Twitter labels NPR's account as 'state-affiliated media', which is untrue

https://www.npr.org/2023/04/05/1168158549/twitter-npr-state-affiliated-media

by dagenix • 3 years ago

61 53 3 years ago

g42gregory• 3 years ago

State affiliation is not just about funding. Per Twitter guidelines:

"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."

S33V• 3 years ago

Here's Twitter's documentation on how they identify state-affiliated media[1]. This excerpt makes the decision seem outside of the defined process:

  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.

  State-financed media organizations with editorial independence, like the BBC 
  in the UK for example, are not defined as state-affiliated media for the 
  purposes of this policy.

[1] https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/state-affilia...

anigbrowl2• 3 years ago

If you look in the article, it links to an archived copy of the same document, which included NPR alongside the BBC.

brucethemoose22• 3 years ago

Could the British government influence BBC stories if they really went of the rails and attacked the govt?

I am not British and don't have a good feel for the BBC, though I am fairly confident NPR can do government hit stories and such.

anigbrowl2• 3 years ago

Yes, both indirectly and directly. Indirectly, in that BBC editorial policy is a regular political football, especially with conservatives. Directly (and like all other media) though a 'D notice.'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSMA-Notice

plandis• 3 years ago

Didn’t the BBC recently take a soccer announcer off the air after he was critical of the conservative government?

ncr100• 3 years ago

EDIT: Removed fluff.

Q: At what point is Twitter itself a source of misinformation, or disinformation?

Q: At what point Could this labeling trigger reasonable legal action, around Twitter's apparent conscientious selective moderation => making Twitter "responsible" for everyone's tweets, by NPR?

rektide• 3 years ago

Just one example, the NPR article on NPR laying a bunch of people off has this disclosure at the end:

Disclosure: This story was reported and written by NPR Media Correspondent David Folkenflik and edited by Acting Chief Business Editor Emily Kopp. Under NPR's protocol for reporting on itself, no corporate official or news executive reviewed this story before it was posted publicly.

https://www.npr.org/2023/02/22/1158710498/npr-layoffs-2023

This is a protocol specifically on "reporting on [themselves]" but it's a solid-ish example of the org not being a top-down controlled entity, and indeed, of making sure the org can report transparently on itself. NPR feels extremely not government controlled.

paulpauper• 3 years ago

I think there should be an appeal process. Hard to say either way. I have seen NPR publish negative stories about Biden too.

firstlink• 3 years ago

Pointing out that Biden is a geriatric fraud hardly runs against the interests of the state. He's not at the helm.

pie420• 3 years ago

You realize even Stalin's USSR allowed controlled opposition and occaisional articles critical of the government in order to give the illusion of freedom and dissent, right? Propaganda has evolved into a much more sophisticated beast since then.

dingosity6• 3 years ago

So... what's your point here? That NPR is controlled by Stalin? or the Soviet Union? or Lyndon Larouche?

brucethemoose22• 3 years ago

Seems like "Follow Musk's daily musings" is the #1 Twitter rule that supercedes their other policies.

xqcgrek2• 3 years ago

Youtube also labels NPR. Twitter is correct in labeling them state affiliated.

dingosity6• 3 years ago

Yes. Youtube applies the label "NPR is an American Public Broadcasting service." It applies the label "VOA is funded in whole or in part by the American government" to the VOA channel. Note that the two labels are not the same. Interestingly, it does not label the @DeptOfDefense account at all.

And it's not just US institutions, they label the Al Jazeera English channel with "Al Jazeera is funded in whole or in part by the Qatari government."

I think what I'm saying is, if YouTube believed NPR got all of it's funding from the US Government, it would label it differently than it does. And YouTube's labeling seems to be incomplete (otherwise certainly the department of defense channel would have a label.) Which leads to my conclusion... maybe you shouldn't depend on YouTube as the arbiter of what is and what isn't funded by various governments.

moose_man• 3 years ago

The US government does not control NPR this is ridiculous. If they did, why are they laying people off over funding? They get most of their money from foundations and corporate sponsors. Who in the US government could control it? Congress, the President? the Top-Secret deep state? This is a bad look for Musk because it isn't even logical. Does Musk not remember the decade where all NPR programs were "sponsored by Audible" or "brought to by Audible"? I got so sick of hearing about audible.com and its great selection of audiobooks.

nyerp• 3 years ago

The article states "More than 99% of NPR's funds do not come from federal sources" and yet elaborates "NPR ... gets the bulk of its direct financial support from two sources: sponsorships and fees paid by hundreds of member stations." How are those member stations funded? Through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which receives a $465 million federal appropration each year.

So can the Federal Government exert pressure through "financial resources" or "indirect political pressure", per the Twitter policy? You bet. Does the NPR model naturally align itself to bigger government with more grant-making power? Definitely.

I think Twitter could have come down on either side. It's a grey area. But how could the NPR story fail to mention the $465 million?

See also https://www.npr.org/about-npr/178660742/public-radio-finance... where NPR makes the opposite argument, namely, that "Federal funding is *essential* to public radio's service to the American public and its continuation is critical for both stations and program producers, including NPR."

vannevar2• 3 years ago

By this same logic, all television networks are "state-affiliated media", because they all depend on local stations that hold federally-granted broadcast licenses. So add Fox Broadcasting, NBC, CBS, etc., etc. to your list.

stusmall• 3 years ago

Also with the same logic Tesla is "state-affiliated". Federal subsidies on sales have been a critical part of their business model.

I think people are arguing that is label makes sense are really losing the thread of the point of the label. Is it possible for the Federal government to exert pressure on the organization? Honestly, that's true of any person or organization that has any financial dealings that touch the US. It's really hard to argue in good faith that NPR is a mouth piece of the state like RT or Xinhua.

krapp• 3 years ago

The logic being applied here is the baseline of American conservative logic that all mainstream media, excepting Fox News of course, is controlled by an organized leftist cabal that takes their orders directly from the Democratic Party. They mistrust NPR and PBS in particular (and have for decades,) considering them nothing but organs for Marxist propaganda.

As with the "Twitter Files" this is just an attempt to normalize right-wing conspiracy theory under the facade of neutrality.

revelio2• 3 years ago

Broadcast licensing isn't the same thing as direct subsidization, though.

TheCoelacanth• 3 years ago

31% of revenue comes from member station fees and 13% of member station fees comes from government funding, so that would mean 13% of 31% or 4% of the total comes from government sources.

"State-affiliated" still seems highly inaccurate. Tesla get 3% of its revenue from government carbon credits. Are they labeling Tesla as state-affiliated?

cool_dude85• 3 years ago

But if the CPB stations didn't exist, who would be trying to advertise, excuse me, become a corporate sponsor, with NPR? The network of stations that NPR sells its material to would likely not exist without Federal funding.

Dudelander2• 3 years ago

The source you cite points out that only 8% of public radio's funding comes from federal funding, and less than 1% of NPR's budget comes from federal funding. The federal government does not exercise any editorial control over NPR other than by the mechanisms that apply to Fox, CNN, Newsmax, or any other "private" media organization.

vuln4• 3 years ago

The federal government does not exercise any editorial control over NPR other than by the mechanisms that apply to Fox, CNN, Newsmax, or any other "private" media organization.

So NPR hires former IC members and then utilizes them to downplay or hype a story? I mean “give an analysis”…

rcktmrtn• 3 years ago

How are those member stations funded?

A case quick case study on this for Wisconsin I did recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35294972&p=2#35295817

... in summary, our station seems to be about 1/3 funded directly by the the government (state+federal). It's obviously simpleminded to claim that NPR is directly and obviously a stooge of the federal government, but trying to deflect the question with the "99% non-federal funds" doesn't convince me of anything.

sometimesjerks• 3 years ago

I've seen a lot of misunderstanding about how NPR's funding works, and a claim that NPR/NPR affiliated stations receive $465M.

First, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) receives ~$128M for "Public Radio Station and Programming Grants", not NPR or NPR affiliated stations [1].

Second, CPB uses that money for grants to local stations, which then license content from NPR. This model was a direct result of NPR's funding crisis in the 1980's. Additionally, the amount a local station gets from the CPB depends on how large it is, with the average station only receiving 7.2% percent of its annual revenue from CPB grants [1]. Small rural stations get a much larger percent -- and most probably wouldn't be able to function without it hence NPR's "Federal funding is essential to public radio's service" statement.

[1] https://cpb.org/funding

dingosity6• 3 years ago

I believe you to be high.

The US petroleum industry as a whole (and the few individual companies I follow closely) receive a higher percentage of their income as subsidies from the US federal government than NPR does.

By this logic, they are more likely to yield to pressure from the US government than NPR and yet Twitter does not label their accounts as "government affiliated."

Tesla received $7.5B in federal subsidies last year on $81.4B of revenue. That's about 8 percentage points more federal funding than NPR received. Maybe we should label Tesla's twitter account as "government affiliated."

I can't find recent data, but through 2015, SpaceX received $4.9B in government subsidies, and SolarCity received $497M in direct federal subsidies. Maybe they should also be labeled "government affiliated."

2022-11-072• 3 years ago

This is not a very convincing defense. Most foreign outlets Twitter and US media label state-affiliated are not directly controlled by the state. It's more like, hey, this institution gets a lot of its funding from, or has close ties to, the state, so just watch out for that which is 100% true here.

NPR was literally created by an act of congress. You can't be honest and say in good faith it's not state affiliated.

kevincrane• 3 years ago

Except when you read the article, you saw a description from Twitter and link saying:

State-financed media organizations with editorial independence, like the BBC in the UK or NPR in the US for example, are not defined as state-affiliated media for the purposes of this policy.

https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/state-affilia...

2022-11-072• 3 years ago

Even though that help page contradicts their decision to label it as state-affiliated media, it does not change the fact that NPR is state affiliated media. Maybe they just forgot to remove NPR as an example when they changed their designation?

Dudelander2• 3 years ago

It does not get a lot of funding from the state. And every competent media outlet has contacts in government.

dingosity6• 3 years ago

And it was defunded by an act of congress as well.

So... your point is... congress once gave them a fair chunk of change and now they don't but that doesn't matter because they once gave them a lot of cash. That's like saying my parents still control me because they gave me an allowance in jr. high school.

dragonwriter• 3 years ago

Most foreign outlets Twitter and US media label state-affiliated are not directly controlled by the state. It's more like, hey, this institution gets a lot of its funding from, or has close ties to, the state

Twitter directly states that the label refers to editorial control, and that even state funded outlets where the state does not exercise editorial control will not get the label (the BBC is explicitly given as an example.)

So, no, your explanation of the labeling logic is not accurate.

fwlr2• 3 years ago

NPR makes a good case that the “funded by the state” clause isn’t applicable to them. Directly is knockdown, they have that “less than 1%” statistic. Indirect funding clause seems like a wash - they are supported by member fees, which some members pay with state grants and others pay with revenue.

Distribution is also clearly not controlled by the state, production is less clear but probably still not materially so.

Which leaves “state editorial control” as the likely cause of this. Many people would say the state doesn’t have editorial control of NPR, many others would say it does. Editorial influence likewise.

egberts1• 3 years ago

Please ignore the $465M that NPR affiliated stations received from Federal government.

See also https://www.npr.org/about-npr/178660742/public-radio-finance... where NPR makes the opposite argument, namely, that "Federal funding is essential to public radio's service to the American public and its continuation is critical for both stations and program producers, including NPR."

fwlr2• 3 years ago

That $465M number is how much government grant money goes to the group “stations who are paying NPR member fees”. The two obvious questions are 1. how much is that as a fraction of the total income of the group “stations who are paying NPR member fees”, and 2. how much of NPR’s revenue is from member fees. Searching around, the first is variously quoted as 6%, 11.4%, or 16%, while second seems to be consistently quoted as about 50%. So the loose bounds on indirect Federal funding for NPR are “more than 3% and less than 16%” - not a very compelling fraction, but not insignificant, so therefore it’s a wash.

In any case, Federal funding is just one clause of the “state controlled media” qualification and the argument for or against NPR receiving this status largely rests on the other clause that is concerned with state editorial control. This is a more subjective question and one that Elon (and thus Twitter) appears to have answered in the affirmative.

tailspin2019• 3 years ago

NPR ... initially assumed it was applied by mistake, NPR spokesperson Isabel Lara said. "We were not warned. It happened quite suddenly last night," Lara said.
In response to an NPR email for this story seeking comment and requesting details about what in particular might have led to the new designation, the company's press account auto-replied with a poop emoji...

Sigh.

dzhiurgis• 3 years ago

Is there a list of similar media companies? NPR, BBC, RNZ, NHK, LRT are pretty much my goto’s, but would love to find more, esp. in English.

oska2• 3 years ago

but would love to find more, esp. in English

RT, Press TV, the Global Times

And I'm not trying to be cute here. If you're only looking at Western state media (all that you've listed) then you're getting a very one-sided view of the world.

monkaiju• 3 years ago

Idk why anyone wishing to be taken seriously is still on the bird site...

dingosity6• 3 years ago

NPR gets a lower percentage of it's funding from the US government than Exxon gets from government petro subsidies. Should we label Exxon as state-affiliated media?

lowkey• 3 years ago

Quote from NPR’s own website[0]:

“Public Radio and Federal Funding

Federal funding is essential to public radio's service to the American public and its continuation is critical for both stations and program producers, including NPR.

Public radio stations receive annual grants directly from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) that make up an important part of a diverse revenue mix that includes listener support, corporate sponsorship and grants. Stations, in turn, draw on this mix of public and privately sourced revenue to pay NPR and other public radio producers for their programming.

These station programming fees comprise a significant portion of NPR's largest source of revenue. The loss of federal funding would undermine the stations' ability to pay NPR for programming, thereby weakening the institution.”

[0] https://www.npr.org/about-npr/178660742/public-radio-finance...

Twitter labels NPR's account as 'state-affiliated media', which is untrue

Related Stories