NPR won’t tweet from NPR until Twitter removes false “state-affiliated” label

https://www.niemanlab.org/2023/04/npr-says-it-wont-tweet-from-npr-until-twitter-removes-false-state-affiliated-label/

by Amorymeltzer • 3 years ago

58 111 3 years ago

jqpabc123• 3 years ago

Musk is the threat to free speech that the right wing warned you about.

labrador2• 3 years ago

I had a list with a bunch of Twitters in support of Ukraine, including NAFO which those who support Russia find problematic. One day recently I went to my lists to find it gone. My other three lists were still there.

I just saw this: Elon Musk's new Twitter: a "verified" account that was previously suspended for spreading disinformation about the Bucha Massacre now spreading completely fictional quotes from Volodymyr Zelenskyy with over a thousand retweets and nearly 300,000 views.

https://twitter.com/JimmySecUK/status/1644048712753356800

Elon Musk is the new Rupert Murdoch, a menace to free societies

happythebob• 3 years ago

Elon Musk has been gaslighting as an "enlightened centrist" who happens to have rightwing views for years, I knew from the day he bought Twitter that his goal was to control digital media for the right.

prh8• 3 years ago

Just like everything else from the right wing, every accusation is an admission

logicalmonster4• 3 years ago

1) How is it a threat to free speech to give some helpful labels or context to Tweets? Pretty much all controversial social media topics get some kind of disclaimers, "fact-checking" or labels from sites like YouTube, Twitter, and others.

2) If NPR receives government funding, isn't calling them state affiliated at least in the ballpark of reasonable labels?

3) Personally, I think the labels themselves should probably change. Rather than calling media entities state-affiliated, maybe Twitter could link to whatever public data is available about each media outlet's funding source. Rather than seeing "state affiliated", maybe people should see the percentage of funding a media outlet gets from government sources. If NPR gets ~4% of their funding from government sources, maybe adding that figure in as the label is fine. If RussiaToday gets X% of their funding from the Russian government, knowing that is helpful to assess their posts too.

Pxtl4• 3 years ago

In Canada, the federal government funds all major newspapers. Should they all be flagged as such?

KerrAvon5• 3 years ago

The intent of the label was to highlight government propaganda editorial outlets so that consumers understand the source of the information.

Funding seems like a problematic metric for this. While it highlights an interesting factoid, funding does not necessarily correlate to editorial control. That information also isn't reliably available for all state broadcasters. And, for fairness, you'd have to label entities like SpaceX as well -- everybody is a media outlet on Twitter! -- which I don't think helps anyone.

melling• 3 years ago

Recently on Twitter I saw a doctored video of Joe Biden saying something about going after Trump. Twitter really needs to clean up the mess. There’s way too much noise. People need to get some sort of reduced rating for promoting false news.

falcolas3• 3 years ago

From NPRs own article on the topic (which the submitted article seems to mostly paraphrase):

Twitter CEO Elon Musk said the platform's recent labeling of NPR as "state-affiliated media" might not have been accurate during a series of email exchanges that provided a glimpse into the billionaire's thought process on decisions that reverberate far beyond the social network.
Regardless, as of late Thursday, the designation remained.

https://www.npr.org/2023/04/06/1168455846/elon-musk-says-npr...

Oh, and: "When reporters reach out for official comment from the company on news stories, Twitter's communications department replies with a poop emoji." Classy.

bombcar2• 3 years ago

It auto-replies.

pibechorro• 3 years ago

Except they are state affiliated.

Analemma_• 3 years ago

Only in a sense which removes all the usefulness of the phrase. If you're going to have the label at all, don't put it on NPR; if you're going to put it on NPR, better to just not have it.

falcolas3• 3 years ago

Doesn't appear that way - they get a few government grants that amount to under 1% of their total funding (which is all publicly available).

qgin6• 3 years ago

Pretty clearly disingenuous on Twitter's part. Whether you agree with content on NPR or not, it doesn't change depending who is in power. It would have been nonsensical to apply this label during the last administration.

rchaud• 3 years ago

That's the point. Elon Musk is a sponge that has been soaking in the "deep state" and "woke mind virus" Republican fumes for a long time.

dang• 3 years ago

Maybe so, but please don't fulminate or call names or do flamewar on HN.

I'm not saying you owe $billionaire better but you owe this community better if you're participating in it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

gitfan86• 3 years ago

NPR is pretty anti Trump. If anything they are anti government when Republicans are in charge.

xienze3• 3 years ago

Whether you agree with content on NPR or not, it doesn't change depending who is in power.

Well first, we don’t exactly have wholesale government purges at the federal level. Second, how is it inaccurate to say NPR is affiliated with the government? It is.

Methinks the real reason behind the outrage is because the original use of the “state affiliated” label on Twitter was to give a subtle “watch out, these guys are probably spewing propaganda!” warning. Much the same way that the blue checkmarks are ostensibly “we’ve verified that this person is who they say they are” but over time it morphed into a “stamp of approval” for the person.

qgin6• 3 years ago

Unless we're listing out all the sources of funding the various media organizations have, what would be the new use of this label if not to say "watch out"?

dragonwriter• 3 years ago

Second, how is it inaccurate to say NPR is affiliated with the government?

It’s inaccurate given that the Twitter explicitly defines that label to refer to editorial control, not funding.

misssocrates3• 3 years ago

Case in point: They went hard against the prior government.

They are not technically state-affiliated as they don't take orders from the state, but are in effect state-aligned in all the ways that matter.

It's ideological alignment. To be more precise you could say they are ideologically-affiliated with the establishment elite.

pwinnski2• 3 years ago

Anyone with any political opinions at all is ideologically aligned in that sense, making them ideologically affiliated with anyone sharing that alignment.

NPR, as it happens, has run many stories that seemed aligned with the right or the left, depending on the subject. They're generally pro-military and pro-wealth, while being against racism and censorship, so it's not as if they're either all left-wing or all right-wing.

yucky• 3 years ago

Someone else mentioned this, but there are a couple million government employees, a change in Administration doesn't really impact that in any meaningful way because the federal government is absolutely massive. NPR does have a bias towards the US-centric neoliberal order, regardless of which party is in power. In that sense, it is at least partially funded by government and parroting pro-US government messaging.

It's nowhere on the level of some countries but it's not exactly an independent media outlet and we shouldn't pretend it is.

bitshiftfaced• 3 years ago

If NPR has such a problem being labeled a state-affiliated organization and they really aren't under the influence of the state or depend on state funds, then why not simply cut ties and become a private company?

qgin6• 3 years ago

If NPR isn't really under the influence of MyPillow or depend on MyPillow funds, then why not simply cut ties?

(Fox News gets about the same percentage of revenue from MyPillow and Balance of Nature as NPR does from grants)

My joke here is way to seriously say that if simply receiving money from a source is enough to indict an organization, then we have a lot of work to do beyond NPR to be suspicious of everyone. But if the requirement is what it has traditionally been, showing actual evidence of influence or coercion, then to me that sounds like a more sensible way to do things.

gnz11• 3 years ago

VoA, which is the state owned news network, does not have this label.

_dain_3• 3 years ago

they should both have it

KerrAvon5• 3 years ago

do you understand the purpose of the label?

KerrAvon5• 3 years ago

VoA is in theory editorially independent from the current political administration, but certainly closer to the intent of the label than NPR.

kneebonian• 3 years ago

So the Wikipedia says the following

"[NPR] differs from other non-profit membership media organizations such as the Associated Press, in that it was established by an act of Congress.[4] Although NPR receives only 1% of its direct funding from the federal government,[5] member stations (which pay dues amounting to approximately one third of NPR's revenue), tend to receive far larger portions of their budgets from the federal (through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting) and state governments.[6][7][8][9][10][11] NPR states it is not state-run media, and further states it operates independently of the U.S. government;[5] nonetheless, NPR indicates that federal funding is essential to NPR and that the loss of federal funding would weaken the network."[1]

So I could see an argument going both ways, technically it isn't owned and operated by the US Government, but it requires US Government funding to continue to exist and was established by an act of congress.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPR

kllrnohj• 3 years ago

More of Twitter is funded by Saudi Arabia than NPR is by the federal government, should Twitter also have a state-affiliated label?

The stated purpose of the label was to identify state-operated news (ie, literal government propaganda outlets). NPR is very obviously not that, and it along with the BBC were literally Twitter's two examples of things that won't get the label.

fknorangesite2• 3 years ago

I could see an argument going both ways

Only if you're being disingenuous; this very much is not what is meant by "state-affiliated", since the state doesn't have any editorial control over NPR.

bhelkey• 3 years ago

So I could see an argument going both ways

I'm not sure I see your point. The label is 'government affiliated' not 'government owned' or 'government operated'.

The argument for the label seems very clear. What would the argument against be?

Edit: I was mistaken: Twitter originally drew a line between state funded and state editorial control. From Twitter's blog in 2020, "State-financed media organizations with editorial independence, like the BBC in the UK or NPR in the US for example, will not be labeled."

[1] https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/product/2020/new-label...

theossuary• 3 years ago

Two things. First Twitter's own policy clearly states "state affiliated media" are media corporations where the state influences editorial decisions. There's no evidence the US government has any editorial influence on NPR, and that's what is (supposedly) required. Just because NPR receives a little federal funding directly, and some federal funding indirectly, isn't proof of editorial control or even influence by the state.

Second, the BBC, which is primarily funded by the UK government, and whose applicants for top positions must be vetted by MI5, doesn't have a state affiliated media warning. So clearly funding source isn't actually a concern, unless it's NPR.

dv_dt• 3 years ago

Perhaps NPR should start hosting their own mastodon/fediverse server. It makes a lot of sense for most news outlets to self host actually.

mistrial9• 3 years ago

remember the Iraq War coverage? sorry, NPR is state affiliated. National Pentagon Radio

KerrAvon5• 3 years ago

If fawning coverage of the Iraq War is the criterion, NYT, MSNBC, and Fox News are all also state-affiliated media.

ncr1004• 3 years ago

I do and I don't think that I agree with your conclusion. Everybody was reporting that the war was going to be justified based on this shocking evidence which turned out to be false, thank you Collin Powell.

Dalewyn• 3 years ago

It differs from other non-profit membership media organizations such as the Associated Press, in that it was established by an act of Congress.[4] Although NPR receives only 1% of its direct funding from the federal government,[5] member stations (which pay dues amounting to approximately one third of NPR's revenue), tend to receive far larger portions of their budgets from the federal (through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting) and state governments.[6][7][8][9][10][11] NPR states it is not state-run media, and further states it operates independently of the U.S. government;[5] nonetheless, NPR indicates that federal funding is essential to NPR and that the loss of federal funding would weaken the network.[6] The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which created NPR in 1970, and still funds NPR, operates through 47 U.S.C. 396.[12][13]

From Wiki's article on NPR: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPR

If that isn't state-affiliated, I don't know what is.

KerrAvon5• 3 years ago

The intent of this label was to highlight government propaganda outlets and distinguish them from news organizations. NPR is editorially independent and should not have this label.

dcow• 3 years ago

Honestly at this point in my life I don’t believe anybody can be editorially independent of their funding source no matter how hard they try. A label indicating accounts who receive government money despite what they claim about editorial independence seems like the move. Otherwise all the “propaganda outlets” will just claim independence. If the BBC is heavily subsidized then label it.

xienze3• 3 years ago

The intent of this label was to highlight government propaganda outlets and distinguish them from news organizations.

Then Twitter should have, from the beginning, attached a big “propaganda warning” label on such sources instead of trying to make passive insinuations to the same effect using a label that has broad meaning. Looks like that backfired.

justapassenger• 3 years ago

State affiliated media means state has editorial control over it. Not that they get some money from government.

taeric• 3 years ago

State-affiliated does seem to imply far more state involvement than this, though? And... just checking, but I don't see this same thing on BBC accounts. Such that I'm now curious how you would distinguish those?

Even more amusing "NPR Health News" doesn't have this. So, am I just to believe that Twitter is incompetent?

ncr1004• 3 years ago

It's a biased labeling. Terminology is being abused here. Read the specific Twitter policy not Wikipedia.

Twitter is applying a label they themselves are defining. Twitter is selectively labeling because while also not knowing the finances of every entity in existence.

Also the actual Twitter policy, the way they've defined it, says that beyond taking funding, and an entity also must toe the line of the state. Which NPR does not.

So, it's inaccurate and therefore misinformation. Worse it's biased so it could be disinformation.

Tagbert• 3 years ago

Even those affiliate stations only receive a minority of their funding from federal, state, and local governments. Most of their money comes from corporate sponsorships and listener contributions.

fknorangesite2• 3 years ago

If that isn't state-affiliated, I don't know what is.

Indeed - apparently you don't.

rayiner• 3 years ago

It’s funny because back in the 1990s we called NPR “Radio Moscow.”

colpabar2• 3 years ago

I am genuinely confused why stuff like this is such a big deal. Whatever happened to "twitter is a private company" and "twitter isn't the public square" and "if you don't like it just make your own twitter"? Why is twitter so important now? Why does everyone care so much about the blue checks now?

_dain_3• 3 years ago

kto, kovo

efields• 3 years ago

Bc despite Twitter devolving into a completely unusable product, it’s still massively influential. If we let this slide — which we keep doing with just about every change since last summer — the slippery slope turns into a waterslide.

colpabar2• 3 years ago

Idk, it seems to me that if less people took twitter seriously we’d all be better off. If NPR stops tweeting, great! Hopefully all the other journalists leave too.

People seem to forget that when twitter first started it became famous because charlie sheen was smoking crack and tweeting about it. I say we go back to that and stop pretending it’s anything more.

Pxtl4• 3 years ago

Nobody is arguing they don't have the legal right to do this (unlike the people who were screaming about First Amendment Rights before).

The argument is they're being short-sighted dicks.

Twitter was the social media of journalism and politics. Now it's the social media of Musk's ego.

krapp• 3 years ago

I am genuinely confused why stuff like this is such a big deal. Whatever happened to "twitter is a private company" and "twitter isn't the public square" and "if you don't like it just make your own twitter"?

That argument was being made to people who were opposed to the right of private platforms to moderate content, and who wanted the government to force them to act like a "public square" (using a false definition of the public square that assumes such spaces cannot be regulated) and make it illegal for them to present content using an algorithmic feed or to moderate any content beyond strict illegality.

No one complaining about what Musk is doing here is also insisting that the government redefine the fundamental nature of freedom of speech and force him to do so under threat of violence. So the dichotomy you're presenting here doesn't apply. Everyone understands that Musk has the right to do what he's doing, they just disagree with him doing it.

bombcar2• 3 years ago

NPR has a related but not identical label on Youtube which they don't mind:

NPR is an American public broadcast service. Wikipedia

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNyX-f7xE8I (example)

dekhn3• 3 years ago

that's because they're an American organization which is a public broadcast service. That label says nothing about their affiliation or their relationship to the state in terms of publishing propaganda.

"American" does not mean "The US government"

mastax• 3 years ago

I think Elon will be fine with that, unfortunately.

anonuser1234564• 3 years ago

NPR is state affiliated media. That doesn’t mean it is state directed propaganda. There is an asymmetry with organizations like NPR vs. say RT however.

NPR exists in a country that largely respects the rule of law and has disclosure requirements, accountability to the public and congress. None of that exists with RT.

If twitter is going to have these labels it should differentiate authoritarian propaganda.

moose_man5• 3 years ago

It's not like NPR shies away from calling out the US government for bad behavior, a lot of their coverage is very critical. It is completely editorially independent.

anonuser1234564• 3 years ago

I’m not saying they are bad journalists. But they are deeply tied to the state.

About 1/3 of their funding is from member station dues. Their member stations receive most of their funding via the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the board of which is appointed by the President (of the United States, not the CPB). CPB gets its money from congress.

vancan1ty• 3 years ago

NPR stations on average receive somewhat over 10% of their revenue from government sources [1].

[1] https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2023/03/16/station-revenues...

throw7• 3 years ago

I don't care for NPR or twitter. Twitter actually says in their rules that NPR is not "state affiliated".

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

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.

ncr1004• 3 years ago

Yesterday that same page was different, Not mentioning NPR as an exclusion.

And days before It was apparently like how it is now, mentioning how NPR is excluded.

So, Twitter is changing its policies frantically.

And the whole point of this fiasco is that truth that you point out of state influence versus state funding. Twitter is fiddling with its own policies incorrectly.

moose_man5• 3 years ago

NPR has far more editorial independence than the BBC.

Pxtl4• 3 years ago

The fact that he flagged NPR before BBC tells us everything we needed to know.

calvinmorrison• 3 years ago

They're not state affiliated, they're just 1% funded by the federal government, their child programs are sponsored by PDX which is funded by other federal programs, a series of shadowy foundations (macarthur etc) who are basically storage facilities for out of work government insiders, who all seem to march in lock step to whatever the US elites are thinking. Yeah. it's propaganda. Let's split hairs though

rabite• 3 years ago

NPR's immediate claim that only 1% of their money comes from federal funds is a bald-faced lie. It's completely contrary to the claims they've made on a regular basis, that are present right this second on their own website.

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

Search for "Public Radio Station Revenues (FY20)" and you can plainly see a graph that states that 8% of their money comes from "Federal appropriation via CPB" and then another 5% comes from a combination of Federal, state, and local government sources.

The minute they get slapped with a state funded label they pretend that they only get 1% of their money from the government, in contrast to their reported finances for the past several decades. It is weasel word behavior to pretend that 8% of entirely federally sourced funds is irrelevant because it is passed through the CPB first (which is itself a state media agency, created by Congress in the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967)

misssocrates3• 3 years ago

It it was 1%, they would drop it to 0%. 1% wouldn't be worth the conflict.

shagie• 3 years ago

From earlier this week - About government and state-affiliated media account labels on Twitter - https://web.archive.org/web/20230402012604/https://help.twit...

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 or NPR in the US for example, are not defined as state-affiliated media for the purposes of this policy.

That wording is no longer in the current page. https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/state-affilia...

As noted in a sibling comment, that wording is still present in the China specific page: https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/state-affilia...

lvl102• 3 years ago

Seems Elon is mad organizations are not paying for Twitter. Boy did he overpay.

moose_man5• 3 years ago

He bought near the top of the bubble.

kevviiinn• 3 years ago

What a brilliant businessman

the_third_wave• 3 years ago

It would have been pure silliness to accuse NPR of being a "state channel" when Trump was president now wouldn't it?

NPR is not "state affiliated", it is ideologically affiliated. In this it closely resembles many other public broadcasters, e.g. SR (Sveriges Radio, the Swedish equivalent to NPR) and SVT (Sveriges Television, the equivalent to PBS), NOS (Nederlandse Omrpoep Stichting, the Dutch public broadcaster), etc. Depending on the ideological colour of the current government these broadcasters either act as megaphones for the government or as channels for the opposition.

clircle2• 3 years ago

If NPR is so concerned about being called stated-affiliated, and if their government funding is really <1% of their revenue, then they should just say "no thank you" to anymore government money.

archagon• 3 years ago

Or they could just not use Twitter and continue to take the money? I fail to see the problem here.

clircle2• 3 years ago

They could certainly do that, obvs no problem for me!

nemo44x2• 3 years ago

That’s clever accounting for a couple reasons.

1) the affiliate stations that broadcast in each market are very often government funded up to 100%. They pay NPR fees to broadcast their content and be the local “NPR station”. It’s essentially laundering government funds if they want to say they only receive 1%.

2) They are a non-profit. Most of their funding comes from donations. These are tax deductible donations meaning tax payers are indirectly funding them.

They make money otherwise too. But without the donations (which would not happen if they were not a non-profit) and without the government subsidized local stations, they’d not exist.

VagueMag• 3 years ago

Look, NPR isn't state affiliated because it also gets lots of money from various foundations and corporations which are themselves built using massive amounts of state funding. If you add those extra steps it's totally different!

Sarcasm aside, NPR has been a reliable mouthpiece for what we might call "establishment state" narratives on subjects like Ukraine, "the pandemic," bank bailouts, and on and on, even up to the blatant US-sponsored coup attempt in Bolivia. Bringing on some token conservative commentator from the Hoover Institute or NYT Opinion pages to occasionally add some conservative take on social issues or even-more-right-wing-than-the-usual-neoliberals economic take doesn't really change that picture.

cirrus3• 3 years ago

What's Twitter?

byyll• 3 years ago

in this thread: Americans pretend their media couldn't be state biased while RT and Chinese journalists are 100% biased.

beej71• 3 years ago

If NPR were state media, I'd expect them to have run a lot of pro-Trump propaganda while Trump was in office. But this I did not see.

NPR won’t tweet from NPR until Twitter removes false “state-affiliated” label

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