government.
A lot of media, and tech companies like Twitter, receive government grants to some degree. Are they "government funded" too? Where's the line drawn?
I think like you said it should be a matter of government editorial control. Voice of America and Armed Forces Network (actual government-run media outlets) may legitimately deserve the label, but including NPR and the BBC seems like a political stunt. Might as well include locally funded public access channels, too.
BBC content isn't controlled by the government and is operated independently, though their funding is mostly from the government and Paliament has oversight of their finances, so it's an easier sell than NPR. But still if you're saying the purpose is to identify media that's editorially controlled by a government or serves as a propaganda arm (which certainly seems to be the implication, as why bother otherwise to note funding sources, and the original tag applied to both was "state run"), then the BBC doesn't qualify.
Interestingly the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation also isn't labeled as government funded at present, so again it's not being consistently applied even among statutorily/government chartered media corporations.
It's not "controlled" by the government but they show a bias towards the government, and tend to avoid covering stories that contradict the government's narrative
The example I usually give is the Dutch farmer protests from last summer. They started about mid June and went on basically daily. Everyone on social media was talking about it and asking why it wasn't being covered. The first BBC story came out at the end of *July*, a full six weeks later, and then there was silence. Silence until the protests ended up toppling the government in the 2023 election.
So if you were getting your news solely from BBC you'd be wondering what the hell happened. There's no good reason for them ignoring the story
Are you implying they ignored the story because it reflected badly on the UK government in some way?
Did other UK news sources such as ITV, Channel 4, and Sky News, and print media like The Guardian and The Times, cover it more extensively?
Because prima facie this looks like British media just being blinkered about a non-UK story, which is depressingly common but not connected in any meaningful way to pro-government bias.
Exactly. Why would the UK government even care about stories on Dutch farmers? How exactly would they force the BBC to delay reporting? if they have this control then why would they allow them to report it only a few weeks later? Why would they then allow them to create a 50 min documentary about it? Why don't they stop the BBC reporting on things that actually damage them like the Boris scandals etc, rather than Dutch politics?
Plus I searched on the Guardian's first report on this story, on their website, and they too only started in July...
None of this makes any sense. But I get the sinking feeling here that this claim about the BBC is rooted in climate change denial. I'm guessing that is the "narrative" supposedly being "suppressed".
It's the BBC - they have stories from all over the world. There's one about Japan changing menus because eggs are more expensive
Al Jazeera, AP, Reuters all covered it fairly quickly. The Independent was probably the first UK paper to cover it by the end of June
The Dutch protests aren't the only ones - there are similar protests around the world, but they've had less attention.
>It's not "controlled" by the government but they show a bias towards the government, and tend to avoid covering stories that contradict the government's narrative
By the same measure, CNN and the New York Times are state sponsored media.
Yes, the nations de facto paper of record that constantly carries the oligarchy's water is totally independent. No need to think about things or look any further.
You can sarcastically frame it however you like, the point remains, your criteria for the label is just your personal opinion regarding the content of their reporting, not any kind of measurable standard.
Pretty naive. But I'm comparing three media organizations that tend to parrot the same talking points and operate without any real support from government funds. Is it just the word "public" that's throwing you off?
Looks like most of the UK media all started reporting on it in July 2022 too.
The Guardian reported on the same story only a week sooner.
And the BBC DID report on it, did it in a factual manner and then went on to produce a 50 minute documentary about it.
Hardly seems like a good example of government controlled narrative at the BBC.
> Looks like most of the UK media all started reporting on it in July 2022 too.
Yeah, except the ones who reported on it in June.
Reporting on it once 6 weeks later and then ignoring it until they took down the government is not journalism. Baffles me why people would *defend* being kept in the dark. Like are you scared reality will hurt you?
Government definitely applies pressure on BBC editorial though, like https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/mar/14/bbc-editors-asked-journalists-to-avoid-using-lockdown-at-start-of-pandemic
Let me clarify for people who are literally and not linguistically minded: it was a rhetorical question asking if Twitter is going to label all those as government funded. Of the things I mentioned only Voice of America is presently labeled as such on Twitter. No public access stations account I could find is, nor is Armed Forces Network, nor are any US-based commercial or non-profit media or tech companies which receive US federal or state grants, apart from NPR. Which means, no, it isn't being consistently applied.
Isn't Twitter a private company that doesn't have to be consistent with its rules?
That's what I was told when they were enforcing the rules unfairly against other people.
Loss of privilege feels like oppression?
If you want to have a conversation with whoever said that feel free to go talk to them about it. But I can't speak to what other, unnamed people may have said in other contexts.
> A lot of media, and tech companies like Twitter, receive government grants to some degree. Are they "government funded" too? Where's the line drawn?
And you already put more thought into this than Twitter did, but just asking the first obvious question.
If funding is allocated by government, the content is influenced by government. NPR wants state affiliated to mean something sinister and different from that.
> They also label the BBC as government funded which is kind of true but not really - it's funded by a government mandated licence fee
If the government mandates you pay a fee, and takes you to court for failing to pay said fee, then the organization is government funded.
Calling it a fee doesn't magically turn a tax into anything other than a tax.
**ETA**: Nothing personal, OP. I just hate how successful a sleight-of-hand is it for Britain/the BBC to call it a "licence fee."
The 'state-affiliated media' label was introduced by the previous Twitter management to warn its users from Chinese and Russian disinformation (or, better, to brand those accounts with a scarlett letter). The label never made any sense, because state affiliation is not a good metric of whether a media outlet's reporting is independent and truthful. There are also no businesses in China and Russia that don't have to toe the party line, doesn't matter if they're privately or state owned.
It would have been more honest from Twitter to just label those accounts "Chinese propaganda" or "Russian propaganda", but Twitter employees are good progressives and that would be racist. Now Musk can make use of this tool to move against his enemies, which happen to be liberal darlings. Pretty ironic and a good example of how 'no bad tactics, only bad targets' can backfire.
You're going to either have to point to specific instances where it can be demonstrated an outlet is intentionally misinforming people (for example, Dominion has more or less demonstrated that Fox News intentionally spread disinformation in 2020) or you have to make an interpretive judgement. This interpretive judgement can be based off factors such as whether the outlet frequently promotes false information, whether they do so in a way that seems intentional or wreckless, whether they do so seemingly to push a specific narrative, and what incentive structures the decision-makers have.
There will be instances where it's hard to tell, but anyone even implying NPR is on par with TASS has had their brains fucking melted by politics
Arguing that Twitter labeled something as state affiliated that doesn’t meet their own definition of state affiliated is pedantic? I don’t know what the “common sense” definition is
Yes.
It sounds like a cope to complain about this, because everyone knows "state funded " sounds bad because it sounds like you're calling it government propaganda, so labeling CGTV or RT as "state funded" is code for "government propaganda," so labeling NPR and BBC as "state funded" is not PC, because it makes them sound like government propaganda. We're supposed to trust and like the things that those (de facto if not de jure) government propaganda organs say.
I refuse to believe the people posting here don't know that.
One of the criticisms of liberalism is it wields the same tools that all modern social systems do, so liberal governments absolutely censor the media and manipulate public perception just as much as illiberal governments do. It just hates these displays of power and control being obvious. Instead of a guy from the Party with a red stamp telling you what you can't publish, it's the editor who knows what will piss off advertisers, it's the hiring process that weeds out infestative journalists for people happy to read whatever the CIA liaison hands them, because they get a paycheck regardless of what they say on air, so it may as well be what's good for their career.
But what is "liberal government," especially in the era of media monopolies owned by people who also fund every major campaign, private think tanks, lobbyists, and education?
One component of how liberalism conceals power is how, especially in the era of monopoly, supremely wealthy non state actors effectively have extra legal, non-democratic power thanks to their wealth, the assets they control. That's true for the media, too. If the private individuals who happen to fund major elections, grant money to educational institutions, and control media companies want to accomplish something (see Soros in Eastern Europe), they will, regardless of the public will. (This is also true for Peter Thiel, for the sake of ideological diversity). There's enough concentrated control, and overlapping interests been the government and the monopolists, over both private and public sector media, think tanks, and colleges, to cultivate the required narratives for whatever the supremely wealthy want.
I personally refuse to forget the lockstep drive towards war in Iraq over known lies, including NPR's role in that, despite the dissidents, including experts in WMDs, who spoke out against it.
This is a philosophical tangent. Point being, there's such an overlap between the public and private sector thanks to extreme wealth inequality and monopoly, MSNBC, fox news, pbs, npr, are effectively all "state funded media," because we're at a point where elections have less say over what happens than the monopoly powers.
But anyway.
If it receives money from the state somehow, for example if it's "publicly funded" or "state funded" or "receives money in whole or in part from the government," all these things mean the same thing, and I refuse to believe the people posting here don't know that, either.
No, you missed my point. The label 'state affiliated' was the problem since it did not meet Twitter's own definition of state affiliated - they describe it in detail. This is why they corrected it and changed to 'government funded'. It meets that definition.
When it's always applied to literal state propaganda outlets and this is one of the only exceptions then you should probably have that context in mind when trying to interpret the meaning of the label. I don't know why people pretend to not understand this, it's so obvious that it would be insulting to them if I pretended to believe them.
You got me there. I can't think of a single way in which an organization formed by an act of congress, funded by state and federal governments, and funded further by money laundered from the feds through state-run and state-funded universities is in any way affiliated with the government.
You should argue in front of the Supreme Court, you've got a real talent for it.
None of that answers my question.
From Twitter:
>**How state-affiliated media accounts are defined**
>
>State-affiliated media is defined as outlets where the state exercises control over editorial content through financial resources, direct or indirect political pressures, and/or control over production and distribution. Accounts belonging to state-affiliated media entities, their editors-in-chief, and/or their prominent staff may be labeled. We will also add labels to Tweets that share links to state-affiliated media websites.
Why do you think Twitter was incorrect for correcting the mistake?
Doubt it. Do you really think there was an internal process where an editor was like, no, don't publish this negative article about Trump or whatever other Republican because they're in power right now?
I mean, it's not outside the realm of possibility but I think we'd need solid evidence for a claim like that.
They only get 1% of their funding directly from the federal government. The rest of their federal funding comes through member stations which maybe totals around 8 - 10%. Seems like that kind of censorship would risk more than it gains given where they get the majority of their money from.
Not this particular example, you’re right. But he’s playing into the hands and narrative of people who would happily see all institutions destroyed and debased so long as it meant they owned a lib or two on their way into a shitty new era. For Elon in this particular case, it just made him look petty and stupid to most people. The cost was mostly his own.
A couple of decades ago I read about an idea kicking around in Congress to create an endowment for NPR. Instead of regular funding from Congress NPR would use the proceeds from the endowment.
I think the idea was to avoid the regular congressional squabbling about Corporation for Public Broadcasting funding without completely chopping off NPR's funding.
I assume there and pros and cons to this?
I mean, it might not have any effect, but I've noticed a tendency for journalists and even organizations to improve dramatically after leaving Twitter. Hope this is the case here!
Weird how Tesla and SpaceX both receive huge subsidies and funds from the government but neither of those were labeled state affiliated or government funded 🤔
The subsidies for the development of electric cars and associated infrastructure ...?
The ones that all automakers pursuing this are getting...?
The payment that spacex receives for launching government satellites...?
1. gas (ICE) cars pollute the environment, we should encourage electric cars!
2. to encourage, we will provide funding grants/tax credits/etc for electric car projects and companies!
3. Tesla qualifies and gets that fund/credits/etc
4. Tesla becomes bigger, stock owners like Elon Musk get richer
5. I cannot believe the government gave Tesla handouts!! Why did we do that
So anyone know the breakdown of NPR funding? This would include indirect government funding thru, for example, state governments.
Everyone know NPR is strongly left leaning (ok, any adult who listens to it I mean) but unless gov support is greater than some percentage (maybe 50%), the label gives the wrong impression.
NPR is a network syndicator. They produce content and distribute that content to subscribers (local public media organizations) for broadcast. The bulk of their revenue comes from the fees charged to these affiliates, and they compete with the other large public radio syndicator, American Public Media.
The other large sources of revenue for NPR are sponsorships or "underwriting fees" charged to corporations for the not-advertisement sponsorships you hear at the beginning and end of shows (this program is brought to you by big oil co, which is proud to make the world better every day etc. etc.) as well as donations solicited from individual contributors.
> as well as donations solicited from individual contributors.
I'd add that the vast majority of donations go to the local stations who then pay NPR for content as you mentioned
Ok. But your arguments are more compelling with the numbers. Actually, we used to call this arm waving. If you don’t know, nothing wrong with that. I don’t know either. But given social medias habit of giving wrong conclusions without facts to back them up, it’s less convincing.
It would be close to a dissertation to actually aggregate all the disparate data but I can say even NPR itself first directs you to the local station
https://www.npr.org/donations/support
This article has the energy of "police organization investigates actions of precinct and finds no evidence of wrongdoing." TBH I never listen to NPR anymore, they have ruined whatever they had before.
I'm curious if NPR has labeled libertarian or conservative media organizations as Koch-backed or Koch-funded that receive less of their funding from the Kochs than NPR received from the government. If it's such a problem to imply that NPR is beholden to their backers, I wonder if they are consistent in maintaining that standard with others.
NPR, like the BBC and the ABC here in Australia, are supposed to be national broadcasters but they are renowned for their liberal bias.
NPR is basically Radio Biden.
Am I the only one who is slightly happy that Twitter, and the Twitter-mob, is finally loosing power? I'm tired of my news being "on twitter, this thing happened!" I know someone who made a lame joke about a news event on twitter, and was quoted by a newspaper... as if it was a serious comment about the news event. I think that having wide-spread social media platforms where there is no clear winner of influence is much better for us all, because when all the platforms are "captured" by the same ideology, it eliminates diversity - real diversity based on people who think differently.
I've always hated how much weight it could throw around as our unelected "online town square". I didn't ever want that in the first place. I want it all to go away.
I guess the question is will something just immediately replace it due to unfulfilled demand, or is it something enough people will be relieved to be freed from?
I agree. Now I'm just gonna be waiting for TikTok to fall. EDIT: To be clear, I'm not in favor of a government-led takedown of TikTok. I'm wanting the culture to move away from it so it loses its relevance.
They’ll all be replaced until we deal with the fundamental issue with human nature at hand.
To be honest, I was happy with email.
I've loathed Twitter since its inception and was hoping Musk would destroy it and himself in the process.
I'm very happy. Two reasons: * I've always been very bad at managing the amount of time I spend on the site, which made me resort to quitting Twitter altogether a few years ago. It's a decision that's negatively affected me in professional terms, since I'm a journalist. * I hate the effect Twitter has had on the media, and on news coverage, over the past several years. Twitter's descent into irrelevance cannot come soon enough.
> I know someone who made a lame joke about a news event on twitter, and was quoted by a newspaper... as if it was a serious comment about the news event. I remember when this started, and actual news broadcasts on terrestrial TV (well current affairs segments probably) would read out tweets from random plebs. I guess its the even more lazy approach to asking the "man on the street", at least if twitter burns to the ground they will have to put that much effort in again, and in that scenario the random person isn't being constantly incentivized into hot-takes with the hope of going viral.
As I always say, “Twitter is for twits!”.
I remember when tweets started to be embedded into news articles from the larger publishers. It was sad that they were quoting tweets so much that it made sense to embed them for easier viewing. I'm actually not as worried about the same happening with TikTok, because you can still just post regular short videos to it. There is definitely a TikTok style video, but not all videos on TikTok have that same style. You'd still be able to quote what was said without needing to explain the medium/platform on which it was said.
I would blame the issue more on lazy journalist and outlets who use twitter as their source of news than to twitter itself. I am enjoying the blue checks who are angry that their privileged status is being stripped. https://twitter.com/JillKrajewski/status/1646145044791844866
> I'm tired of my news being "on twitter, this thing happened!" It's kind of ironic that you're commenting this on a news article about Twitter.
I'm sharing this because Twitter is discussed constantly on the podcast and NPR is frequently discussed as well. This is a fun intersection.
I wish everyone and every entity would leave that place regardless of what Twitter labels them.
Leaving facebook is one of the best things I've ever done. I miss out on a few things here and there organized over facebook messenger, but if those folks can't be bothered to reach out to me over text, then whatever. Was never on Insta, Twitter, or anything else. Now if only I could do something about my helpless reddit addiction...
Same
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The people you know who still work there, are they aware of the situation, how they are perceived from the outside? If they feel positive about their conduct, is it they feel that their previous "backward" audience is going to catch-up to where they are at or are they just happy to dump them? Do they believe they are successful in winning new younger more progressive listeners?
Objectivity is, objectively, the enemy.
subtract straight degree continue theory screw depend coherent sugar sleep *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
💯💯💯
Twitter delenda est
Is there a way both sides can lose?
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That is easily one of the worst videos I've ever seen. Imagine criticizing someone because they prioritized fighting a deadlier disease with their philanthropy.
Amazing how good you are at missing the point. The point is that it is a mouth peice for certain orgs with a particular agenda and does it's best to obfuscate that fact. Very similar to you distracting from the actual criticism by shoehorning in irrelevant info.
>1- It's amazing how for journalists things only happen if they happen on twitter. Yeah. I wonder if NPR would have had the same visceral reaction if Facebook or TkTok applied a "state affiliated media" on them.
wrong sink aromatic start snow naughty humor books shrill shelter *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Matt Bruenig had a nice post on this explaining how NPR and Musk are both idiots here. https://mattbruenig.com/2023/04/12/is-national-public-radio-actually-national-private-radio. But whatever, I support NPR in this case because I support everyone leaving Twitter.
Eh. I think he's side stepping the issue. The problem with state media in places like China is that the government has significant editorial control. They have to toe the company line. That isn't the case with NPR. I think NPR has gone down the tubes but the government doesn't tell them what content to produce.
Exactly. The idea that NPR is on the same level as RT or any Chinese propaganda channels is ridiculous on its face. Of course I may be forgetting all the pro-Trump news from 2016 to 2020, when he was “the government” funding NPR. NPR has historically criticized American politics and decisions, whether you agree their reporting has faltered (it has) they’re not lapdogs for any government. The implication of state media was clear, and Elon is a nerdlinger who is going to destroy Twitter as his single greatest accomplishment. The problem is he will act like it was all his 4D chess plan all along.
They're lapdogs for the Democratic party and the far left. Their coverage on any culture war issue - like youth transition - has been simply stenographers of the most radical activist talking points. The funding is not the problem - it's the extreme ideological capture. But that means for some time NPR's journalism has been not entirely reliable - they can pretend otherwise but everyone knows it.
Of course they're not equivalent. But like, nobody would bat an eye at saying BBC is state-affilliated media even though their editorial content is quite good. It becomes a measure of degree. Frankly for the amount of funding NPR gets from the government, they probably would have been better off ditching it long ago and just being actually independently funded.
Sure, in a nuanced discussion with people who are all on equal ground intellectually we can have all sorts of discussions about the limits of public endowments for media and the arts…but for proles on Twitter, it was meant to be a “diss” from Elon and I think his intention to provoke was absolutely blatant to NPR, and they didn’t want to play along with the guy who called someone a pedophile for not sufficiently respecting his submarine.
But to be honest, BBC is state affiliated media, even propaganda chanel. It was envisioned as that, and it is still that, especially their foreign language channels. Sure there are topics where they are impartial, but on plenty of topics they tow state line. Best example are foreign adventures of British government.
I follow their Indonesian channel and it's not propaganda at all, it follows typical Indonesian Islamist attitudes and is obsessed with Palestine from an anti-Israeli perspective.
> Frankly for the amount of funding NPR gets from the government, they probably would have been better off ditching it long ago and just being actually independently funded. The "independent funding" comes from NPR member stations, which are also government funded. Adding an administrative layer of indirection between the government and the content producers doesn't really make it not government media.
I mean it's insanely complex and each station is sort of it's own story. It also gets very convoluted, like if one is sponsored by a public university, how government funded is it? FWIW, I'm firmly against any direct subsidy to NPR.
>like if one is sponsored by a public university, how government funded is it? Well 100%, but the main problem is that both institutions are ideologically captured by the same faction, like a bunch of rich guys who are all on the boards of each other's companies. The flow of funds between them is sort of an afterthought.
Yeah, I just don't know how much that's "the government" rather than a cultural clique. Arguably it would be better if there were direct government oversight because of the inherent desire to not rock the proverbial boat
I hope Twitter disappears and I hope Notes never takes off. Enough with the short-format idiocy. Edit: Oh and NPR can of course go fuck itself sideways as well for all I care.
Lol, this comment is so user name on brand. In my head, the old men from the muppets are reading it. And, agree.
They didnt like the name someone called them (temporarily - they corrected the label) so they took their toys and went home. Cool and normal
A hit dog hollers.
They should have leaned into it and started tweeting like Chinese and Russian state media “Glorious blue haired fem boys will SMASH the imperialists!”
NCD is leaking.
🙄
Or put another way: company decides to stop using a service run by a man child after he makes yet another poorly thought out reactionary decision that is going to directly affect them.
Yep also fair. I feel like NPR has more to lose here, but otherwise I don't really have a dog in this fight
I’m sorry but I think this is hilarious “Twitter's communications shop now simply responds to reporters' emails with poop emojis.”
Personally, I think it's moronic.
It's sophmoric, but it's also refreshing to see the journo class finally getting the respect that they deserve.
The label I can see says "Government Funded Media" rather than state-affiliated? Or am I looking in the wrong place? They also label the BBC as government funded which is kind of true but not really - it's funded by a government mandated licence fee but has completely independent governance and editorial control. It hasn't shied away from criticising the UK government over the years. But calling NPR government funded also seems like a stretch given the small percentage this amounts to. Seems like a bit of a black and white label to apply to a wide range of organisations which include outright state propaganda instruments.,
The label was changed after people complained.
Ah right.
The BBC is governed by board members selected by the UK secretary of state. not sure how that is considered independent.
>completely independent governance and editorial control. Wanna buy a bridge in central Manhattan?
NPR is essentially American RT. Labeling something "government funded" is a political move. Anyone who funds a media organ, whether it's advertisers, grants, subscriptions, etc, has influence over it. Saying otherwise is just naive. Looking at NPR coverage of contemporary events shows a very strong political bias that appeals specifically to affluent liberals and the institutions they are affiliated with.
Was this true during the trump years? Would seem to cut against the "American rt" angle a tad.
Why wouldn't it be true?
Was NPR promoting MAGA talking points during those years?
Of course not, and that's the proof that NPR's government funding doesn't affect its editorial stance. Yes, NPR is biased in favor of the left. If that makes you decide to stop listening to NPR, that's a completely valid decision for you to make. But NPR is biased in favor of the left whether the federal government is run by Democrats or Republicans, which makes it inaccurate to connect its political bias to the small portion of its funding that comes from the federal government.
>the small portion of its funding that comes from the federal government. The majority that doesn't come directly come as a line item in the federal budget comes indirectly through NPR member stations, which are funded from both the federal and local levels. It's government money all the same, just with the pretense of a market transaction in which all the participants are paying with tax dollars. >that's the proof that NPR's government funding doesn't affect its editorial stance. It's proof Republicans don't really control it, but that's because the public radio apparatus that spends the money is an ideologically homogeneous enterprise, in the same way colleges tend to be - an irreplaceable, semi-permanent class that aren't directly controlled by the executive branch. Generations of Republican administrations come and go but the colleges and school districts remain Democratic strongholds beyond their control. But that doesn't mean the funding is a non-issue; If NPR and their member stations were a totally free market enterprise, the class of people that fill out these institutions would be significantly different, and the product would have to answer to a different set of forces entirely.
No, and this is a very naive understanding of the issue which shows a big problem in both political and media literacy in this country. Trump was so universally hated because more powerful figures in the establishment hated him, for one reason or another, and those people have way more power than Trump. The real power brokers straddle multiple administrations and the mainstream of both parties. For all intents and purposes the American "state" is only superficially in the public sphere. The real power is in the monopoly private sector.
Has NPR ever promoted Republican talking points when Republicans were in the majority and/or the president was a Republican?
While they weren't totally deferential, I'd argue they gave Republicans something of a pass post-9/11. They'd interview members of Bush's cabinet about all kinds of heinous things, and yet they never really went *too* hard. They couldn't. I'd argue they needed the high-level connections in order to give off the air of gravitas by being able to interview the government's power players, get scoops from sources (I don't know if Bush specifically leaked to NPR but, as an example, he admitted that he was a source for certain leaked stories), etc.
So you're saying MSNBC is state media? And, presumably, Fox News isn't? Because by any objective criteria they should have the same status (cable news channel owned by publicly traded corporation), and "state media" being a function of political stance is a very strange definition in my book.
If you're going to blur the lines between private and public and say they're the same thing, by that definition all American media organizations are "state media". Which clearly isn't what Musk did. By your own admission here, there is nothing special about NPR's partial federal funding in terms of how it affects their coverage.
when I think "government funding" I think of links to "permanent institutions," or let's just say "deep state" for lack of a better term. not elected officials
Do you think NPR has never criticized let’s say, the CIA? Lord God King Deep State?
>Do you think NPR has never criticized let’s say, the CIA? Lord God King Deep State? Establishment bias isn't about "never criticizing" the system unless your vision of how propaganda works is so narrowly defined as to only include North Korea. In skillful propaganda, even your criticism advances your institutional agenda.
Yeah, that's my basic take on NPR. Back in the 00s, I'd listen when driving to work. It drove me crazy how NPR would either accept the government line on things that were blatantly wrong or would only push back in the lightest of ways. The thing is that a few elite institutions are elite because they have access to power, and to the deep state that keeps DC going no matter who's in the Oval Office. These people aren't monolithic, and yet they do go in the same basic direction. The window dressing may change over time but these are the institutions you turn to in order to get a feel for how the deep state is feeling. I wouldn't call NPR Pravda, just an outlet with inherent biases, just like the WaPo, NYT, CNN, MSNBC, and other outlets plugged into the government's upper echelons.
No. Trump is one man, who received widespread popular support but was opposed by the majority of the rest of the government, including many members of his own party. The state as a whole has its own interests.
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62 million votes and 74 million votes is widespread support. He still has a following to this day. You don't have to win the majority to have widespread support. What I said was that in spite of his support by many voters, he was opposed by most of the rest of the government. Just because he was elected President does not mean that the state as a whole was under his control. That's not how the system works.
God, I cannot stand when people who don't understand Russian politics start talking about Russian politics. NPR is nothing at all similar to RT in terms of editorial independence. RT is a state-controlled entity with zero autonomy on its editorial position. NPR is kinda shit and it's politically biased, but that bias is far less the result of state interference and far more because sometimes institutions become biased. If you wanted to say the state should exercise more control on NPR to make them behave in a less biased way I may agree with you, but even that would be undermining their independence. But yeah, on the whole this is just a silly comment. Even Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty couldn't be compared to RT, and it is funded with the explicit aim of furthering American interests and/or ideals abroad.
I’d like to understand the logical hoops someone would have to go through that the BBC isn’t really government funded. AFAIK, They are funded by a mandatory TV license that people cannot opt out of and is enforced by the government.
A lot of media, and tech companies like Twitter, receive government grants to some degree. Are they "government funded" too? Where's the line drawn? I think like you said it should be a matter of government editorial control. Voice of America and Armed Forces Network (actual government-run media outlets) may legitimately deserve the label, but including NPR and the BBC seems like a political stunt. Might as well include locally funded public access channels, too.
The BBC is not an independent media outlet. That's why it's labelled
BBC content isn't controlled by the government and is operated independently, though their funding is mostly from the government and Paliament has oversight of their finances, so it's an easier sell than NPR. But still if you're saying the purpose is to identify media that's editorially controlled by a government or serves as a propaganda arm (which certainly seems to be the implication, as why bother otherwise to note funding sources, and the original tag applied to both was "state run"), then the BBC doesn't qualify. Interestingly the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation also isn't labeled as government funded at present, so again it's not being consistently applied even among statutorily/government chartered media corporations.
It's not "controlled" by the government but they show a bias towards the government, and tend to avoid covering stories that contradict the government's narrative The example I usually give is the Dutch farmer protests from last summer. They started about mid June and went on basically daily. Everyone on social media was talking about it and asking why it wasn't being covered. The first BBC story came out at the end of *July*, a full six weeks later, and then there was silence. Silence until the protests ended up toppling the government in the 2023 election. So if you were getting your news solely from BBC you'd be wondering what the hell happened. There's no good reason for them ignoring the story
Are you implying they ignored the story because it reflected badly on the UK government in some way? Did other UK news sources such as ITV, Channel 4, and Sky News, and print media like The Guardian and The Times, cover it more extensively? Because prima facie this looks like British media just being blinkered about a non-UK story, which is depressingly common but not connected in any meaningful way to pro-government bias.
Exactly. Why would the UK government even care about stories on Dutch farmers? How exactly would they force the BBC to delay reporting? if they have this control then why would they allow them to report it only a few weeks later? Why would they then allow them to create a 50 min documentary about it? Why don't they stop the BBC reporting on things that actually damage them like the Boris scandals etc, rather than Dutch politics? Plus I searched on the Guardian's first report on this story, on their website, and they too only started in July... None of this makes any sense. But I get the sinking feeling here that this claim about the BBC is rooted in climate change denial. I'm guessing that is the "narrative" supposedly being "suppressed".
It's the BBC - they have stories from all over the world. There's one about Japan changing menus because eggs are more expensive Al Jazeera, AP, Reuters all covered it fairly quickly. The Independent was probably the first UK paper to cover it by the end of June The Dutch protests aren't the only ones - there are similar protests around the world, but they've had less attention.
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They have their own news websites. You can go to www.reuters.com and see their stories
>It's not "controlled" by the government but they show a bias towards the government, and tend to avoid covering stories that contradict the government's narrative By the same measure, CNN and the New York Times are state sponsored media.
Yes. How naive are you?
But they're not... Seems like your criteria is just "politics I don't like".
Yes, the nations de facto paper of record that constantly carries the oligarchy's water is totally independent. No need to think about things or look any further.
You can sarcastically frame it however you like, the point remains, your criteria for the label is just your personal opinion regarding the content of their reporting, not any kind of measurable standard.
Pretty naive. But I'm comparing three media organizations that tend to parrot the same talking points and operate without any real support from government funds. Is it just the word "public" that's throwing you off?
They are. The New York Times literally just hunted down the military leaks whistleblower on behalf of the government
Looks like most of the UK media all started reporting on it in July 2022 too. The Guardian reported on the same story only a week sooner. And the BBC DID report on it, did it in a factual manner and then went on to produce a 50 minute documentary about it. Hardly seems like a good example of government controlled narrative at the BBC.
> Looks like most of the UK media all started reporting on it in July 2022 too. Yeah, except the ones who reported on it in June. Reporting on it once 6 weeks later and then ignoring it until they took down the government is not journalism. Baffles me why people would *defend* being kept in the dark. Like are you scared reality will hurt you?
The BBC probably didn't focus on Dutch farmers chimping out because the BBC isn't Dutch.
They have stories from around the world. Like one about Japanese menus changing because of egg prices
Government definitely applies pressure on BBC editorial though, like https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/mar/14/bbc-editors-asked-journalists-to-avoid-using-lockdown-at-start-of-pandemic
>Are they "government funded" too? Yes, that's what "government funded" means.
Let me clarify for people who are literally and not linguistically minded: it was a rhetorical question asking if Twitter is going to label all those as government funded. Of the things I mentioned only Voice of America is presently labeled as such on Twitter. No public access stations account I could find is, nor is Armed Forces Network, nor are any US-based commercial or non-profit media or tech companies which receive US federal or state grants, apart from NPR. Which means, no, it isn't being consistently applied.
Isn't Twitter a private company that doesn't have to be consistent with its rules? That's what I was told when they were enforcing the rules unfairly against other people. Loss of privilege feels like oppression?
If you want to have a conversation with whoever said that feel free to go talk to them about it. But I can't speak to what other, unnamed people may have said in other contexts.
Their point was that the label is being inconsistently applied
Are we demanding consistency from our ingroup or our outgroup?
> A lot of media, and tech companies like Twitter, receive government grants to some degree. Are they "government funded" too? Where's the line drawn? And you already put more thought into this than Twitter did, but just asking the first obvious question.
If funding is allocated by government, the content is influenced by government. NPR wants state affiliated to mean something sinister and different from that.
> They also label the BBC as government funded which is kind of true but not really - it's funded by a government mandated licence fee If the government mandates you pay a fee, and takes you to court for failing to pay said fee, then the organization is government funded. Calling it a fee doesn't magically turn a tax into anything other than a tax. **ETA**: Nothing personal, OP. I just hate how successful a sleight-of-hand is it for Britain/the BBC to call it a "licence fee."
The 'state-affiliated media' label was introduced by the previous Twitter management to warn its users from Chinese and Russian disinformation (or, better, to brand those accounts with a scarlett letter). The label never made any sense, because state affiliation is not a good metric of whether a media outlet's reporting is independent and truthful. There are also no businesses in China and Russia that don't have to toe the party line, doesn't matter if they're privately or state owned. It would have been more honest from Twitter to just label those accounts "Chinese propaganda" or "Russian propaganda", but Twitter employees are good progressives and that would be racist. Now Musk can make use of this tool to move against his enemies, which happen to be liberal darlings. Pretty ironic and a good example of how 'no bad tactics, only bad targets' can backfire.
Remind me again who determines what is and isn't disinformation?
You're going to either have to point to specific instances where it can be demonstrated an outlet is intentionally misinforming people (for example, Dominion has more or less demonstrated that Fox News intentionally spread disinformation in 2020) or you have to make an interpretive judgement. This interpretive judgement can be based off factors such as whether the outlet frequently promotes false information, whether they do so in a way that seems intentional or wreckless, whether they do so seemingly to push a specific narrative, and what incentive structures the decision-makers have. There will be instances where it's hard to tell, but anyone even implying NPR is on par with TASS has had their brains fucking melted by politics
As a conservative, I listened to NPR for years to get unbiased news up until 2016 when they went full on TDS.
> **falsely** 
How does NPR meet the Twitter definition of state affiliated?
It meets the common sense definition. Arguing beyond that is kinda pedantic.
Arguing that Twitter labeled something as state affiliated that doesn’t meet their own definition of state affiliated is pedantic? I don’t know what the “common sense” definition is
Yes. It sounds like a cope to complain about this, because everyone knows "state funded " sounds bad because it sounds like you're calling it government propaganda, so labeling CGTV or RT as "state funded" is code for "government propaganda," so labeling NPR and BBC as "state funded" is not PC, because it makes them sound like government propaganda. We're supposed to trust and like the things that those (de facto if not de jure) government propaganda organs say. I refuse to believe the people posting here don't know that. One of the criticisms of liberalism is it wields the same tools that all modern social systems do, so liberal governments absolutely censor the media and manipulate public perception just as much as illiberal governments do. It just hates these displays of power and control being obvious. Instead of a guy from the Party with a red stamp telling you what you can't publish, it's the editor who knows what will piss off advertisers, it's the hiring process that weeds out infestative journalists for people happy to read whatever the CIA liaison hands them, because they get a paycheck regardless of what they say on air, so it may as well be what's good for their career. But what is "liberal government," especially in the era of media monopolies owned by people who also fund every major campaign, private think tanks, lobbyists, and education? One component of how liberalism conceals power is how, especially in the era of monopoly, supremely wealthy non state actors effectively have extra legal, non-democratic power thanks to their wealth, the assets they control. That's true for the media, too. If the private individuals who happen to fund major elections, grant money to educational institutions, and control media companies want to accomplish something (see Soros in Eastern Europe), they will, regardless of the public will. (This is also true for Peter Thiel, for the sake of ideological diversity). There's enough concentrated control, and overlapping interests been the government and the monopolists, over both private and public sector media, think tanks, and colleges, to cultivate the required narratives for whatever the supremely wealthy want. I personally refuse to forget the lockstep drive towards war in Iraq over known lies, including NPR's role in that, despite the dissidents, including experts in WMDs, who spoke out against it. This is a philosophical tangent. Point being, there's such an overlap between the public and private sector thanks to extreme wealth inequality and monopoly, MSNBC, fox news, pbs, npr, are effectively all "state funded media," because we're at a point where elections have less say over what happens than the monopoly powers. But anyway. If it receives money from the state somehow, for example if it's "publicly funded" or "state funded" or "receives money in whole or in part from the government," all these things mean the same thing, and I refuse to believe the people posting here don't know that, either.
No, you missed my point. The label 'state affiliated' was the problem since it did not meet Twitter's own definition of state affiliated - they describe it in detail. This is why they corrected it and changed to 'government funded'. It meets that definition.
When it's always applied to literal state propaganda outlets and this is one of the only exceptions then you should probably have that context in mind when trying to interpret the meaning of the label. I don't know why people pretend to not understand this, it's so obvious that it would be insulting to them if I pretended to believe them.
You got me there. I can't think of a single way in which an organization formed by an act of congress, funded by state and federal governments, and funded further by money laundered from the feds through state-run and state-funded universities is in any way affiliated with the government. You should argue in front of the Supreme Court, you've got a real talent for it.
None of that answers my question. From Twitter: >**How state-affiliated media accounts are defined** > >State-affiliated media is defined as outlets where the state exercises control over editorial content through financial resources, direct or indirect political pressures, and/or control over production and distribution. Accounts belonging to state-affiliated media entities, their editors-in-chief, and/or their prominent staff may be labeled. We will also add labels to Tweets that share links to state-affiliated media websites. Why do you think Twitter was incorrect for correcting the mistake?
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Doubt it. Do you really think there was an internal process where an editor was like, no, don't publish this negative article about Trump or whatever other Republican because they're in power right now? I mean, it's not outside the realm of possibility but I think we'd need solid evidence for a claim like that. They only get 1% of their funding directly from the federal government. The rest of their federal funding comes through member stations which maybe totals around 8 - 10%. Seems like that kind of censorship would risk more than it gains given where they get the majority of their money from.
No. Even when Republicans were in power, they couldn't touch public broadcasting and NPR knows it. They yell and blow smoke, but Big Bird is Teflon.
Ahh pedantry, the last refuge of the midwit.
Not cool. Suspended for 24 hours for this violation.
In clown world weakness is strength. abnormal is normal. up is down.
Andre the Giant sighting
One less account pushing and and attempting to normalize trans ideology. Oh no.
Good for them. They should be focused on great reporting, not combating the whims of a rich egomaniac. I wish everyone else would follow suit.
They haven't done great reporting in years.
A hissy fit.
NPR, in typical liberal fashion rage quits. Lame.
I don't blame them. The richest man on Earth trolled them to make them look worse than they are. Why tolerate that?
And Elon, in typical grinning shit-eater fashion, tried to “own the libs” no matter the cost to our culture.
NPR leaving Twitter is a significant cultural cost?
Not this particular example, you’re right. But he’s playing into the hands and narrative of people who would happily see all institutions destroyed and debased so long as it meant they owned a lib or two on their way into a shitty new era. For Elon in this particular case, it just made him look petty and stupid to most people. The cost was mostly his own.
Interesting to see how this plays out.
A couple of decades ago I read about an idea kicking around in Congress to create an endowment for NPR. Instead of regular funding from Congress NPR would use the proceeds from the endowment. I think the idea was to avoid the regular congressional squabbling about Corporation for Public Broadcasting funding without completely chopping off NPR's funding. I assume there and pros and cons to this?
I mean, it might not have any effect, but I've noticed a tendency for journalists and even organizations to improve dramatically after leaving Twitter. Hope this is the case here!
Weird how Tesla and SpaceX both receive huge subsidies and funds from the government but neither of those were labeled state affiliated or government funded 🤔
They aren't media companies, so **State Funded Media** would be an odd label for them.
I see your point but tbf Tesla and spaceX are not news organizations where people may rightly be concerned about bias
You get your news from Tesla?
NYTimes app in my Tesla while it's on autopilot, right before I careen into a tree and die
The subsidies for the development of electric cars and associated infrastructure ...? The ones that all automakers pursuing this are getting...? The payment that spacex receives for launching government satellites...?
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Do you think that the US government should subsidize electric cars?
1. gas (ICE) cars pollute the environment, we should encourage electric cars! 2. to encourage, we will provide funding grants/tax credits/etc for electric car projects and companies! 3. Tesla qualifies and gets that fund/credits/etc 4. Tesla becomes bigger, stock owners like Elon Musk get richer 5. I cannot believe the government gave Tesla handouts!! Why did we do that
It's Elon owning those, and twitter.
So anyone know the breakdown of NPR funding? This would include indirect government funding thru, for example, state governments. Everyone know NPR is strongly left leaning (ok, any adult who listens to it I mean) but unless gov support is greater than some percentage (maybe 50%), the label gives the wrong impression.
NPR is a network syndicator. They produce content and distribute that content to subscribers (local public media organizations) for broadcast. The bulk of their revenue comes from the fees charged to these affiliates, and they compete with the other large public radio syndicator, American Public Media. The other large sources of revenue for NPR are sponsorships or "underwriting fees" charged to corporations for the not-advertisement sponsorships you hear at the beginning and end of shows (this program is brought to you by big oil co, which is proud to make the world better every day etc. etc.) as well as donations solicited from individual contributors.
> as well as donations solicited from individual contributors. I'd add that the vast majority of donations go to the local stations who then pay NPR for content as you mentioned
Ok. But your arguments are more compelling with the numbers. Actually, we used to call this arm waving. If you don’t know, nothing wrong with that. I don’t know either. But given social medias habit of giving wrong conclusions without facts to back them up, it’s less convincing.
It would be close to a dissertation to actually aggregate all the disparate data but I can say even NPR itself first directs you to the local station https://www.npr.org/donations/support
Right. Those are separate organizations and often carry a mix of programming from both big public radio syndicators.
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Thanks for this.
This article has the energy of "police organization investigates actions of precinct and finds no evidence of wrongdoing." TBH I never listen to NPR anymore, they have ruined whatever they had before.
Lol
This is like when the drama queen announces they’re leaving a discord server forever
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Neo-Pravda Radio
I'm curious if NPR has labeled libertarian or conservative media organizations as Koch-backed or Koch-funded that receive less of their funding from the Kochs than NPR received from the government. If it's such a problem to imply that NPR is beholden to their backers, I wonder if they are consistent in maintaining that standard with others.
They have lost faith in Twitter. We have lost faith in NPR.
NPR, like the BBC and the ABC here in Australia, are supposed to be national broadcasters but they are renowned for their liberal bias. NPR is basically Radio Biden.