NPR quits Twitter after being labeled as 'state-affiliated media'

https://www.wbur.org/npr/1169269161/npr-leaves-twitter-government-funded-media-label

by davidbarker • 3 years ago

614 896 3 years ago

andsoitis• 3 years ago

"At this point I have lost my faith in the decision-making at Twitter," he says. "I would need some time to understand whether Twitter can be trusted again."

aeternum• 3 years ago

Translation: We saw a great opportunity to generate some profitable controversy but will likely be back on twitter in a few months.

hidden80• 3 years ago

It's so wild witnessing the degradation of Twitter.

TigeriusKirk• 3 years ago

Ragequitting is also degrading to NPR.

toomuchtodo• 3 years ago

Why engage on the platform when it’s rigged by a narcissist? Like the Greyrock method, disengage.

Twitter only has value so long as it has network effect. People leaving diminish it. So why not?

rcme• 3 years ago

Having standards and self respect isn't rage quitting.

rideontime• 3 years ago

How, specifically, does it degrade anybody to stop using Twitter?

mwsfc• 3 years ago

Not at all ragequitting and not degrading to NPR. Staying on the platform tacitly implies NPR accepts the label ...which would be degrading, from their perspective.

JohnFen8• 3 years ago

I think it speaks well of NPR.

colanderman• 3 years ago

Right?

Twitter's communications shop now simply responds to reporters' emails with poop emojis.

Like, does Musk realize the market of trolls, clowns, and morons who enjoy his adolescent antics is... not worth $44 B?

jfengel2• 3 years ago

He certainly figured it out, which is why he worked so hard to back out of the deal.

Though he never really expected it to earn its price back. As a large-fraction-of-a-trillion-aire, he may well have found that having trolls, clowns, and morons to enjoy his adolescent antics is worth $44B in pure enjoyment. He was buying a chance to put a significant thumb on the finger of world culture.

Musk has so much money that he doesn't really care if there's a net positive return to his purchases. He spends money to enjoy it. Which I actually find bizarrely refreshing, compared to the ones who want to use it for the purpose of acquiring more money, plus the occasional conspicuous consumption that seems more like a performance than actual enjoyment (e.g. megayachts).

Too bad he's such an asshole, though.

ModernMech2• 3 years ago

It's not worth it to you, of course.

But if you already have $100 billion dollars; and all you wanted in the world was adoration and accolades from adoring masses; and you didn't care those masses are trolls, clowns, and morons; then maybe $44 billion is the right price.

poisonarena4• 3 years ago

People keep saying this but I haven't noticed at all, I stopped using it for years but now I am back and have noticed only improvements

vicktour3• 3 years ago

Sometimes it wont show me current tweets. My timeline is full of accounts that I don't follow and nobody I follow replied. I had to block musk's account because it was the only thing I was seeing. Tweets disappear when I try to look at them. Its been frustrating to say the least.

yamtaddle7• 3 years ago

It's waaaaay better for those of us without an account. It loads every time, rather than failing about 2/3 of the time (at least on mobile—always figured that was some weird dark pattern to try to get me to use the app, did it to me consistently for years across multiple devices), and doesn't block me with a loginwall if I scroll too far before hitting "more replies" anymore.

All the drama around Twitter's also flat-out hilarious if one doesn't care whether Twitter lives or dies, and lots of that drama's on Twitter, so I'd call that an improvement, too.

muyuu• 3 years ago

same

I take it for what it is, a notification engine for "influencers" and media, and a time-waster, and basically nothing else

it's essentially not good for anything else, if you put too much faith in it to do things like learning or discovering new things, you're going to be disappointed

but at what it does I think it's better than a couple of years ago when I last spent some time using it - it was unmitigated garbage at everything back then

Eric_WVGG• 3 years ago

It really underscores how the Internet needs a notion of social networking that is based on open standards and open infrastructures. Imagine if it was 2002 and Bill Gates pulled a similar gambit and just "bought the web."

Fortunately that was actually impossible, but it underscores how a thing like Twitter is also too important to be a plaything of investors and playboys.

Every time someone mentions Mastodon here, we get a bunch of responders saying "they blew their chance" as if they're copy-pasting off of a script… I hate to be conspiracy-brained, but a quick note to those guys: if you are Twitter insiders, you're not being very subtle.

From where I'm sitting, Mastodon — and more importantly, ActivityPub — is doing great. For those that thing the standard is too weird for normies, keep in mind that the way things are going, more startups are going to follow Medium and Substack’s approach.

marstall• 3 years ago

well done. losing NPR clearly is giving Musk pause.

illiarian2• 3 years ago

By "clearly giving him pause" you mean he finally went to bed after spending the evening joking about BBC?

(At this moment the last tweet is 8 hours ago after several tweets about BBC including dick "jokes")

illiarian2• 3 years ago

So, that "pause" now is, quote, "Publicly funded PBS joins publicly funded NPR in leaving Twitter in a huff after being labeled “Publicly Funded” " https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1646359636361224193

segasaturn2• 3 years ago

I wonder if this will have any domino effect, right now the only thing holding Twitter together is its network effects. According to the article on NPR's site[0], they have 8.7 million followers and run 52 different accounts so Twitter is losing a pretty important partner.

Also, no mention of Mastodon in this announcement. It sounds like they're just going to use Facebook for the time being.

0: https://www.npr.org/2023/04/12/1169269161/npr-leaves-twitter...

spir• 3 years ago

Last week, the Federal Reserve issued an important update on twitter. So no, I don't think twitter is worried about losing NPR. Twitter has the strongest network effects of any contemporary social network.

fknorangesite2• 3 years ago

Well, I'm sure they didn't issue it only on twitter, right? That'd just be part of their normal media processes. Post it on the website. Post it on twitter. Post it on Facebook. Send press releases to media outlets. Blah blah blah.

reset2023• 3 years ago

No dopamine hit with twitter anymore.

agluszak• 3 years ago

Network effect is literally the only thing holding non-federated social networks together

JumpCrisscross2• 3 years ago

no mention of Mastodon in this announcement

Mastodon blew its moment. It could have eaten Twitter’s lunch. But onboarding—specifically, choosing a server—was too tedious for non-niche adoption.

dylan6047• 3 years ago

This will always be a problem with federated vs unfederated services. It's hard to get a network effect when things are so spread out without a central place.

jpmattia2• 3 years ago

But onboarding—specifically, choosing a server—was too tedious for non-niche adoption.

I'm not entirely sure that's a bug. Specifically, I'm curious whether it squelches non-niche conversations like: Are vaccines a nefarious plot by Bill Gates to implant mind-control chips?

aquova• 3 years ago

I don't think there's anything they can really do about that. It's a federated platform, the user is going to have to pick a server. Aside from some landing page that shows you servers based on your interests, I don't know what else they could do.

I do agree that migrating between servers could be a more streamlined process though.

hklgny4• 3 years ago

Everyone likes to blame the server interface, but honestly that's not so bad and I think most people get over it.

Mastodon's real problem in my opinion is that its primary audience today doesn't actually want anyone new to join - it's VERY toxic for newcomers who don't fit a specific mold. It's a shame, cause we really do need something new.

I'm hoping some of the new decentralized ones take off.

Edit: I think the comment about this being survivor bias is fair, but I still believe the community itself is a bigger hurdle for Mastodon than the signup flow

tppiotrowski• 3 years ago

My experience was bad. A lot of servers my friends used didn't take new sign ups so I was forced to pick my own which went offline a few weeks later and I haven't tried using it since because there's no indicator of server quality that I know of and all the servers with a lot of active users are not taking signups. Recommendations from HN would be appreciated.

JustSomeNobody4• 3 years ago

I don't think they "blew it" but it could have been better. I think it would be better if they have a blurb about how it is very much like email; you pick a provider and sign up then after that you can message anyone else via your "address" and provider. Also, they could be a LOT more clear about which instances are accepting new signups.

fortuna869• 3 years ago

Also a "decentralized" social media network is something an engineer thinks is great, but no user does.

icehawk• 3 years ago

The internet blew its moment. But onboarding—specifically, choosing an ISP—was too tedious for non-niche adoption.

throw_m239339• 3 years ago

This is by design, Mastodon goal was never to replace Twitter, it's an alternative but with different goals. Mastodon isn't a centralized platform. This is good. The people that after a broad global audience shouldn't expect Mastodon to replace Twitter. Mastodon is its own thing.

Overtonwindow• 3 years ago

I am viewing Twitter more than before because I am attracted to the open speech where political banning is no longer occurring. I do not know all who have been blocked under Musk but it feels more open.

belltaco2• 3 years ago

Fox News probably had more followers when they stopped posting on Twitter a few years ago. Not to mention all the right wing momentum behind Parler, Gab, Telegram, Truth Social etc. didn't make a noticeable dent.

RobAtticus• 3 years ago

For a company that "stopped posting on Twitter" they sure post a lot: https://twitter.com/FoxNews

jeffwask• 3 years ago

I think the Dominoes have been falling for a while. I mostly quit the bird in November. I pop over once or twice a week these days to see what's happening and the degradation of content is very apparent. It may be because of departures or it may be because his constant weaponizing, sorry monetizing, of the algorithm but it's a lot quieter. A lot of the people I liked to follow from our industry are gone. It's a stark contrast to what the app was even a year ago. All while their CEO rebrands them as Titter and has people repaint signs.

The most recent gaff of exposing people "private" circles to the main feed (including private nudes) is probably going to create a new slew of legal issues.

rvz2• 3 years ago

Also, no mention of Mastodon in this announcement. It sounds like they're just going to use Facebook for the time being.

I think it is time that we can call it a day after 7 years, and we should also admit that the Mastodon experiment has become unviable, unscalable, obsolete and already extinct as a serious alternative against Twitter. It had its slither of a chance, and it still failed.

Maybe a lesson in networks effects will tell you why the 220M+ daily active users on Twitter still continue to use the platform. Unsurprisingly.

riffic3• 3 years ago

mastodon as an open source project is wildly successful what are you even talking about?

dylan6047• 3 years ago

I would assume a single account with 8.7 million followers isn't a big deal to Twitter. It's not like the 8.7 million NPR followers are unique to NPR and are going to disappear. Those 8.7 million followers probably follow 8.7 million other things themselves.

I'd be willing to guess a single Kardashian has more followers than NPR (maybe I'm too cynical). Eventually, the way Musk is running Twitter, he'll give a free blue check mark for the Brawndo Corp. Maybe he could just rename Twitter to "Ow, my balls"

acdha3• 3 years ago

That’s true to some extent but NPR and its people provide a ton of timely content which keeps users active. People like the “what’s going on” aspect and news organizations disproportionately help provide that.

pixxel• 3 years ago

8.7 million followers but take a look at their feed. Go back a week in time (for a snapshot) and the like/retweets/comments are generally in the 10s or low hundreds, with a few exceptions (low thousands). Same with NYT. Last time I looked they had 50+ million followers with similar low engagement.

So how many of their followers are bots and what’s NPRs true value to Twitter? I don’t know. I’ve got a small 5k following and I have similar engagement.

effingwewt2• 3 years ago

You hit the nail on the head.

Most twitter account followers are nothing but bots. Millions of 'followers' but likes and retweets only in the dozens.

It also makes for huge egos. Like, they know they bought all their followers, but they wake up one day and forget, and start to believe their own bullshit.

To be fair it is everywhere, youtube accounts will millions of followers do the same. Never more than 200 comments or likes on them.

Seems to me the only organic accounts are the ones with only a few K.

I assume anything with 100k-1 million followers is 95% bots.

No one ever thought it was odd that these accounts all got their million followers in the first few days of acct creation, then literally didnt gain any more ever?

Or how odd it is that every celebrity or business just happened to hit 1mil+?

mdaniel• 3 years ago

And too bad, also, since the On The Media hosts seem to have joined a journalist-centric server that would have been the perfect place for them: https://journa.host/about

I wouldn't envy the hosts having to read our their addresses but npr.org could absolutely implement WebFinger if they were thus inclined

hnburnsy2• 3 years ago

Wonder what all those social media interns are going to do all day long when they shut down those 52 accounts.

moralestapia• 3 years ago

8.7 million followers and run 52 different accounts so Twitter is losing a pretty important partner

Nah.

misssocrates• 3 years ago

It receives less than 1 percent

Why do they keep saying they receive almost nothing, yet at the same time say government funding is essential to their operation?

judge2020• 3 years ago

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

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.

Sounds like it may be more than 1% in total?

ceejayoz10• 3 years ago

NPR is one of several providers to individual public radio stations. The government supports those individual stations; they use some of that support to purchase programs from NPR, American Public Media, PRX, etc.

thelittlenag• 3 years ago

The numbers I am last aware of, while ten years old now, were that Federal funding was roughly 10% of their operating budget, with 90% coming from other sources.

This came more or less directly from our NPR station in DC as they talked about fund raising in their many, many drives. And this wasn't for the station itself, I believe this was for NPR, since they then went on to talk about how many stations, mostly in rural areas, had a funding inverse of that.

Basically, if you are listening to NPR outside a major population center, then its almost certainly because Federal dollars make that possible. And if you listen and contribute to a major station, then you are one of the few that pay the 90% or so of the budget for the content on NPR.

TheCoelacanth5• 3 years ago

If you look at the breakdown lower in the page, 31% of NPR's revenue comes from member station licensing fees and of the member station funding 13% comes from government sources, so in total that would be 4%.

pigbearpig• 3 years ago

They also say my $60/yr is essential so I can’t see NPR saying $3 million as non-essential.

mikeryan• 3 years ago

Because the bulk of NPRs funding comes from the dues of member stations most of which are non-profits and receive funding from a myriad of sources.

Hard to say what percent of their funding comes from some governmental source but it’s all indirect and arms length.

A lot of folks confuse NPR With PBS which is publicly funded and many of NPR’s member stations are PBS affiliated.

throwawaylinux5• 3 years ago

Because the bulk of NPRs funding comes from the dues of member stations most of which are non-profits and receive funding from a myriad of sources.

From wikipedia:

Although NPR receives less than 1% of its direct funding from the federal government, member stations (which pay dues amounting to approximately one third of NPR's revenue), tend to receive far larger portions of their budgets from state governments, and also the US government through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

dragonwriter4• 3 years ago

A lot of folks confuse NPR With PBS which is publicly funded

PBS gets a minority of its funding from government, and a minority of what it gets from government from the Federal government.

But it gets a bigger minority of its funding from government than NPR does.

fooblaster• 3 years ago

They usually emphasize listener funding in virtually all broadcasts I have ever seen.

bilekas• 3 years ago

Because every penny counts. What business would turn around and say : "We don't need that 1%, you can have it back".

It's state affiliated. Like Tesla. Like any company who received covid relief. Tax breaks etc.

Less than 1 percentage is simply not influential. It's disingenuous to say it's owned by the government.

rdtsc• 3 years ago

It depends on the perception one has of the US govt. If one considers them benign and aligns with their policy, 1% seems is not a big deal. If one doesn't, even 1% funding is considered influence. Imagine one politician you don't like receiving 1% from the Russian or North Korean government, or say from the Meta corp, I wouldn't have a problem calling out them as being "funded" or even "influenced".

What business would turn around and say : "We don't need that 1%, you can have it back".

The one which would try to claim independence and non-influence from said entity?

sidfthec• 3 years ago

It's state affiliated. Like Tesla. Like any company who received covid relief. Tax breaks etc.

So... everyone and everything is state affiliated and should be labeled as such?

That's obviously not the case. State affiliated should be limited to organizations that are influenced/controlled significantly by the state, which NPR is not. This is actually the definition that Twitter advertises.

deelowe• 3 years ago

This isn't just about NPR itself. They depend on local broadcast networks to reach their audience. How much does government grants influence the local stations? I know in my state, the majority of local public radio funding comes from the government.

Georgelemental4• 3 years ago

Either the money is important to NPR, or it is not. If and only if is important, it gives the government leverage over the organization.

adamrezich3• 3 years ago

if "every penny counts", and the federal government gives them a single penny, then by definition they owe their continued existence to the federal government.

there is a difference between a company that makes electric automobiles, and a company that influences the thoughts and (crucially) feelings of the populace through opinion and reporting.

we all agree that all of these things are true for government-dependent media organizations outside of the West, but for some reason many refuse to believe that the same thing happens here domestically.

waboremo3• 3 years ago

Let's say you're being paid $1k per month by your job. You would say you receive almost nothing, right? Simultaneously, you would also say what you do get is essential to your livelihood. Same here, larger scale.

Hope that helps you visualize the situation.

sahila2• 3 years ago

That's not an accurate analogy if what you're saying the $1k/month is your entire pay.

More accurate would be saying I make a $100k/month of which $1k comes for a certain source, and then me saying that thousand is essential to my livelihood. I'd be lying if I said that; I make a whole lot less than $100k/month and I could easily forgo $1k/month today which just goes into my savings anyways.

ismokedoinks• 3 years ago

Disconnect between direct federal funding and aggregate funding from a variety of public institutions or grants from publicly funded NGOs at national/state/local levels I imagine.

js2• 3 years ago

In 2022, CPB got $465M from the Federal government. Of that, $72M goes to "Direct grants to local public radio stations", $24M to "Radio National Program Production and Acquisition grants" and $7.3M to "Radio Program Fund".

https://cpb.org/aboutcpb/financials/budget

According to NPR's 2020 budget, total revenue was $275M, of which $92.7M was "Station dues, programming and digital fees".

https://media.npr.org/documents/about/statements/fy2020/Nati...

So ~ 1/3 of NPR's revenue is from member stations, and some percentage of that revenue is part of the $72M that the stations were granted from CPB.

Looking at WBUR's budget as a randomly picked example, its 2022 revenue was $39.7M of which $1.8M was grants. Let's call that 4.5%.

https://media.wbur.org/wp/2023/01/WBUR-Special-Purpose-Finan...

Let me pick another random station, WUNC. In 2018 its total revenue was $13.8M. of that CPB grants were $617.8K. Again, about 4.5%.

http://mediad.publicbroadcasting.net/p/wunc/files/wunc_2018_...

Using 4.5% as the percentage of of the $72M from CPB that ends up as part of the 1/3rd of NPRs revenue. 4.5% x 33% = ~1.5%.

I gather then that even though it's a small part of NPR's revenue, it's very high leverage in helping to keep all of the member stations afloat. I guess that's how they can simultaneously downplay the dollar amount while also speaking of how critical it is.

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

I may have gotten my math wrong here somewhere, corrections appreciated.

I ignored the $24M and $7.3M of the CPB budget because I wasn't sure what to do with them, but you can read more about those here:

https://www.cpb.org/funding/

It's probably fair count some part of those dollars as part of NPR's funding, I just don't know how much.

yamtaddle7• 3 years ago

I think it has more to do with preserving the fiction that they're significantly more independent from commercial interests than other news media. Losing dedicated public funding would make them a commercial network that also begs for donations a few times a year, probably harming donation and removing some of the halo-effect that advertisers are looking for by "sponsoring" them (paying for ads).

In short, it'd push them farther out of the ad niche they've carved for themselves, which could have serious revenue consequences beyond that 1%.

dghughes• 3 years ago

Grocery stores traditionally or supposedly only make 1% to 3% profit. These days it's probably 1%. So I'd say 1% is a lot if it's the thing keeping the company from going under if that income disappears.

fwungy• 3 years ago

Yes, but food is incredibly popular and buying it the most popular way to get it, so they're making a small margin on good volume.

user39393823• 3 years ago

Let’s graph all their sponsors and their connection to the corporations that also puppet our elected officials. My guess is the vast majority of their funding looks like:

Megacorp -> NPR Megacorp -> Exec -> NPR Megacorp -> Political NGO -> NPR

In addition to the direct Federal grant which is under the control of the same politicians in turn owned by these corporations.

The idea that it’s some independent real news organization is a farce.

nemo44x• 3 years ago

Not to mention it is conveniently a non-profit so all those donations are tax write-offs. What better way to influence the voice of a media company?

hikawaii• 3 years ago

But he spoke the truth

ceejayoz10• 3 years ago

In the BBC's case, he's acknowledge it's not accurate. NPR's case is similar (and even less "state affiliated" than they are).

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-65248196

Mr Musk said Twitter was adjusting the label for the BBC to "publicly-funded". "We're trying to be accurate," he said.

If NPR is state affiliated because of 1% government funding, SpaceX should get the tag.

the_gipsy• 3 years ago

Including Elon's SpaceX spam tweets.

slackfan• 3 years ago

Corporation for Public Broadcasting is entirely government funded, and it funds NPR.

bryanlarsen2• 3 years ago

I've seen government-funded ads on Twitter. Wouldn't it be ironic if Twitter's revenue share from government sources is larger than NPR's 1-2%?

jpmattia2• 3 years ago

It's also interesting that we don't see the state affiliated label on SpaceX yet.

TheCoelacanth5• 3 years ago

Or Tesla, for which government carbon credits makes up roughly the same percentage of revenue that NPR gets from government funding.

dylan6047• 3 years ago

"whats good for me, is not good for thee" or some version should be tattooed on Musk's forehead.

drstewart• 3 years ago

It's also interesting that you think SpaceX is a media company

qikInNdOutReply• 3 years ago

? At the same time they removed the state-affiliated media, from a ton of global times and CCT affiliated content creators. Guess musk really needs that tesla market in china..

nailer7• 3 years ago

Do you have references? I’m surprised I haven’t heard this previously.

JumpCrisscross2• 3 years ago

they removed the state-affiliated media, from a ton of global times and CCT affiliated content creators

Source? Global Times’ Twitter accounts appears properly labelled [1].

[1] https://mobile.twitter.com/globaltimesnews

euix• 3 years ago

Is NPR state funded? (real question - I actually don't know). What is the definition of state funded? Here in Canada all the media take government subsidies especially the big ones - a lot of that I think is the economics, they simply don't generate enough revenue on their own to sustain themselves so in the process of being subsidized by the federal govt they take on the viewpoint that can be considered statist. You just can't bite the hand that feeds you. The step that comes before independence of thoughts has to be independence of economics.

stefantalpalaru• 3 years ago

Is NPR state funded?

Yes, in part. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPR?useskin=vector#Funding :

"According to CPB, in 2009 11.3% of the aggregate revenues of all public radio broadcasting stations were funded from federal sources, principally through CPB; in 2012 10.9% of the revenues for Public Radio came from federal sources."

"about 50% of NPR revenues come from the fees it charges member stations"

"In 2009, member stations derived 6% of their revenue from federal, state and local government funding, 10% of their revenue from CPB grants, and 14% of their revenue from universities."

kelipso2• 3 years ago

34% of their budget comes from CPB, which is federal funding for local radio stations, and which NPR gets the money through local stations. They downplay this funding source and only mention the 1-4% that they get directly from local/state/federal government sources but clearly NPR would be dead without federal funding.

[1] https://gigafact.org/fact-briefs/does-npr-receive-less-1-its...

JohnFen8• 3 years ago

34% of their budget comes from CPB

No. 34% goes to affiliate stations. A portion of that 34% goes to NPR indirectly through the fees they charge the affiliates to carry the programming.

The affiliates are not NPR.

veec_cas_tant2• 3 years ago

You are quoting that source incorrectly:

In its 2019 fiscal year, direct federal grants provided 0.6% of funding for National Public Radio... NPR does derive support indirectly, through payments from member stations that also get direct federal funding.
NPR relies on the local stations' payments for 34% of its budget. CPB estimates its support provided 8.2% of the average station's budget in 2017, but it's more important to affiliates in smaller, rural markets

samschooler• 3 years ago

This is still wrong though. From your source:

NPR relies on the local stations' payments for 34% of its budget.

Local stations are not 100% government funded.

CPB estimates its support provided 8.2% of the average station's budget in 2017, but it's more important to affiliates in smaller, rural markets.

If I do the math. An average station's budget is 8.2% from CPB, and 34% of the funding for NPR comes from local stations, taking that 8.2% of government money, and saying 8.2% of the 34% funding from local station it is 2.7% of NPR's budget from local stations. And 0.6% directly, so from _your source_ NPR is funded by 3.1% from CPB.

anoonmoose8• 3 years ago

Here's Twitter's old definition of who is and isn't "state-affiliated". They have since changed it. Note that NPR was literally used as an example of someone who receives state funds but is not "state-affiliated".

"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://web.archive.org/web/20230404115255/https:/help.twitt...

trasz311• 3 years ago

It's not just that it's state-funded - NPR's CEO got there after years of heading the relevant US government propaganda agency, as evidenced in https://www.usagm.gov/who-we-are/management-team/john-lansin....

pionar2• 3 years ago

So is your argument that NPR is a mouthpiece for the US government? I think that requires some evidence, rather than flinging about flimsy associations like this.

thefilmore• 3 years ago

It's labeled "Government-funded Media".

ceejayoz10• 3 years ago

As with many recent Musk impulsive changes, it's being rapidly revised, and looks to be changing again soon.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-65248196

And he confirmed Twitter will change its newly added label for the BBC's account from "government funded media" to say it is "publicly funded" instead.

https://www.npr.org/2023/04/05/1168158549/twitter-npr-state-... has a screenshot of the "state-affiliated" tag that was recently present.

jacquesm30• 3 years ago

Ninja editing this stuff is par for the course at Twitter, as are impromptu decisions, reversals of those decisions and reversals of the reversals. If you want to keep track of stuff you need to screenshot and timestamp it.

badwolf2• 3 years ago

This will surely bring advertisers rushing through the doors!

zajio1am• 3 years ago

According to https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/state-affilia... 'state-affiliated media' and 'government-funded media' are two distinct labels on Twitter.

datadata• 3 years ago

It is a sad state of affairs that being "state-affiliated" is a negative thing.

brucethemoose22• 3 years ago

Thats not necessarily true if its the weather service, post office or whatever. I am no Twitter fan/user, but its a decent format for circulating government announcements that people will actually see.

troyvit2• 3 years ago

Interestingly NOAA isn't listed as state media:

https://twitter.com/NOAA

stametseater4• 3 years ago

This was the implication of the label from the start, when twitter created it years ago.

AnimalMuppet• 3 years ago

That depends a great deal on which state it's affiliated with. How much do you trust that state?

DrThunder9• 3 years ago

What's sad is that people just automatically assume every government is altruistic when history has proven that to be unequivocally false. There is not ONE government in history that hasn't committed disgusting atrocities against its people.

When you realize that, it becomes clearly easy to see that you ought not put full trust media that is backed by government when every government has used media like this to push evil propaganda on to its citizens.

dustedcodes• 3 years ago

I think after COVID and all the revelations since then it is pretty clear that funding aside, every big media outlet bends over to their own government when they are being asked to push a certain narrative to the population in order to make us belief or behave in certain ways.

COVID made this extremely blatantly obvious but it was already apparent before COVID. For instance, when the US and its allies wanted to invade Iraq all big media corporations were peddling misinformation and propaganda to get people swayed in favour of an illegal invasion of a sovereign nation over false claims of weapons of mass destruction.

segasaturn2• 3 years ago

This comment doesn't hold up when you consider the person in charge of running the US government in 2020 was adamantly against any kind of COVID-19 prevention measures.

sbuttgereit• 3 years ago

That person was also a disorganized, ineffective baffoon on a good day with a staff more interested in court intrigues than governing. That massive government institutions operated outside of his will shouldn't be surprising.

carapace3• 3 years ago

You might like "Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media", a 1988 book by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky.

It argues that the mass communication media of the U.S. "are effective and powerful ideological institutions that carry out a system-supportive propaganda function, by reliance on market forces, internalized assumptions, and self-censorship, and without overt coercion", by means of the propaganda model of communication.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent

colpabar4• 3 years ago

I know it's cliche to say but I started reading this recently and it is amazing how well it applies to the media today. I can't wait for it to be designated a conspiracy theory!

kome3• 3 years ago

citing the social media platform's decision to label NPR "state-affiliated media," the same term it uses for propaganda outlets in Russia, China and other autocratic countries.

it's indeed a shame they do it for chinese and russian companies, but not the BBC or western european broadcasters...

hell, not even Radio Free Europe is marked as "state-affiliated media". If not them, who?

anoonmoose8• 3 years ago

Twitter themselves had a guide that explained why NPR and BBC were not labelled as such, which has been revised since, but is still archived.

"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://web.archive.org/web/20230404115255/https:/help.twitt...

kome3• 3 years ago

but this opens the can of worm of defining "editorial independence". and I think that speaking of State-financed or Publicly-financed is a better.

trasz311• 3 years ago

Editorial independence in action: https://www.usagm.gov/who-we-are/management-team/john-lansin...

stametseater4• 3 years ago

Twitter themselves had a guide that explained why NPR and BBC were not labelled as such
"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 explains the what, not the why. It says they aren't going to consider BBC and NPR as state-affiliated, but not why they aren't going to consider them as state-affiliated. "Editorial independence" is a meaningless superlative that cannot be empirically measured through any means available to twitter.

The "why" is because the "state affiliated" label was meant to be innuendo for "untrustworthy" and twitter, under previous management, did not consider NPR and BBC untrustworthy.

photochemsyn5• 3 years ago

Well, there is an interesting history here. E.g. in 2000 NPR (and CNN) allowed the US Army's Psychological Operations division to place military members in the newsroom as interns as part of a media training program:

https://fair.org/home/psyops-in-the-newsroom/

"PSYOPS is a division of the U.S. Army mandated to “develop and disseminate propaganda designed to lower the morale” of “enemy forces,” and to “build support among the civil population” in other countries for U.S. objectives (U.S. Army Field Manual No. 100-15)."

I'm fairly certain that if a Russian media company had a history of hosting Russian military psyops people in its newsroom, or if hired ex-military and ex-intelligence officers as commentators, it'd get the 'state-affiliated' label on platforms like Youtube, Facebook, Twitter etc. without any controversy.

VulgarExigency• 3 years ago

Yes, but the United States are the Good Guys, so their propaganda outlets must not get the label identifying them as such.

kelipso2• 3 years ago

The 'state-affiliated' label is a bludgeon that the US gets to use, not get used against the US haha.

carapace3• 3 years ago

Please, in Soviet Russia interns tell you what to do. (I'm sorry, that was a terrible Yakov Smirnoff reference, I apologize to him and to anyone reading this.)

Anyway, in the USA military interns at NPR are learning how to run a radio station or whatever. I mean, if the military tried to tell NPR what to say there would be howls from coast to coast.

- - - -

And now I have read the article you linked to, and it does sound like there may have been some influence from OPD to NPR. As I would expect, when this came to light, there was howling from coast to coast, and it got shut down right quick. In fact, the article says the whole OPD was shut down. Good. (WTF people?)

md_4• 3 years ago

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2000/apr/12/julianborger

"Cable Network News (CNN) and National Public Radio, (NPR) denied that the "psy-ops" officers influenced news coverage and said the internships had been stopped as soon as senior managers found out . For its part, the army said the programme was only intended to give young army media specialists some experience of how the news industry functioned."

That...seems like a pretty reasonable explanation?

Just to be clear, the alternative theory you have is that the US government wanted to influence NPR's coverage, and thought the best, most inconspicuous way to do so would be by using an intern placement program targeting Army media officers?

KyeRussell• 3 years ago

The point they’re making is the point they’re making. Take it exactly for what it is. If the same thing was reported to have happened In Russia, it wouldn’t be terribly controversial to label the media outlet “state-sponsored”.

photochemsyn5• 3 years ago

I'd perhaps distinguish between 'state-sponsored' (i.e. all the operating funds come from a government) and 'state-affiliated' (i.e. media employees and government employees are intermingled and move back and forth from media to government jobs.)

If MSNBC hires a Biden spokesperson (Jen Psaki) or if CNN hires a intelligence officer (e.g. James Clapper) or if Fox hires a White House communications director (Hope Hicks), that's 'state-affiliated' in the same sense that if RT hired Putin's press secretary or some FSB/GU officer we'd say, 'oh, right, they're state-affiliated.'

News reports are more reliable if the people reporting on government activities are not themselves from the government, it's called an independent press and is generally held to be a critical component of democratic systems.

colpabar4• 3 years ago

It's insane to me that we're all just supposed to give a US army program literally titled PSYOPS the benefit of the doubt because their corporate partners said there was nothing to worry about. Does anyone remember that the entire mainstream media was in full support of everything the bush administration did in the middle east, NPR included?

bfeynman2• 3 years ago

Isn't it interesting that a few months ago a few people in twitter spaces were shouting to the world that twitter ITSELF had backchannels to govt and payments and thus was also state affiliated media? What about that?

hn2017• 3 years ago

Considering Musk has openly endorsed Russia's talking points, his changes don't surprise me. Such a shame to see Twitter destroyed completely.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2023/04/07/elon-musk-...

warner252• 3 years ago

For what it's worth, I'll give some perspective here as a career Army officer.

I think this is one of those things that sounds like the plausible work of a highly intelligent and effective monolith, which is how conspiracy theorists often seem to view "the government." I think the reality is that "the government" and the US Army is not. It's a sprawling bureaucracy with insanely high turnover and many internal divisions, in which every sub-organization has its own goals, and people are operating independently at every level of those sub-organizations (and mostly to advance their personal career goals which are often quite limited, like making it to a 20-year active duty retirement or 30-year FERS civilian retirement, getting an education, and transitioning to a good job in the private sector as soon as possible).

2000 was before my time, but this sounds like a program which still exists called "Training With Industry." The ideas behind TWI are that: (1) The Army has people in uniform who've been working hard and doing good things, feeling burned out, and are on the fence about whether they should continue in uniform or find another career path. (2) The Army would like to retain their valuable experience and expertise. (3) Letting people do an internship in private industry for a year, trying out "civilian life," on the condition that they do three more years in uniform afterwards, might be a win-win. It gives people a break and something nice to put on their resume for later. They learn and experience some things from the internship that the Army can't teach. It's like offering a sabbatical more than anything else. The Army lets people go to civilian graduate school for a year or two for the same reasons. My main point is that it's very divorced from the operational side of the Army, even though it's placing people in companies or graduate school programs that relate to their operational career fields.

photochemsyn5• 3 years ago

Your arguments are cogent, but it's still 'state-affiliated media' - I mean, that also applies to the whole 'media embedding program' that got started in Desert Storm (Gulf War I, or perhaps II if we count the Iraq-Iran war in the 1980s).

Independent media is not necessarily adversarial to government, but it can't be dependent on government or it turns into nothing but the propaganda arm of the government. E.g. reporting on military failures is necessary, even if this upsets the brass because it damages morale.

redleggedfrog• 3 years ago

I read/listen to NPR daily. Twitter is blocked at my router. My very tech savvy family hasn't even mentioned the block once. Making good choices Mom...

DeepYogurt• 3 years ago

We should all be quitting twitter tbh

jacquesm30• 3 years ago

Did that the day the sale became final. There is no way I'm going to be associated with anything that Elon Musk does or holds sway over.

smotched2• 3 years ago

They will look cool to a certain group of people momentary but it will hurt them in the long run.

The average user won't even notice their tweets are missing from their feed.

garrickvanburen• 3 years ago

this is true for any account, especially since algorithmic sorting was introduced and then amplified with the introduction of 'For You'.

8organicbits• 3 years ago

Each of these announcements shifts the window of discourse[1]. Not too long ago, the idea that a major news organization would leave Twitter was almost unthinkable. Now its just one of many departures and even more are on the fence.

It's also a great opportunity for networks like Mastodon to pick up steam and mindshare.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window

Nicksil• 3 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window

Avshalom• 3 years ago

Maybe, but like it didn't hurt Fox https://www.thewrap.com/fox-news-breaks-16-month-twitter-sil...

JohnFen8• 3 years ago

Since only about 25% of the US population pays any attention to Twitter, I think that you're correct -- the average person won't notice NPR's tweets are missing.

hermannj314• 3 years ago

They were labeled as "state-affiliated media" and after a retraction, Twitter referred to them as "government-funded"

On March 20th, NPR listed this retraction on their website "An earlier version of this story mistakenly said Musk bought Twitter for $44 million. In fact, he paid $44 billion." [1]

Twitter can't make mistakes, but NPR makes dozens of them daily. Should we rage quit NPR everytime they issue a retraction to preserve our own independence and integrity?

[1] https://www.npr.org/corrections/

anoonmoose8• 3 years ago

It wasn't a mistake, it was intentional. Musk verified this, and even if we disregard his ramblings, they intentionally removed NPR as an example of who wouldn't be marked as state-affiliated from their description of how the label is applied, which gives the game away.

https://web.archive.org/web/20230404115255/https:/help.twitt...

ajford4• 3 years ago

It sure doesn't seem like a mistake. Twitter itself used to make the distinction between state-funded (without editorial control) and state-affiliated (where the state has editorial control) on their own Help Center [1].

They removed the distinction on 2023-04-07 [2], two days after they slapped the state-affiliated label on NPR. That timeline sure doesn't sound like Musk made a mistake and sought to correct it, but more like he swung his whiny authority around and then people had to scramble to retract/alter policies to fit with Musk's world view.

If it was a mistake, Twitter would have owned up to it instead of altering their policies to match the mistake.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20230404115255/https:/help.twitt...

[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20230407155944/https://help.twit...

trasz311• 3 years ago

Yeah, it's not like their CEO came directly from the relevant government bureau, right?

I'm not a fan of Elon (or most companies, for that matter), but this was the right thing to do. Previously the "government-sponsored" badge was nothing more than US propaganda.

matthewmcg• 3 years ago

There’s a bit of a “Pluto problem” [1] though with labeling NPR and not explicitly government supported media organizations like Voice of America. This suggests to me that the decision was based on some personal beef the owner has with NPR and not any kind of objective basis.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-33462184 (warning: BBC is explicitly supported by the British Government)

justin666• 3 years ago

Twitter have got the govenrment-funded label on VoA now. But not the BBC, curiously.

some personal beef the owner has with NPR

NPR is a bogeyman of the American right-wing media, which Musk seems to be consuming an awful lot of in recent years.

trasz311• 3 years ago

Oh, definitely; it could be based on literally anything, or just effectively random. But it doesn't change my view of whether the outcome is positive or not.

JohnFen8• 3 years ago

Except, of course, that NPR is not government-sponsored to any meaningful degree.

eqvinox• 3 years ago

I wouldn't exactly call the USAGM the "relevant government bureau". Their purpose is to push US-biased news and media outside of the US. I see your point, and it's a bit iffy, but I'd rather judge on actions than reputation.

afinlayson• 3 years ago

SpaceX and Telsa are government funded ... More so than NPR. I don't see that tag anywhere on Twitter. And I wouldn't be surprised if twitter is combing the tax code to find government subsidies. It's the slippery slope fallacy. Maybe we should start calling jaywalkers un-convicted criminals. It'd be a good way to differentiate rural and urban people for political gain. This is just another way to keep people heading to twitter for some extra clicks.

QuizzicalCarbon• 3 years ago

Although, NPR was created by an act of Congress, along with the CPB.

somedude895• 3 years ago

Every large corporation benefits or has in the past benefited from the government. What difference does it make? Business profiles do marketing and advertising. They're not expected to report neutrally and fairly about current goings-on in society and politics. This is a ridiculous argument that has absolutely nothing to do with anything.

adamrezich3• 3 years ago

it is very frustrating to see this openly disingenuous argument made repeatedly here in these comments.

media corporations are different from other corporations in that their product is information, as opposed to other types of services or physical goods. information is something that can be biased, politically or otherwise. this does not apply to automobiles, spacecraft, or any other non-information-related product. the release of an electric automobile cannot influence anyone's view, opinion, or emotions, with regards to anything except the existence of said electric automobile.

mindslight• 3 years ago

The mismatch is that it's disingenuous to apply the label in the US, while not applying it to NBC, ABC, Fox, NYT, WaPo, Sinclair, etc. The US has a microkernel government where most actual power resides with corporations, with the same investors and executives owning the major news sources and shaping their coverage. Ironically, "government funded" NPR and PBS are in many ways actually more independent of the governing power structure. There's a similar blindspot where US culture readily condemns foreign governments with singular dominant parties, while letting our own two party oligopoly (in alignment on most policies) go essentially uncritiqued.

(full disclosure: I'm unable to listen to NPR without falling asleep. That's not meant to be some sort of knock, rather it's just what happens)

jacquesm30• 3 years ago

The US has a microkernel government

Brilliant insight. Thank you.

oefrha• 3 years ago

Interestingly, VOA, RFA etc. are not labeled state-affiliated media.

Edit: Actually VOA does have it now; I swear I checked just two days ago... Their various foreign language accounts still aren’t labeled though.

dirtyid2• 3 years ago

VOA is also labelled as "government funded", which implies less editorial control but personally sounds worse than affliated. The labelling is all over place.

greenie_beans2• 3 years ago

they should add a "government-sponsored" badge to the spacex twitter account. and maybe even starlink and telsa (assuming they have government subsidies or their consumers are using tax credits to buy EV or rural internet)

kylecordes5• 3 years ago

Would be slick if all the space-company accounts had a couple lines of detail identifying what % of their total sales comes from government, military, commercial customers, etc.

Of course this would require people wanting to move away from “how can I tarnish this account with a label?” and toward “how can I improve transparency without aiming to insult?”

barbazoo• 3 years ago

As others have noted already, their actions don't match their own rules so this is, again, just Musk being an angry manbaby.

from• 3 years ago

He curiously missed Al Jazeera, RFE/RL, and the dozens of media organizations that the NED subsidizes. I don't think there's a conspiracy or anything, I just think he has a grudge against a handful of media companies.

Laaas• 3 years ago

They likely just haven't gotten around to all of them yet.

SilverBirch• 3 years ago

It's always a bit strange when someone says they're not a fan of Elon and then proceed to give him an absurd level of benefit of the doubt by just eliding all the obvious facts that what he's doing is ridiculous and bad.

Government-sponsored was not a US propaganda badge, it was a response to a serious concern about adversarial governments influencing US debate through 3rd party cut outs. It's a difficult problem to solve but the previous employees made a good faith effort to come up with a definition and then enforce it. Musk, however, didn't do that. He took an official label with a definition that Twitter publicly discloses and applied it to a news organization he personally doesn't like despite it being completely inaccurate.

If what you're arguing, is that the label was bad, and badly or unevenly enforced what Musk has done is made it worse - not better. There's now no consistent definition, all the old organisations that were tagged are still tagged, and he's driven a bus through twitter's credibility.

Even if you accept that there was a genuine problem with the way the previous system was designed, there's simply no way to argue that Musk has improved it. And to be clear - the previous system was exactly what Musk claimed he wanted for twitter - a clear open definition you could point to, and labelling accounts rather than banning them in order to maximize free speech, if this system weren't in place before it is almost certain Musk would've loved it if a right wing bigot twitter user suggested it.

What you actually seem to be arguing is "Something should have been done, this was a thing, therefore this was the right thing to do".

trasz311• 3 years ago

Government-sponsored was not a US propaganda badge, it was a response to a serious concern about adversarial governments

For most people USA is an adversarial government. You've just confirmed it was a propaganda badge meaning "unamerican".

devjab• 3 years ago

I'm Danish and I may have a different take on this than many Americans, but I'm frankly a little appalled that our democratic institutions are still renting their digital homes on the turf of tech giants. The EU set a good example when Elon musk bought Twitter and the EU created their first Mastodon servers, both for it's organizations and it's elected officials, and everyone should frankly follow suit. We shouldn't accept that a billionaire gets to dictate the online content of our democratic institutions, and, especially not when there are easily available alternatives where you can take back the governance. At least that is my opinion on the matter and I hope Elon manages to make this happen by getting people to quit Twitter.

I'm not sure how it is around the world, because I mostly follow our local news on these topics, but it's been sort of silly to watch the Danish debate about TikTok. We've banned public officials from having it on their phones, but we've not banned Twitter, Facebook or any of the other Social Medias that do the exact same things TikTok does. Yes, we're allied with the US, but it's still sort of silly isn't it?. If the NPR is a state affiliated media because it gets public funding, then our primary media institution Danmarks Radio should frankly get the same label since it gets all of it's funding from the public. But why on earth wouldn't our primary media institution not run their own Mastodon server, so they can govern and moderate their own public image instead of being on Twitter? Sure they might lose followers, but we don't pay them public money to be popular on an American Social Media, do we?

Heh. I personally think that what I've said here applies to everyone, every institution and organisation but I can see why it's different for American organisations to be on an American Social Network, but really, isn't it time we took ownership of our online lives back?

jensgk• 3 years ago

I am also Danish, and I agree.

JasserInicide• 3 years ago

They do this because our federal government is absolutely incapable of doing it themselves. Any tech project (hell, any massive project in general) they undertake goes massively over-budget/over-schedule and is loaded with subcontractor after subcontractor circling overhead like vultures trying to get their piece of the pie. It's why no government at any level is capable of delivering a public works project anymore. It's why so many have so little faith in our governments. No one cares about the end results, they just want to know how they can benefit personally from it and then fuck off

chiefalchemist6• 3 years ago

I listen to NPR station in the car. Anecdotally, very little of the content is true journalism; much of it is effectively op-ed. That's not necessarily a bad thing, provived you understand what you're consuming.

The state-funded tag is a bit much. But to claim NPR is a pure journalism play isn't accurate either.

ProAm• 3 years ago

I dont think they claim to be pure journalism:

"NPR is an independent, nonprofit media organization that was founded on a mission to create a more informed public. Every day, NPR connects with millions of Americans on the air, online, and in person to explore the news, ideas, and what it means to be human. Through its network of member stations, NPR makes local stories national, national stories local, and global stories personal."

[A] https://www.npr.org/about/ [B] https://www.npr.org/ethics/

chiefalchemist6• 3 years ago

I think in their statement about leaving Twitter he mentioned journalism. I was pointing out that - imho - it's mostly op-ed. Nothing wrong with op-ed but it should never be confused with journalism.

rayiner• 3 years ago

My dad used to listen to NPR all the time growing up (WAMU). It was always liberal, but now it’s become this highly processed and refined sort of white sugar liberal that’s hard to stomach even for him.

ToDougie• 3 years ago

Happy music and happy words when "preferred" people/ideas are the focus of the story. Sad music and choice words when "bad"/ideas people are the focus of the story.

It's maddening. Artisan hand-crafted propaganda.

chiefalchemist6• 3 years ago

NPR and The NYT have both jumped the shark. Sad really. Tho sadder is the fact that they're in denial about it.

throwaway7435• 3 years ago

By definition they're state funded, but not state ran. The implications from the optics though may result in extreme takes. Though we could assume there's at least some influence the funding has.

retrocryptid4• 3 years ago

Exxon gets a larger percentage of its income from the federal government in subsidies, yet we seldom (if ever) apply "government funded" to that organization.

What's your definition of "state funded"?

commandlinefan• 3 years ago

If they were truly state run, they would have been supportive of the past president... which they definitely weren't.

JohnFen8• 3 years ago

NPR is not meaningfully state funded. They get less than 1% of their funding directly from the government. Local NPR affiliates get more, through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. On average about 1/3 of their funding comes from the government, and a portion of that goes to NPR in the form of licensing fees for their programming.

In the end, erring on the side of overestimating the amount of government money going to NPR, it appears to be less than 10%. That is substantially less than a whole lot of other companies get, and those companies aren't considered "government sponsored".

retrocryptid4• 3 years ago

What's your definition of journalism?

chiefalchemist6• 3 years ago

This is handy for me:

https://www.openculture.com/2020/01/jim-lehrers-16-rules-for...

https://www.mixdexhq.com/tv-news/here-are-jim-lehrers-10-rul...

derstander• 3 years ago

very little of the content is true journalism; much of it is effectively op-ed

What is your alternative for a true journalism / non op-ed radio news station?

Other than some tech sites and link aggregators / discussion forums (hello hackernews), I limit my news-reading to the AP and Reuters sites. But I’d be interested in learning about radio-based news sources, provided that they’re either accessible in my area or online.

jimbob45• 3 years ago

The problem with NPR right now is that good content and content creators get snatched up immediately by bigger organizations once they gain any traction at NPR.

Joshua Johnson and his show 1A was the main case of this for me. The guy was running a top-notch show before NBC yoinked him up to the big leagues.

chiefalchemist6• 3 years ago

Makes ya wonder if they're acquiring the person for the person, or to gain control of the ideas that person is able to promote, or not.

say_it_as_it_is• 3 years ago

NPR lost the influence that it once had on Twitter, controlling narrative that suited their political ideology. So, it quit. That's great new for Twitter.

NPR is far worse than a state-affiliated media. Its coverage during the riots and protests following the accidental murder of George Floyd focused on "racially disproportionate policing". It wasn't journalism. It was BLM protest using NPR as a microphone. There wasn't a single show that discussed crime statistics. Policing methods were discussed to the extent that it suited the narrative that cops in America are a racist militant group.

stametseater4• 3 years ago

It wasn't journalism. It was BLM protest using NPR as a microphone.

Sounds like journalism to me. Journalism has never meant nor implied 'impartial reporting.'

pionar2• 3 years ago

that it suited the narrative that cops in America are a racist militant group.

I mean, they are, so where's the lie?

freitzkriesler22• 3 years ago

Talk about rage quitting. They'll be back.

And whether it's unpopular or not, CPB gets federal and state grants for part of their operating budgets . Technically state funded or affiliated in the same way auto makers get government contracts.

I don't know why they are mad about the designation. Whether it implies bias or not, it's true they get state funds, ergo they are state funded media.

bfeynman2• 3 years ago

Wait wasn't the whole debacle that Twitter had special access to govt and received money for them regarding postings? Isn't twitter then also state affiliated media?

freitzkriesler22• 3 years ago

Wahwahwhatabout! We're talking about NPR, not Twitter. And the designation doesn't matter.

colpabar4• 3 years ago

Do you mean the twitter files conspiracy theory? That didn't happen, and if it did, it was totally normal, and if it wasn't, it was justified.

orwin2• 3 years ago

The issue is that they are marked as state affiliated, not state funded.

And i support every company that receive state funds, directly or via tax breaks to be called 'state funded company'. That would have interesting repercussions.

justin666• 3 years ago

Twitter will probably, eventually find a more appropriate label for high-quality public media sources, and NPR will probably find their way back, since it doesn't cost them anything. On the other hand, the current kerfuffle just scratches the surface of their current labeling approach's weirdness.

Propublica's twitter page is labelled "Media and News Company," but that's a label they applied to themselves, not something Twitter applies. Okay, fair enough. Some other for-profit or nonprofit news organizations don't have any labels at all, so clearly it's not mandatory. The distinction between something like Propublica and something like The Washington Post is significant to someone who cares about news, but maybe not to Twitter's censors.

Voice of America is still on there and is, reasonably, labelled "government-funded media." But BBC is not not labelled at all, with any label, because... Elon Musk liked their reporter? Or something?

retrocryptid4• 3 years ago

Does anyone still use Twitter? I tried to delete my account a couple years ago (well before people complained of post-musk problems) and couldn't do it.

Not tweeting gives me time to make the award-winning comments [*] I'm known for on this platform.

But seriously, what are people using after leaving Twitter? I just quit social media sites, didn't go anywhere else.

* yes, this is sarcasm.

shaunxcode• 3 years ago

Mass tow dawn.

r7212• 3 years ago

Twitter is #5 website by global traffic, according to SimilarWeb (6.6B visits/user sessions in Mar 2023):

dahwolf• 3 years ago

Whilst I admit that Musk is needlessly erratic, unpredictable and troll-like in these matters, part of me enjoys the pushback against legacy media on Twitter.

They've come into power by riding the Twitter hate train, maximally exploiting the algorithm that rewards rage and division. Lowering standards for journalism to a mere shadow of its former self. And yet they always have clean hands and are perfectly neutral, according to themselves.

Regardless of where you stand on this, it's interesting to watch. Journalists don't really have anywhere else to go. Their status and reach is exclusive to Twitter and cannot easily be replicated elsewhere.

annexrichmond• 3 years ago

So much of this article reads like an op-ed that I can't take it seriously.

Edit: for the downvoters, some excerpts:

The BBC exchange showed Musk as alternately conciliatory and erratic.

According to whom?

He also said that he's sleeping on a couch at work, that he followed through on his promise to purchase Twitter only because a judge forced him to, and that he should stop tweeting after 3 a.m.

this is a lot to say without any specific quotes

Like so many policy decisions at the social network of late, Musk applied the label to NPR's Twitter account abruptly. It's still not clear why he became so animated about the issue.

Heavy use of adverbs and adjectives is like injecting opinion.

For years, many journalists considered Twitter critical to monitoring news developments, to connect with people at major events and with authoritative sources, and to share their coverage. Musk's often hastily announced policy changes have undermined that.

Again, according to who??

newfonewhodis2• 3 years ago

If you want "objective" just watch the BBC interview?

weinzierl3• 3 years ago

Most western countries have media comparable to NPR. In the UK that would be BBC, in Italy there is Rai, in Spain RTVE, in Portugal RTP and in Germany there is ARD. That makes me believe that they warrant their own label.

ceejayoz10• 3 years ago

The BBC isn't comparable to NPR. The Chairman of the BBC is appointed by the UK's King-in-Council, on the advice of the Secretary of State. Similarly, RAI is owned by the Italian Ministry of Economy and Finance; RTVE is state owned. Not sure on RTP and ARD; they sound more NPR-ish from their Wikipedias, although ARD appears to be paid for by a mandatory license fee like the BBC is.

weinzierl3• 3 years ago

That is a bit my point. The details differ and the naming differs but I'd argue that by and large and in the broad public perception there are three categories: Privately-owned commercial, state controlled and a third category that is really neither. Regardless of the details and legalities people know it when they see it, so an own label would be justified.

AraceliHarker• 3 years ago

Who wouldn’t resent being thrown in the same basket with the likes of Voice of America, Xinhua News Agency and Sputnik under the same label?

hbarka• 3 years ago

By his logic, Tesla should be labeled as "Government-funded Car Company".

coldtea• 3 years ago

Not sure NPR's track record of this, but other news outlets labelling anything they didn't approve as misinformation, and calling out any affiliations for outlets they don't approve with abandon, now go: "It's not OK when others do it to us".

The decision by Twitter last week took the public radio network off guard. When queried by NPR tech reporter Bobby Allyn, Twitter owner Elon Musk asked how NPR functioned. Musk allowed that he might have gotten it wrong.

Notice the BS reporting wording, because of course Musk did it, it couldn't be that Twitter employees did the labelling for thousands of outlets, including NPR.

They even managed to write about how Musk "allowed that he might have gotten it wrong" in a negative light.

hitpointdrew4• 3 years ago

How on earth can anyone say "falsely labeled"? NPR does get money from the federal government, that is an undisputable fact. How are they not "state-affilated"? I don't care how small a % of the budget is money from the government. The fact they take any money at all from the gov makes them sate-affilated.

chatmasta• 3 years ago

In their rebuttal [0] to this, they cited a statement from the White House Press Secretary:

When asked about Twitter's decision during the White House's daily briefing, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre declined to address Twitter's content rules specifically. But she also defended NPR's journalism.
"There is no doubt of the independence of NPR journalists," Jean-Pierre said. "If you've ever been on the receiving end of their questions, you know this."

[0] https://www.npr.org/2023/04/05/1168158549/twitter-npr-state-...

starbase2• 3 years ago

How ironic that NPR uses the state's talking points to argue they're not affiliated with the state.

kaesar14• 3 years ago

By this logic, Tesla is also "state-affiliated". A huge amount of companies in this country receive government subsidies, are they all "state-affiliated" media? The NPR journalists act independently from any government oversight, they are not part of the government's media apparatus

laweijfmvo• 3 years ago

Tesla's not exactly a media company, but in general, always "follow the money"

clipsy• 3 years ago

Great, so you agree that Tesla and SpaceX must also be labeled as state-affiliated, right? And of course every single company that took PPP money, and...

drooby• 3 years ago

Twitter’s policy seems to specifically mention “media” accounts. Not just any business.

throwaway85822• 3 years ago

And what purpose would that serve? Tesla is not a media company. It doesn't publish news and it doesn't claim to be objective. Nobody is interested in how their sources of funding might bias their coverage of events because that's completely irrelevant to a car company

JohnFen8• 3 years ago

The fact they take any money at all from the gov makes them sate-affilated.

In that case, very nearly every business (including mom and pop shops) is "state affiliated" and one has to ask why NPR is being singled out for this.

hitpointdrew4• 3 years ago

In that case, very nearly every business (including mom and pop shops)

How so? In what capacity are “most businesses” getting federal money? Tax credits/breaks don’t count, that is the companies money that they don’t have to pay, not the federal government directly funding the business.

NickM• 3 years ago

Twitter's own definition of "state-affiliated media" reads as follows:

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.

By this definition, NPR is not state-affiliated.

dirtyid2• 3 years ago

COMPETES act stuffed 500M for state sponsored anti-PRC propaganda. By that definition all US media should be default suspect of being state affliated. Or charitably state influenced / infiltrated.

timid_tiger• 3 years ago

The name twitter was looking for is 'public broadcasting' which is crucially different to 'state media'

hitpointdrew4• 3 years ago

You expect me to believe that gov funding NPR receives is “no strings attached”. LOL yeah right.

infamouscow• 3 years ago

If NPR was as upstanding as some think, and if this money isn't meaningful as claimed, then why is it so hard for NPR to give the money back and distance themselves in a way that leaves no room for question about being propaganda?

greenie_beans2• 3 years ago

with that logic, wouldn't corporations who take subsidies and tax credits be considered "state-affiliated"?

just slap that label on every single food product.

newfonewhodis2• 3 years ago

The fact they take any money at all from the gov makes them sate-affilated.

Let's leave out the Elno companies that take gov money hand over fist, why is this label not applied to every company that gets tax benefits, took out govt loans?

cortesoft• 3 years ago

So if you were, say, a restaurant where your local park rangers held their annual employee appreciation dinner, you are now state affiliated?

fknorangesite2• 3 years ago

The fact they take any money at all from the gov makes them sate-affilated.

All this demonstrates is that you don't know what "state affiliated" actually means.

asveikau• 3 years ago

The contrast is between NPR, PBS, BBC, etc., and, say, Russia Today.

The difference between these is obvious.

snowwrestler2• 3 years ago

I think folks who don’t follow the media industry would be surprised how much federal money makes its way around. The U.S. military alone has an annual marketing budget over $400 million, most of which goes to media companies.

There is also the 2nd order effect of major government contractors who spend heavily on brand advertising, which is in turned funded by revenue from government contracts. NPR actually gets most of its “government funding” this way, as private membership dues from local radio stations (who themselves receive some federal grants).

Personally what matters to me is editorial independence from the government, not where single digits of revenue come from. And NPR is undeniably as editorially self-directed as any other media company.

gamblor9562• 3 years ago

By that logic, SpaceX gets most of its money from the federal government, therefore it is "state-affiliated."

SpaceX actually gets significantly more money, in absolute and relative terms, of its budget from the federal government than NPR.

smolder2• 3 years ago

Okay, so when big media corps get cut deals by government, are they now state-affiliated? Is Disney state-affiliated, with no editorial independence, because Florida had granted them their own little kingdom? Your post might as well say: "I don't care what the facts are, my minds made up that NPR is a mouthpiece for the state." It's just not at all true. Stations pay for NPR content, and stations are member driven, despite subsidy. The federal government has no more say in NPRs content than anyone else's.

hitpointdrew4• 3 years ago

Is Disney state-affiliated

Yes, clearly.

mochomocha• 3 years ago

Since it's tax season... Did you ever benefit from a tax credit on your return? Should we consider you state-affiliated?

Less than 1% of their funding is from the government.

Tesla received billions in government subsidies... Is it state-affiliated?

jonstewart• 3 years ago

One could say that Voice Of America is state-affiliated. One cannot say the same of NPR.

StuPendisdick• 3 years ago

Well, Bye.

starbase2• 3 years ago

Here's what NPR's own website says about their 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)"

"The loss of federal funding would undermine the stations' ability to pay NPR for programming, thereby weakening the institution."

"Elimination of federal funding would result in fewer programs, less journalism—especially local journalism—and eventually the loss of public radio stations, particularly in rural and economically distressed communities."

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

ceejayoz10• 3 years ago

That excerpt isn't about their funding. The CPB funds (in part) public radio stations.

Many of those public radio stations purchase NPR-produced content. (And from other similar providers like American Public Media (Marketplace), PRX (This American Life), etc.)

NPR's customers can't afford NPR's offerings without said Federal funding, which is why NPR's particularly interested in it.

wyager6• 3 years ago

An agency that is federally funded through 1 layer of intermediaries is still, in the most practical sense, federally funded.

civilized2• 3 years ago

That funding page says 31% of NPR's revenue comes from programming fees from member stations. Some of the 8% "other revenues" and 5% "PRSS contract" sound like they may come from member stations too, so let's call it 40% total from member stations as a best guess.

Member stations themselves receive 13% of their revenue from the CPB (8%) and "federal, state, and local governments" (5%). Let's call that piece about 10% as a best guess of the federal-only part.

40% from member stations, which themselves get 10% from the Feds, is 4% additional from the Feds, bringing up NPR's federal revenue from the 1% they said to an all-in total of 5%.

It seems that NPR's statement is a bit misleading, but not that materially so.

(I'm as surprised as many of you may be, readers -- I thought they were much more federally funded as well.)

My accounting skills are less than amateur, so please point out anything I may have missed. I'm not quite sure if 40% of 10% computation is a sound representation of what's going on.

veec_cas_tant2• 3 years ago

There is also this part that you did not quote:

On average, less than 1% of NPR's annual operating budget comes in the form of grants from CPB and federal agencies and departments.

It is irrelevant to most of the controversy, however. The original Twitter label declared that NPR did not have editorial independence from the government.

DrThunder9• 3 years ago

They don't. Just because you say you do doesn't make it so. When a big part of your funding comes from the people that can vote to cut it at any moment you do not have true independence.

This is as silly as the argument saying the 1st amendment isn't violated by social media when you have the government literally asking these companies for censorship.

jacquesm30• 3 years ago

Besides the fact that they receive only a tiny percentage of their funding from the government the bigger issue is that of editorial control and NPR is pretty clean as far as I can see. Unlike most of the other entities labeled 'State Affiliated Media'.

Naming NPR in one breath with those others is intentionally tarnishing them and playing to the crowd, which is something that Elon has been engaging in in a very specific manner since he took over Twitter. Trying to suggest that this is appropriate is edging pretty close to that cartoon about people jumping in to defend Musk in the most weird ways.

I don't see Tesla's account labelled as State Affiliated and yet, if we were to judge solely by the amount of funds received they would qualify long before NPR would.

nostromo2• 3 years ago

If the public funding isn’t important to them, then don’t take it and become truly independent. Or keep the funding and be open about it.

I suspect most of NPR's followers are fine with their public funding, it's literally in the name. They're probably more upset about all their corporate funding.

Tesla’s funding is neither here nor there; it’s not a news outlet.

rahimnathwani6• 3 years ago

they receive only a tiny percentage of their funding from the government

There are at least two ways they get government funding:

- direct funding from the federal government

- payment from member stations (at least 31% of revenue) who are themselves supported by government funding

Without looking at the funding sources of each NPR member station, it's hard to come up with a good estimate, but it's probably a double digit percentage, which exceeds what I consider 'tiny'.

woooooo5• 3 years ago

It's still federally funded.

Twitter probably shouldn't have gotten into labeling who is and isn't state funded, but if they are, US/UK/NATO orgs should be fair game alongside the Russians and Chinese.

NPR labeling the "state-funded media" claim as "false" when its trivially, factually true is a bad look for them as a fact-based organization.

freemanofthewan• 3 years ago

Since when did Tesla start producing media? Specifically, media funded by the government? Can you provide proof of this funding and links to what they produced?

This comment is edging pretty close to that cartoon about people who can't help but try to find reasons to dislike Elon, because NPR told them to do so.

kzrdude• 3 years ago

There's a bunch of state funded media in Europe, for example Scandinavian, German, UK, etc public service media orgs. They have standards for editorial independence and I think they are just as independent or more, as NPR.

anon291• 3 years ago

Well Twitter is a private company and can ban/publish who they please under their own terms

JustSomeNobody4• 3 years ago

Your quoting was rather disingenuous. How could you not quote the last line (regarding how much of their budget comes from this source), when you quoted almost all the rest regarding federal funding?

burkaman6• 3 years ago

It would be helpful to add some numbers to your comment. 31% of NPR revenues are from member stations, and 13% of that 31% is federal funding. So ~4% of NPR revenue is indirect federal funds. This is, to give one example, substantially less than the portion of grocery store revenues that come from SNAP. Do we consider all grocery chains to be government sponsored businesses? Is Y Combinator government sponsored, since so many of its investments received money from the SVB bailout?

My answer would be yes, government support is essential for most businesses, but that makes this label useless in theory and malicious in practice when only applied to a tiny subset of government-funded companies.

DrThunder9• 3 years ago

And this proves they're not government funded / affiliated how?

Didn't they tweet that their funding by the government was so minuscule that they shouldn't be labeled state-affiliated? You cannot simultaneously say that while also declaring you can't exist to your full capacity without government funding.

guywithahat3• 3 years ago

The irony is that it's likely not minuscule. Although NPR claims its around ~5%, independent investigations usually put it closer to 20-40%

skybrian• 3 years ago

You might compare with a government contractor like SpaceX. Private organizations can depend on government funding without being fully government-controlled. Speaking of SpaceX as a privately owned company is still accurate. Calling it state-affiliated wouldn’t be entirely wrong (they work with NASA), but a bit weird.

In NPR’s case, their customers (public radio stations) receive a lot of government funding, so it’s one step removed compared to a government contractor.

NPR is a nonprofit with a board of directors that includes NPR member station managers, though. Control over NPR seems rather diffuse? Nonprofit boards are often kind of weird that way.

kodah• 3 years ago

Elon's playing word games. When the average person talks about State Affiliated Media they're referring to editorial control. As far as I know NPR has always had editorial control and goes to great lengths to maintain neutrality in their writing. They've certainly screwed up in major ways before, but compared to MSNBC, Fox, the NYT, NYP, and CNN I'd say NPR looks like a saint.

The irony I see here is that Twitter is on record as to being involved in suppression exercises around COVID, where they basically acted as the governments hands to suppress legitimate voices. Given that, Twitter needs to wear its own State Affiliated Media badge. Hell, what do you even call an entity that willfully suppresses valid and good information that is not favorable to the government? A state apologist?

petsfed3• 3 years ago

I was going to mention Radio Free Europe as a really good example of egregious, western state-sponsored media, but then on a lark, I looked up how well regarded they are, bias-wise, and now I don't know what to think.

giaour• 3 years ago

At least as of the time of this comment, no special label was applied to Stars and Stripes (50% funded by the US Department of Defense), Al Hurra (100% funded by the US Agency for Global Media), or CBC (>50% funded by the Canadian government).

Maybe that's just a mistake, and every news organization that gets a dollar of funding from any government will eventually get its own "Government-funded Media" label. Or maybe Twitter's new owner is being a petty little despot and didn't like a recent NPR story. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

fortuna869• 3 years ago

Yes, every organization when faced with potential budget cuts refers to all of their budget as "essential". This should not be surprising.

fundad5• 3 years ago

I love that people are trying to coat his actions in reason like "look at the numbers, it's not spite it's truth" and then Elon tweets "Defund @NPR" and makes them look silly.

hnburnsy2• 3 years ago

It has the words National and Public right in its name. I'd bet many already assume NPR is somehow state related.

On a different note it's last news post on its main account had almost a million views. That is a lot of eyeballs to give up, but they don't really have advertisers to please.

adultSwim• 3 years ago

I've been uncomfortable with the uneven application of those labels. I think they are a good idea and should be applied to all government sponsored media. It should be basic transparency, instead of a selective scary warning.

tapoxi• 3 years ago

Good. It's clear now that Twitter is just an information control mechanism for Musk, and journalists should quit their addiction to it. I think every major news outlet should have their own ActivityPub compatible service, essentially as a modern replacement for RSS.

riffic3• 3 years ago

with ActivityPub you can have specific actors like @breaking@npr.org, @sports@npr.org, @finance@npr.org, @waitwaitdonttellme@npr.org, @reporter@npr.org, et cetera.

VWWHFSfQ• 3 years ago

for some reason I'm annoyed by all the @ symbols in these new things

mavhc2• 3 years ago

what's the reason for the initial @ symbol, seems superfluous

eastbound3• 3 years ago

Strange that labelling medias with their true funding diminishes their credibility so much that they’d flee to any place where this information is not disclosed.

travisd• 3 years ago

I suspect this is a bad-faith argument, but just to be clear, NPR get's a tiny fraction of its funding from the government *and* maintains editorial independence.

The news organization says that is inaccurate and misleading, given that NPR is a private, nonprofit company with editorial independence. It receives less than 1 percent of its $300 million annual budget from the federally funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

xdavidliu• 3 years ago

what percentage of NPR’s true funding was from the government?

fundad5• 3 years ago

Yeah I'm sure it has nothing to do with months of the CEO putting out right wing agitprop and promoting QAnon conspiracies. He openly promoted GOP candidates on his media site.

thrashh• 3 years ago

The problem isn’t that Twitter is labeling media with true funding. If it was, you’d be seeing under MSNBC or CNN or Fox News who their main sponsors are (which are probably bigger than NPR’s government contribution).

So by cherry picking only some funding sources to label with, that means that you are trying to present a narrative.

(or if Twitter is not trying to present a narrative, instead it means that they‘re just being naive)

guelo3• 3 years ago

The label was "State Affiliated" not "publicly funded".

khochesh_kushat3• 3 years ago

As long as Twitter lists itself as a Qatari/Saudi backed social media company I suppose fair is fair and at least they are being consistent in how they apply the rules. I wonder if they will do so.

corndoge• 3 years ago

Not that rss really needs replacing - in fact using both is a great experience

h2odragon• 3 years ago

Twitter is just an information control mechanism for Musk, and journalists should quit

agreed. That was the case long before Musk.

Would you have felt comfortable articulating that opinion, two years ago? When anything but Twitter was "an extremist echo chamber"? When the only censorship they were indulging in was the censorship we still can't talk about?

scythe• 3 years ago

Would you have felt comfortable articulating that opinion, two years ago?

I posted rather often about how awful Twitter was long before there was a whiff of Musk buying it. (It's still awful.) I didn't really talk about "information control", but I don't care about that now, either; Twitter's audience was never that big.

ModernMech2• 3 years ago

Twitter was also an extremist echo chamber. It's how the January 6th insurrection happened, a violent attack on the US Capitol that was organized, launched, and coordinated in real-time on Twitter. You can't do that if voices of sanity are seeping in. It's just that Twitter as many echo chambers, some bigger and more dangerous than others.

xnx• 3 years ago

Email remains undefeated as the original, indestructible, federated social network. It's a shame about the flub with Google Buzz, that could've been the basis for something great.

timbit422• 3 years ago

Too bad it's so centralized now.

softwaredoug• 3 years ago

It's too bad we don't get a real experiment in trying to run a social network like Twitter on a skeleton crew. It would have been interesting to see the impact of sane moderation rules, but on 75% staff reduction.

xibo9• 3 years ago

Who gets to say what is sane moderation? Sane is not something I would ascribe to Musk.

dmitrygr• 3 years ago

Why "falsely"? I've been an NPR fan my whole life, but there is no denying at all that their coverage of american politics is nowhere near impartial. So as long as current party in power is aligned with them, they are de-factor state-aligned.

Rebelgecko• 3 years ago

I think "falsely" because they're primarily viewer supported and less than 1% of their budget comes from the government. So it's odd for them to get the label when other news outlets like BBC and Voice of America (which is literally a state owned propaganda outlet) don't

JohnFen8• 3 years ago

Because it's not state-affiliated or state-sponsored media. Saying it is is factually incorrect.

Whether or not it's impartial is a completely different conversation.

mikestew• 3 years ago

Why "falsely"?

Because "nowhere near impartial" != "state-affiliated". And your attempt to tie the two is a bit lacking.

jckahn• 3 years ago

Good. A publicly-funded entity like NPR should be hosting its own Mastodon server anyways.

DrThunder9• 3 years ago

There's a reason they don't. Much harder to trick people into donating to you if the algorithm on a large private social media site isn't around to prop you up.

LispSporks22• 3 years ago

Don't they know when they're being trolled?

mfer3• 3 years ago

By David Folkenflik

According to Wikipedia...

David Folkenflik ... is an American reporter based in New York City and serving as media correspondent for National Public Radio.

Interesting conflict of interest in news reporting.

jacquesm30• 3 years ago

What conflict of interest do you perceive? Would you rather the article was by Rush Limbaugh or do you see any items in the article that you feel misrepresent reality and that this was done because of the reporters' bias?

mfer3• 3 years ago

The conflict of interest is that he is writing about an organization he works for.

jaredwiener• 3 years ago

Shameless plug here, but we're building a news feed for news at https://www.forth.news.

It's not a social network. It's a way to follow reporters/news organizations/topics, and see what they post. No misinfo, no spam, no hate speech. Just news.

gkoberger2• 3 years ago

Musk (and Trump) are really, really good at vocally saying things everyone agrees with to cover the fact they're doing the exact opposite. They're populist champions to such a degree that their supporters (and even the media / independents) can't fathom they don't actually care at all.

Free speech, no wars, anti-corruption in DC, etc. These are all things most people agree with. If some of the stuff Trump/Elon did secretly leaked, people would be going crazy. But they've mastered the art of publicly being hypocrites, to the degree that the average person just genuinely can't wrap their heads around.

Like, how can Elon publish "The Twitter Files" and then literally just do way worst stuff with way less accountability, and have people still believe he's a champion for free speech?

jacquesm30• 3 years ago

It's an intelligence test of sorts. Unfortunately lots of people fail that test.

mb9000• 3 years ago

Maybe the average person just likes one brand of hypocrite over the other brand.

And what sort of secret stuff has Trump or Elon done that hasn't been covered 100x by the media?

gkoberger2• 3 years ago

Like I said, they don't do secret stuff. People associate shame with having done something bad, and their in-the-open shamelessness is what breaks people's mental models of how to evaluate them.

There's a difference. I have a hard time thinking of anyone (other than Bernie) on the left who has followers in the same way as Trump or Elon. It's a very new (yet not new at all) type of cult of personality.

shagymoe• 3 years ago

If some of the stuff Trump/Elon did secretly leaked, people could be going crazy

Not their supporters, they very, very clearly don't care.

m3kw9• 3 years ago

Opens up a mastodon account: 5k followers after a few months

pphysch2• 3 years ago

The current CEO of NPR was the former global propaganda chief for the US government. This is a fact.

If you think that is a coincidence, and NPR is totally not de facto state-media, I have a bridge to sell you.

Props to Twitter's new leadership for doing what is ostensibly right, though who knows what their motivation is.

tpmx• 3 years ago

Had to look that up.

Current NPR CEO John Lansing used to be the CEO for USAGM which supervises Voice of America (VOA), Office of Cuba Broadcasting, Radio Free Europe, etc.

https://www.usagm.gov/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Agency_for_Global_Media

travisporter2• 3 years ago

Same label as Chinese and Russian state media? This was not was an apolitical decision based on facts.

bagels4• 3 years ago

Should Twitter itself get a state sponsored label for getting concessions from San Francisco on their headquarters?

https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/S-F-controller-hails-...

Should Elon's account (or SpaceX or Telsa) have the same label because of their significant government funding?

It's hard to see this as anything but silly politics games.

smotched2• 3 years ago

"media"

binarymax• 3 years ago

Twitter is a media company.

EDIT: lots of discussion around this. Twitter is literally a social media company. You can split hairs on whether the “media” part of “social media” agrees with your bias here.

anonymouskimmer10• 3 years ago

Various companies in China are on US embargo lists because they are state-affiliated. Parsing out "media" companies is just hyper-targeting of ire. All companies that post tweets are effectively media. So why only highlight "news media" on a publication app such as Twitter?

anonymouskimmer10• 3 years ago

Should Elon's account (or SpaceX or Telsa) have the same label because of their significant government funding?

My first thought. How much in easy loans have his companies received from the government?

This is just rich people hating on the industry that publicly critiques them.

RobotToaster• 3 years ago

Wasn't spaceX partly funded by the CIA's investment capital arm?

yossarian14082• 3 years ago

1. SpaceX and Tesla do not publish news

2. If by "easy loans" you mean competing for contracts with the likes of BlueOrigin, Raytheon and Boeing, you ought to drop the word 'easy'

3. If the goal is getting back at the industry, one questions whether Elon Musk wouldn't have had an easier time just buying up a bunch of the papers like Bezos and Murdoch

4. Unlike the previous Twitter regime, Musk allows organisations free reign to critique anyone and anything they like. They just have to disclose who's paying for the criticism is all :)

KZerda• 3 years ago

Or more to the point, with how much of twitter is owned by the Saudi government?

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/10/28/saudis-kingdom-hol...

Andrex• 3 years ago

Twitter doesn't exist anymore (as of yesterday[1]), so the Saudis' ownership shares likely transferred to X Corp.

How much of X is now owned by Saudi Arabia is the real question.

1. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/04/twitter-no-longe...

908B64B1973• 3 years ago

Should Elon's account (or SpaceX or Telsa) have the same label because of their significant government funding?

They aren't trying to hide it.

The NASA contracts are very much public.

iamerroragent5• 3 years ago

Here is how NPR is funded:

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPR#Funding

nimbius• 3 years ago

more ontopic, I think its indicative of a general exodus of brands in general as well. nobody wants to pay for the checkmark, nobody wants to have their brand identity or message challenged or negated by fly-by-night impostors, and most people have lost tolerance for the abdication of moderation and safe space for a modern brand in general. The time to close your account was arguably last November when leadership fired all the employees and locked themselves out of the headquarters.

thats not to say theyre evacuating to another platform, just that 'no platform' is a safer option than twitter platform.

wpietri2• 3 years ago

Yeah, agreed. I was one of the people who quit Twitter in November. It has been a real loss for me, going from 7k followers on Twitter to 0.1k on Mastodon. Especially now that I'll be soon starting a job hunt, I miss that. But when I review my reasons for leaving Twitter [1], I'm not regretting it. I would rather have no platform than that platform. And the calculation for brands is surely much more fraught. I expect NPR will be the beginning of a fair bit of large orgs quitting Twitter, either loudly or just tailing off.

[1] https://twitter.com/williampietri/status/1593662348568326151

throwaway2023032• 3 years ago

They don’t produce news so maybe no?

akira2501• 3 years ago

Should Elon's account (or SpaceX or Telsa) have the same label because of their significant government funding?

Are they a "media" company primarily dedicated to the practice of journalism?

ImPostingOnHN12• 3 years ago

the account is media, and it's as state affiliated as NPR, if not moreso

as for whether it's a media company, that's irrelevant and seems to be an attempt to move the goalposts

bagels4• 3 years ago

Okay, by the same label, I mean "state affiliated"

I think the "state affiliated media" could be applied to Twitter by the same standards, but for Tesla & SpaceX, just "state affiliated"

yossarian14082• 3 years ago

Twitter, SpaceX and Tesla are not newspapers/publishers. The reason for labelling news organisations' government affiliations is for the viewer/reader to understand that there may or may not be bias, and where the funding is coming from.

If NPR's government contributions are embarrassing for the organisation, it might be best for them to forgo that funding. Additionally, if there's no influence/bias, then why does it matter that their funding is disclosed to the reader?

kyralis• 3 years ago

Because the label has a connotation that is not accurate.

Connotation is just as important as denotation when evaluating meaning and accuracy of statements. Engineers love to pretend otherwise - that's probably part of why we're engineers - but that doesn't make them right.

lostlogin8• 3 years ago

When Chinese and Russian state propaganda channels are getting the same label for a different situation, it’s a bit off.

Your (and Elons) argument has shades of the famous ‘with us or against us’ line. Details matter.

scarface742• 3 years ago

And Fox News had a direct line to the White House and was influenced heavily by it. Was it not just as biased?

bagels4• 3 years ago

Twitter is a publisher. Just like newspapers publish AP stories, Twitter publishes the latest memes from users.

fundad5• 3 years ago

SpaceX and Tesla are not newspapers/publishers.

Twitter is a media company, a publisher with an editorial voice that we have to assume is independent from the Saudi government or any government funding the owner's other businesses.

rbanffy2• 3 years ago

Twitter and its curation and targeting mechanisms make it very much a publisher.

d236• 3 years ago

NPR is not nor has it ever been state-affiliated media in any reasonable sense of the word. Is it a full stop, bald-face lie.

guelo3• 3 years ago

The label was "State Affiliated media" not "publicly funded".

khochesh_kushat3• 3 years ago

The label doesn't say anything about publishing or printing a newspaper, it says media. Social media is surely media?

ramses0• 3 years ago

"Sea Lion" comment/question. It's a distraction.

http://wondermark.com/1k62/

jmye• 3 years ago

If NPR's government contributions are embarrassing for the organisation, it might be best for them to forgo that funding.

Ah, yes, the old "if I misrepresent the issue and assign a negative emotion to it, other people will see it as bad" trope. That's fun.

Do you have any evidence they find the contributions "embarrassing" as opposed to finding the label an intentionally-misleading dog whistle? Or is that not something that occurred to you?

sonotathrowaway• 3 years ago

Irrelevant and misleading. By Twitter’s own guidelines it’s not a state owned publisher.

dragonwriter4• 3 years ago

Twitter, SpaceX and Tesla are not newspapers/publishers.

Twitter is a publisher, though (because of Section 230) they are not liable as a publisher for most of what they publish under US law.

ideamotor• 3 years ago

Funny

hacktavist24• 3 years ago

This is true, but Elon Musk is, let's say, a producer of content that drives engagement on the platform that is Twitter. I'd say he gets enough tax breaks and such to qualify for a state shill label. That's not even considering his many years' long business affiliation with the Saudis, even before he decided to piss away 44 billion dollars to buy one of the world's largest megaphones.

rakoo• 3 years ago

Twitter chooses what to push in front or not, it absolutely is a publisher

drtz• 3 years ago

Elon publishes commentary and opinions about policy and society to his Twitter account regularly. He probably has a much broader reach than NPR. To say he shouldn't be held to the same standards because he's not a "publisher" is laughable.

Making NPR display its funding sources for all to see is a good thing (although "state-affiliated" was not the right label). Not making other high profile accounts do the same is pure hypocrisy.

philipov• 3 years ago

Whether or not it's applied consistently doesn't even help the situation. The goal is clearly to muddy the waters on what we mean by state-sponsored media. Even if he labels everything consistently as state-sponsored, it nonetheless serves to mask organizations without editorial independence by creating confusion within the discourse.

oatmeal1• 3 years ago

Should Elon's account (or SpaceX or Telsa) have the same label because of their significant government funding?

Are SpaceX or Tesla news organizations?

lostlogin8• 3 years ago

They can post on Twitter in the same way as others can. If the objective is to show potential bias, why only apply it to some accounts?

alfor2• 3 years ago

strawman.

ElevenLathe• 3 years ago

I'd say its more like serious politics games. Yes, anyone who is interested in material reality knows that all media institutions are controlled by wealthy people, governments, and so on. No, that doesn't mean there isn't real benefit to some groups in projecting the illusion of their independence while simultaneously sewing doubt about the independence of other media. Material reality is a fringe idea pursued by a small minority (and shrinking all the time).

maaand• 3 years ago

Do you also get your news from SpaceX and Tesla?

bagels4• 3 years ago

No, but why not label them as "state affiliated space company" and "state affiliated automobile manufacturer"

meerita2• 3 years ago

I didn't realized Twitter was a media company and not a social network.

khochesh_kushat3• 3 years ago

It's right there in the name, social media.

IG_Semmelweiss• 3 years ago

That seems like moving goalposts.

An org that primarily sells media (PBS or Twitter) should live by what its primary revenue source is for that media, because it colors the media that goes out the door.

Further, are the bulk of twitter's profits derived from concessions on a lease ? I don't think so, but I'm open minded.

An org that does not sell media, but physical goods (i.e. Tesla) is arguably selling cars, not media.

v0idzer03• 3 years ago

The labels are for media publishers. They are to make readers aware of the motivations of the writers. This was Twitter practice long before Musk. He just removed the bias toward not labeling US media companies.

Why would SpaceX need a label? “Warning: this rocket fuel is affiliated with the US government so maybe don’t trust it’s opinion on open flames”

DrThunder9• 3 years ago

Terms sound acceptable to me. They're constantly decrying how it's full of hate speech due to Elon anyway. Time to take a stance against "hate-speech" right?

Just fyi, simultaneously saying your funds from the government are minuscule while also saying you shouldn't have them cut is just a whole lot of cognitive dissonance. Also, that in fact means you're state-affiliated and funded.

BooneJS• 3 years ago

Can we go back to RSS with great apps to get our news?

eestrada• 3 years ago

This is how I get my news. Not every news source has an Atom or RSS feed, but plenty of aggregating sites (like HN I might note) do have feeds. Nothing is stopping anyone from doing this now. But apparently, this is not how the masses want to consume media, including news media.

ck2• 3 years ago

Someone is missing a massive opportunity that won't present itself again.

As every big entity and celebrity quits twitter, have an exact clone ready, it almost doesn't matter what the name is.

They don't need to be exclusive on it, just have all those entities cross-post and slowly over the next few years it will build to critical mass.

kgwxd3• 3 years ago

Any accounts suspected of cross-posting would be banned.

labrador2• 3 years ago

I've long thought that a service like Twitter is a public utility and should be run in a democratic way with government funding. The tragedy of Twitter only confirms that. I hope that a billionaire creates a Twitter clone and grants oversight to it to a democratically elected government body. I don't think it should have ads, because that would give advertisers influence. I think we should all fund it so we the public and have a public square for discussion that is neutral. We can all debate what kind of speech that we allow and vote on that

clsec• 3 years ago

It should be labeled as such considering it has received massive tax breaks and free rent from the City and County of San Francisco.

labrador2• 3 years ago

I'd support the Federal Government nationalizing Twitter. We live in a time of war after all, mostly cold fought on a cyber and informational front, but just as serious just the same. Musk has suppressed support of Ukraine on Twitter and boosted Russia supporting accounts. I think that's just wrong. I think it's obvious by now Musk can't be trusted.

CodeWriter232• 3 years ago

Headline is incorrect. NPR’s label at the time of their departure was “government-funded media”. Changed after Musk conceded he got it wrong with the first label “State affiliated media”.

well_actulily• 3 years ago

I strongly disagree with the notion that Elon Musk's labeling of NPR as 'state-affiliated' was an innocent mistake. In my opinion, Musk was well aware of the implications of lumping NPR together with propaganda outlets like RT and Xinhua. By doing so, he deliberately misrepresented NPR's journalistic integrity and reputation as a non-partisan news source. It's clear that NPR's objection was not to being labeled 'government-funded,' but rather to being unfairly associated with disreputable media organizations. This was a calculated move by Musk to undermine NPR's credibility and independence.

CodeWriter232• 3 years ago

There’s plenty of skullduggery going on around this situation. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1646228065071292416?s=46...

poisonarena4• 3 years ago

It is, since 2015-2016 its just awful. I used to love NPR, listening to is everyday in the 2000s and first half of 2010s, love the podcasts. SOMETHING happened, and it took a whole year or so for almost everything to be focused on politics and race and trump and I just completely lost interest.

kgwxd3• 3 years ago

A fascist took office, and now more fascists are taking office. When the fascists go, the news can be boring again.

poisonarena4• 3 years ago

anyone who says 'fascist' that many times in one line wont be able to convince me of anything

philippejara• 3 years ago

obama and bush took office way before 2015.

snowwrestler2• 3 years ago

There’s a lot of focus in comments on the funding. But let’s say you are an engineer at Meta. And the next time you log into Twitter, your personal Twitter account has a label that says “Meta-affiliated account.” Would that seem fair or accurate?

Even though you get most of your personal income from your employer, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they are directing what you do and say on your own social media accounts. Unless you are communicating in some professional capacity on behalf of your employer, like PR.

It’s similar with the concept of “state-affiliated media” (a concept which predates Twitter, by the way). The deciding factor is how much the media operation is doing, essentially, the PR work of the government.

Maybe with Biden in office, some poorly-informed conservatives would be willing to believe NPR is taking direction from the government. But during the Trump presidency? It’s obvious from even a cursory review of NPR content over the years that they are frequently at odds with the contemporaneous administration. Whereas state-affiliated media always is aligned, by definition.

bhelkey• 3 years ago

But let’s say you are an engineer at Meta. And the next time you log into Twitter, your personal Twitter account has a label that says “Meta-affiliated account.” Would that seem fair or accurate?

It seems reasonable to disclose that one works at a company before posting an opinion related to that company online. The statement "I love CeraVe products" is worth a whole lot more from a happy customer than it would be from a CeraVe employee.

crisdux• 3 years ago

NPR's funding does not come solely from direct appropriation. NPR receives a higher amount of federal funding than what is commonly believed. It is difficult to determine the exact amount of federal funding because it is hidden within the fees paid by local affiliates. These local affiliates receive a significant portion of their funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which is itself funded by federal tax dollars.

Congressional appropriation > Corporation for Public Broadcasting > grants for local affiliates > fee paid to NPR

jtr1• 3 years ago

NPR is very up front about its funding: https://www.npr.org/about-npr/178660742/public-radio-finance...

costanzaDynasty• 3 years ago

Good. Maybe more companies, media/new outlets will quit and be forced to realize that pandering to the amen chorus on Twitter is bad for business.

kylecordes5• 3 years ago

Imagine an upgraded version of Musk - making some of these changes in a less contentious way.

I find the idea of labeling media outlets quite helpful. The initial state-affiliated label for NPR seemed like an unnecessary tarnishment. The updated "government-funded" label is better, but still not quite there. The idea elsewhere in this thread of labeling the approximate percentage of government funding is excellent and should not be offensive to anyone involved.

blowski• 3 years ago

Musk does have the tendency to make "motherhood and apple pie" sound like nuclear war. It seems more about attention seeking than running a business.

obeyandunthink• 3 years ago

“Silicon Valley is full of libertarians”

HN has become so contrarian that it’s now the establishment well rooted in postmodernism and authoritarian tendencies to ensure society agrees with them.

tric• 3 years ago

It would be more noteworthy if their reporters left Twitter.

shagie2• 3 years ago

It's an active and current discussion.

https://twitter.com/NPRinskeep/status/1646154796905136128

Steve Inskeep (NPR): John Lansing, NPR CEO, at the ⁦ @MorningEdition meeting.
NPR says it will de-emphasize Twitter. Aside from the misleading label, NPR says Twitter isn’t used by most Americans; drives little traffic to NPR; and “no longer has the public service relevance that it once had.”

https://twitter.com/NPRinskeep/status/1646155432124137474

Steve Inskeep (NPR): NPR employees with personal accounts are told they may make their own decisions. I’ll take it day by day.

https://twitter.com/abbydphillip/status/1646166679032938501

Abby D. Phillip (CNN) replying to morning edition meeting: At the news org level, this makes sense. And even at the reporter level, we’d all be better served spending less time on here, because the conversations happening here are increasingly divorced from what’s happening in the real world.

https://twitter.com/NPRinskeep/status/1646202479988686855

Steve Inskeep (NPR) replying to Abby: This captures something real. While I am not stepping away at this time (I read all sorts of sources!), Twitter always encouraged groupthink; has never captured the full range of what’s going on; and is a less valuable resource than a year ago. I’ve been on here less.

BiteCode_dev• 3 years ago

In the BBC interview, Musk says they are thinking about changing the label to "publicly funded".

Seems like a good compromise.

Eumenes• 3 years ago

NPR has been insane since Trump/2016. I play a game with a few friends/family, we tune into NPR, and see how fast they'll talk about trans issue or white supremacy ... its literally 90% of the time within 60 seconds

askin4it2• 3 years ago

I play that too! I call it NPR bingo

kaeresten_dit4• 3 years ago

Seems like a funny reaction to a label added as a subtitle to an organization with the name National Public Radio

People get attached to words or phrases without thinking about what they actually mean, seems like definitions get modified to emotionally herd the [un]imaginative/initiated

Wild that style of thinking goes that high up the chain at NPR the CEO sounds child-like with their response

petrusnonius• 3 years ago

The BBC just had their label corrected..

minsc_and_boo8• 3 years ago

If it's such s small infraction then it should be easy for Musk to say they were wrong and correct it, right?

asdfman123• 3 years ago

Because words and definitions matter, and you’re doing a lot of projection here

harrelchris• 3 years ago

Twitter defines state-affiliated media 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. [1]

This isn't an accurate description of NPR. The government has no control over the content.

NPR receives less than 1% of its direct funding from the federal government [2]

Even Twitter recognized this and walked back the labeling. [3]

[1] https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/state-affilia... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPR [3]: https://nypost.com/2023/04/10/twitter-rebrands-nprs-account-...

rozal• 3 years ago

I can't stand NPR. It's always one sided and always the typical US propaganda. CSPAN is where it's at for raw politics.

kaeresten_dit4• 3 years ago

Interesting I was unaware of the lack of direct connections in current days

My view was more from a historical context in which NPR as its now onown was a byproduct of the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967

Thanks for the insight

CobrastanJorji• 3 years ago

That's an odd reaction.

Twitter is in a precarious state with both advertisers and media folks like reporters. Advertisers are concerned that Elon Musk has a tendency to hurt brands by taking unpredictable, rash action. Reporters are concerned that Twitter is becoming increasingly political.

In a fit of conservative pique, Elon Musk took an umprompted pot shot at NPR by labeling it as "state-sponsored media," which fed heavily into both stories in a completely predictable way. Then he changed his screen name to "Harry Ballz."

And you accused the OTHER guy as "child-like."

kaeresten_dit4• 3 years ago

I guess it depends on who you think the platform is designed for, I believe it is designed first and foremost for the users' and their experience which is not to say advertisers and media don't have a place but they should not be driving the direction of what is ultimately a design decision

Being surprised Elon is meming is is like being surprised [normal thing happens] while the CEO of NPR saying "At this point I have lost my faith in the decision-making at Twitter," "I would need some time to understand whether Twitter can be trusted again." Has one semi-controversial decision against his org. and decides to pull everyone in that org. off it, especially a firm whose management is known for rapid iteration, as shown earlier today with f.ex. the BBC label being updated

However I do understand American's propensity for being sensitive to having any of their institutions having the same labels as the bad guys'

libraryatnight• 3 years ago

The label carries a lot of weight that drags down NPRs integrity. Musk knows that, NPR knows that - NPR is doing the right thing rejecting the label.

bigtex884• 3 years ago

It's a direct attack on the reputation and credibility of the organization from a man-child. Musk is targeting certain orgs and people because "hurr durr lolz I'm funny!" He's a troll.

I'm so glad that NPR is leaving Twitter. Many more will come. The world will be a better place when that cesspool is no longer bubbling.

gaoshan• 3 years ago

State affiliated media indicates state run media... i.e. propaganda for the State. NPR is in no way propaganda for the State. It's probably the furthest a media outlet could be from such a thing. This as an example of people putting their own political ideologies above all else and labeling the things that don't necessarily support them as propaganda. It's wrong and short sighted.

user39393823• 3 years ago

Do you have any examples of them bucking the DNC establishment? I’ve never seen one. AFAICT state propaganda is exactly what they are.

mortenjorck• 3 years ago

State propaganda and party propaganda are the same thing in some countries, but fortunately not in the US.

minsc_and_boo8• 3 years ago

Are you genuinely asking for examples, or are you just declaring your opinion in bad faith?

NPR reports on DNC mishaps and criminals all the time:

- https://www.npr.org/2017/11/16/564593737/sen-al-franken-accu...

- https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/12/12/505309059...

- https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/05/19/529119721...

- https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/12/04/568336597...

- https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2013/02/20/172480780...

LynxInLA• 3 years ago

Take it as you will, but the example they give is:

For example, NPR joined with other media organizations to press the Obama administration for access to closed hearings involving detainees held by U.S. authorities at Guantanamo Bay

Georgelemental4• 3 years ago

NPR are totally propaganda for the State, 100%, without reservation. (I used to be a regular listener, back when they were tolerable)

detaro5• 3 years ago

One would've expected a much larger shift in reporting with changing governments if that were true.

hexage1814• 3 years ago

Only state-affiliated media from countries we don't like, such as China and Russia, should be considered state-affiliated media. BBC and NPR get a pass. [/irony]

wayeq• 3 years ago

"At this point I have lost my faith in the decision-making at Twitter," he says. I would need some time to understand whether Twitter can be trusted again."

Welcome to the club.

guywithahat3• 3 years ago

To be fair they are, independent investigations have found around 20-40% of NPR's money comes from the US government in one form or another. I agree it's a bit ambiguous where the cutoff should lie though

balozi• 3 years ago

Distilled down to its most basic argument -the question becomes: can an institution that receives funding from a sponsor also claim that its output is independent of that sponsor's interests?

My perception is that NPR serves specific class interests, not State interests per se. Unfortunately for them, the State also serves the same narrow class interests. Rage-quitting will not address the underlying tension.

user39393823• 3 years ago

I’d say no. All of these corporate media outlets have the same conflict of interest (Fox, MSNBC, etc) and the result is unsurprising.

nafizh• 3 years ago

NPR is indeed a propaganda machine. But only for one party, and its woke ideology. It doesn't even have to receive federal funding to acknowledge that. Now the technical question is what label do you put on a media platform that's captured by an ideology favorable to a single party which comes to power every few years?

dragonwriter4• 3 years ago

Now the technical question is what label do you put on a media platform that's captured by an ideology favorable to a single party which comes to power every few years?

Without agreeing that that is actually true of NPR, the most accurate label would be “typical private media”, virtually all of which has an ideological viewpoint shaped by the interests (commercial and/or otherwise) of its principals (and, often by way of those commercial interests, those of its sponsors.)

kgwxd3• 3 years ago

what label do you put on a media platform that's captured by an ideology favorable to a single party which comes to power every few years?

a dog logo

almost_usual• 3 years ago

https://twitter.com/logout

zenlf• 3 years ago

I’m surprised that NPR is still held with high regards after they just ignored Hunter Biden’s story and justify it with “not really stories”.

whydoyoucare2• 3 years ago

If NPR is really concerned about getting balanced news to the masses, then their decision to quit twitter, in the lack of an alternative and equivalent platform, seems short-sighted and more like a temper tantrum of a kindergartner, than that of a thoughtful and mature news organization.

It also reinforces the conspiracy theories that they were never truly independent. By making a stinker about this issue, they are trying to paint Musk as the evil overlord hell bent on strangling anyone he dislikes. NYT, WaPo and other leftist media outlets are going to join (yet again) this bandwagon, guaranteed.

Did BBC quit? No.

NPR, grow up, be an adult.

TobyTheDog123• 3 years ago

I'm one of the people who thinks "government-funded" is a fair label (though "state-affiliated" isn't as it implies editorial control).

However, not putting up with someone's (or a company's) antics is not a temper-tantrum, nor a factor in if their decision was "adult" or not. If an organization is offended by a company's decision, then what's wrong with their decision to leave?

Why would they tarnish their brand by having all of their posts accompanied by a label that they deem to be false?

whydoyoucare2• 3 years ago

While I don't have proof, I believe the screaming of NPR about this issue was deliberate (yet again) attempt at painting Musk as the "Evil Overlord" about to destroy the very fabric of fairness, democracy and society.

And I never implied NPR cannot or should not leave if they disagree. The BBC example was simply drawing parallels with someone who made no stink about this and chose to stay. To my knowledge, there was no attempt from NPR to have that label corrected, which seems to be the first logical step.

Off topic, I never found NPR to be neutral or unbiased. They are great pretenders of neutrality though.

eunos• 3 years ago

Unlike Twitter that is still selective on labeling. YouTube pretty much label every public media, that includes DW, BBC, and also NPR. Why do the stake seems much higher on Twitter? I'm thinking that's because journos, blobs and think tankers personally hang out on Twitter unlike YouTube.

sschueller• 3 years ago

Does this marking only apply to US media or media active in the US?

Swiss public broadcasting such as @SRF is publicly funden but lack suck label. However you would have a very hard time finding someone in Switzerland that does not know this as there is constant debating about the fee which almost everyone has to pay separately from taxes.

German public television is also not marked.

badwolf2• 3 years ago

I think Twitters' main criteria currently is "Has <@anyone> been saying mean things that Elon Musk doesn't like lately?"

fdschoeneman5• 3 years ago

I'm sure NPR does some good work, and while I believe it is biased, I've found it to be less biased than CNN or MSNBC. I don't understand why NPR objects to being labeled as either state funded or state affiliated. It was established by an act of Congress, for one thing, and according to its own website, and its own disclosures, it does depend on federal funding. And that figure is substantially more than the claimed 1%. The 1% funding figure is misleading because it implies that the only kind of state funding is that coming directly from the federal government. The figure is much higher when you consider indirect state funding, the fact of NPR taking in dues from affiliates that are substantially dependent on federal grants or state and local grants or money that comes from public schools and public universities, all of which are funded by or subsidized by government.

In addition to the 1% figure being a lie, the writer of this piece failed to disclose that he is literally an employee of NPR. I guess it wasn't difficult to find out, but still...

lgdskhglsa• 3 years ago

WBUR is an NPR station, not only is it not difficult to find out the writer is an employee of NPR, it's out in the open and advertised as such. Do writers need to disclose on every article that they're employees of the organization they're writing for?

https://www.wbur.org/about

fdschoeneman5• 3 years ago

I think they should make it clear in the first paragraph when they are, in effect, writing about themselves or their employer. That's what I would have done.

kenjackson2• 3 years ago

It does disclose it... this is at the end of the article:

Disclosure: This story was reported and written by NPR Media Correspondent David Folkenflik and edited by Acting Chief Business Editor Emily Kopp and Managing Editor Vickie Walton-James. NPR's Bobby Allyn and Mary Yang contributed to this story. Under NPR's protocol for reporting on itself, no corporate official or news executive reviewed this story before it was posted publicly.

What more do you want?

fdschoeneman5• 3 years ago

You're right. I either missed it or the disclaimer was added after I first read the piece.

I think I'd have preferred it be up front in the first paragraph, and that the writer used language making it clear he was talking about his own company and not NPR as an entity he was able to be objective about. That's what I'd have done.

gloghmalogh• 3 years ago

maybe it was added in the 12 minutes since you wrote your comment but there is a disclaimer at the end stating the writer is an NPR correspondent.

zerocrates• 3 years ago

The "state affiliated" label on Twitter was originally applied to sources that are not editorially independent from their states. Twitter put this label on NPR, then removed an explicit mention of NPR as non-state-affiliated from their public policy related to the label, then removed the mention of editorial independence from the policy entirely, then changed the label to "state funded."

I think it's easy to see why NPR objected to the initial "affiliated" labeling, and that they see the new one as just a quick wording change to try to bat back some criticism, but that it carries the same stigma.

In terms of the affiliation of the author, this is a story written by NPR itself: https://www.npr.org/2023/04/12/1169269161/npr-leaves-twitter...

The poster here on HN just happened to post the version from WBUR's website. Also, I don't know if it was edited later or not, but the piece both on NPR's site and WBUR's site has a disclosure at the end explicitly stating that it's NPR reporting on itself.

fdschoeneman5• 3 years ago

I'm not sure I care. To me, state funded is the same as state affiliated. The important thing is not that npr is labelled one way or the other. Everyone knows what NPR is and what the BBC is. Most fair people figure they have a bias but that sometimes they still do good work. The important thing is that by being consistent, and by labelling journalists and media brands like RT and the Chinese state media organs using the same rules we apply to npr and the BBC, we help information consumers understand when they're likely being propagandized.

linuxhansl• 3 years ago

That would indicate many high-quality news outlets.

Many European countries have state-funded but independent media. Switzerland, Germany, Great Britain, France, et al, all have state-funded and independent media.

The idea is that state-funding makes them less dependent since they do not have to only report what people want to read for ad-revenue but can focus on honest reporting (including reporting critical of the government).

Whether you buy that argument or not is a different discussion. The point is that "state funded" has nothing to do with "state controlled" or even "state affiliated"; just another dumb move by Elon Musk.

I quit Twitter a long time ago. Good riddance, I have not missed anything!

stronglikedan• 3 years ago

Well they literally are, and combined with being as biased and disingenuous as any MSM organization out there, they should be labeled as such. Twitter has become much better since Musk took the helm. The little people can finally speak truth to power without getting deplatformed.

jtode• 3 years ago

He... he really thought that he was buying reality, I guess?

hintymad• 3 years ago

A criticism of NPR that I often see online is that NPR is leftists' propaganda machine (not government's, mind you, but democrat's). However, is this criticism true, though? To me, a propaganda machine would lie or weave facts to paint false pictures. I think it's perfectly okay if a media is either left leaning or right leaning. Heck, it's even okay if a media is extreme left biased or right biased, as long as the media reports facts (I assume opinions are their own rights). The only example I saw recently was that NPR blatantly rejected the legitimacy of the Hunter Biden's laptop story. I don't agree with NPR's decision, but I can definitely give them the benefit of doubt that they truly believed that the story was a distraction. So, are there any additional data points that show NPR is a propaganda machine to some extent?

luckylion• 3 years ago

a propaganda machine would lie or weave facts to paint false pictures

A simple propaganda machine would. A sophisticated propaganda machine wouldn't want to be seen as a propaganda machine and wouldn't go off the rails, but just significantly lean on all topics and reports and massage the truth enough to make an impact, but not so much to derail the train.

No clue whether that's true for NPR, I think I've only ever seen something from them when I randomly discovered Kishi Bashi because he did an NPR concert that I enjoyed. But I don't think it's useful to say "you've either completely left reality whenever it comes to topics concerning your agenda or you're not a propaganda machine". Like, if I have a pair of dices that I can control, I won't just hit the best throw each time, because it won't last. I'll make much more money if I just make sure I win 60% of the time.

AuryGlenz5• 3 years ago

https://allthingsreconsidered.buzzsprout.com/

Episode 3 (trans dinosaurs) and the follow up are one good example.

But honestly, just turn on your station and listen. Unless you're so far left you can't tell the difference, it should be pretty obvious - although it was even worse when Trump was president.

tptacek• 3 years ago

My general take on this is that people can make whatever arguments they want about whether NPR is According-To-Hoyle state media (I don't think it is, by the spirit of the term, but it's a gnarly enough question that I wouldn't want to burn a whole thread trying to hash it out).

The real issue here is: if Twitter is going to continue to be ad-sponsored for commercial viability, running a social media platform that chases National Public Radio off is very bad for business. You already have major national brands hesitant to re-engage there (whether you like their reasons or not). Playing chicken with NPR and losing is an awfully powerful arrow to put in the anti-Twitter quiver at those companies.

I wouldn't want to look at this through the lens of politics, so much as just plain mismanagement. It's part of a broader theme of Twitter, which depends utterly on user-generated content, doing things to deliberately antagonize the minority of their user base that actually produces content people want to see.

r7212• 3 years ago

Bobby Allyn (Tech Reporter for @NPR):

NPR's analytics show that less than 2% of our traffic comes from Twitter. It's not a surprise to people who work in media, but even before the labeling saga, there was a pretty strong business case that the game wasn't worth the candle

https://twitter.com/BobbyAllyn/status/1646195092661891072

anigbrowl3• 3 years ago

This was pretty much the aim; occupy the territory and drive others out. The goal isn't for Twitter (or X) to make money, as such, but to have a monopoly on real-time mass communication and leverage that monopoly to pick which content 'wins'. All the complaints about Twitter and other big tech companies are essentially a to-do list of what will happen following their capture or neutralization.

tristanb• 3 years ago

For a smart man, this guy is a complete idiot.

timbit422• 3 years ago

He's not that smart. He just hires smart people.

B1FF_PSUVM• 3 years ago

So, "state-affiliated" is a bad thing, unlike those "by appointment to HM the Queen" that used to grace the advertisements of British (and other) brands?

thordenmark• 3 years ago

But NPR is state-affiliated media. It was founded by the LBJ administration. And has always towed the government line with very little deviation from state-approved positions. Even the calls are heavily screened to not let anything remotely out of the box in.

reso• 3 years ago

This seems perfectly fair to me and I don't understand the controversy. Maybe in the US people see "State Affiliated" as some kind of an insult? Public broadcasters like the BBC and Al Jazeera have done extraordinary work at times.

That being said it would only be fair to also include a badge for private media corporations that says who their parent corporation is.

jackson1442• 3 years ago

Typically the State Affiliated badge is only applied to accounts where editorial control is in the hands of the state - think Chinese and Russian media companies.

Also interesting- after the change, NPR's badge says "Government-funded media" while the BBC's badge says "Publicly funded media," at least in the US. Al Jazeera does not have any such badge, other than the gold "Official Organization" badge.

corbulo• 3 years ago

US Politics revolves around being the underdog. If you're state affiliated you can't pitch yourself as the plucky underdog trying to change the world.

Thats why NPR would rather leave twitter than live with the label.

stusmall2• 3 years ago

This seems perfectly fair to me and I don't understand the controversy. Maybe in the US people see "State Affiliated" as some kind of an insult?

From Twitter's definition

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.

Yes. That is an insult.

shagie2• 3 years ago

From their definition from a week ago: https://web.archive.org/web/20230404115255/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.

Note that that copy is currently still live on the China specific version of the page: https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/state-affilia...

faeriechangling• 3 years ago

Mostly because the amount of money we're talking about from NPR where including indirect funds (Government -> NPR Affliates -> NPR + Government -> NPR) reaches single digits whereas the majority of BBC funding comes from the TV license legislation enforced by the government and Al Jazeera has an undisclosed amount of money funding it.

Further a huge amount of media outlets worldwide receive money from the government in the realm of single digits and yet are not slapped with the same label, NPR is only being equated to organisations like the BBC here who are truly on a different level in terms of being "state affiliated".

NPR could very conceivably leave all of its government funding behind and not hurt all that much as a result. Whereas if BBC lost all the TV license funding it would be apocalyptic for the organisation. So regardless of the nominal independence of Al Jazeera and BBC from their respective governments, it's difficult to see them as being as independent in practice. NPR gets far more of its funding from corporate sponsors who in all likelihood have more of an editorial influence over it than the government does. They aren't however listed as "Corporate-affiliated media", which would honestly be both more accurate and more damning to their image. Whereas I really wouldn't claim that BBC or Al Jazeera are "Corporate affiliated media" but I wouldn't hesitate to call them "State affiliated".

guidorice• 3 years ago

national: (adjective)

relating to a nation; common to or characteristic of a whole nation: this policy may have been in the national interest | a national newspaper. • owned, controlled, or financially supported by the federal government: plans for a national art library.

mleafer• 3 years ago

"Tesla has received more than $3.2 billion worth of direct and indirect California subsidies and market mechanisms since 2009, according to an estimate from Newsom's office." - https://www.govtech.com/policy/gov-newsom-says-california-su....

neom• 3 years ago

Why doesn't AlJazeera have a label?

EchoReflection• 3 years ago

twitter and NPR are both liberal echochambers, although NPR has "high credibility".

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/npr/

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/oct/22/twitter-a...

https://quillette.com/2019/02/12/it-isnt-your-imagination-tw...

re: NPR:liberal bias but not egregious

https://nypost.com/2017/10/21/the-other-half-of-america-that... (I realize NY Post leans way right)

EricE• 3 years ago

From the you-can't-make-this-stuff-up department, NPR then ran to TikTok. Running home to mama I suppose.

helsinki• 3 years ago

I mean, have you listened to NPR lately? It’s too much for me, a longtime listener, to tolerate the majority of the editorial content, these days.

liberty-DNBWM• 3 years ago

LMFAO why it is so hard to accept the truth?

strken• 3 years ago

I wish they'd tell me who owns the private media. Labelling the Murdoch press would be useful.

1vuio0pswjnm7• 3 years ago

https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/national-public-ra...

SebKba• 3 years ago

We're talking about it so what Elon is doing is working. Amazing to see all the hate.

insane_dreamer2• 3 years ago

To be fair, all private media should have a “corporate ad funded” label, or maybe better yet, a list of their top 5 ad purchasers.

syngrog66• 3 years ago

SpaceX has taken massively more US gov funding than NPR. and many Tesla car buyers were persuaded to make the leap due to US gov tax incentives on EVs

I do miss the old Elon Musk, the one I could respect and appreciate without reservation. feels like something "broke" in his personality a few years ago

mlindner• 3 years ago

I'm not sure what NPR is complaining about, they themselves state that federal funding is "essential" (in bold) for them.

parasense• 3 years ago

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) receives about half a billion dollars annually from Federal grants, and then channels that funding into subsidiaries like PBS and NPR.

https://cpb.org/appropriation/history

Funding from a benefactor is known to create bias.

I'm concerned about NPR's statements which almost resembles some kind of pathology, because the statements look like a mix of denial and/or rationalisation. We are seeing outright denial, that they only get a little bit of federal funding... or rationalisation like that funding is just a small portion of our tiny budget...

The fact is that in 2021 Public Radio received about ~$100 Million, and about the same in 2022. If these estimation are wrong, they are leaning towards the conservative side, and would likely go higher. I'm pulling the data from the CPB financial statements, and mostly glossing over the details, yanking data from the executive summary.

https://cpb.org/sites/default/files/aboutcpb/financials/audi...

Please, by all means dispute this data. I'd love to be persuaded that this is all somehow wrong. But right now it looks like NPR & PBS are both affiliated with the Federal government because they get significant funding from there, alongside donations.

perigrin• 3 years ago

I'm not going to dispute the data, but I don't think it means what you're saying it does. Honestly, I think you've made the same mistake that most people make in this conversation and equating NPR to Public Radio. NPR is Public Radio, but not all Public Radio is NPR.

TL;DR: Based on the document you linked to the lions share of the money goes to _public radio stations_ in unrestricted grants to pay for their operations. Of the money that does trickle through that to program providers, NPR is only one of dozens of program producers and distributors, and NPR's own reporting on this seems to accurately portray the reality of how they are funded from independent stations.

Looking at the second link you provided theses are the expenditure programs that look related to public radio broadcasting in the us: Radio Program Fund, National program production and acquisition grants, Community service grants, and Public broadcasting interconnection system. There may be expenses in other categories but they don't appear to be directly related to public radio.

According to that document, these programs are:

Radio Program Fund represents expenses for the development and production of high-quality, new and innovative radio programs that might not otherwise be supported by the marketplace.

National program production and acquisition grants are restricted grants made to qualified public radio stations that must be used for the production, acquisition, promotion or distribution of national radio programs that are of high quality, creative and reflect society’s diversity.

Community service grants are unrestricted general operating grants made to qualified public television and radio stations.

Public broadcasting interconnection system [...] a new interconnection system to be used by both public television and radio stations to transmit and receive programming feeds [... as well as] “other technologies and services that create infrastructure and efficiencies within the public media system.

The line item breakdowns on these services for 2022 are Radio Program fund: 7,145,925 National program production and acquisition grants: 24,579,081 Radio community service grants: 72,446,561 Public broadcasting interconnection: 2,871,313 Total: 107,042,880

So it looks like the CPB spends slightly over 107M on _public radio_ in the united states.

Note that the "National program production and acquisition grants" specifically go to qualified public radio stations. NPR isn't a public radio station, and so doesn't directly get any of that money. That money would go to a local public radio station (here's a [list](https://radiostationusa.fm/formats/public)). A station like my own WMFE then would use that grant money to purchase a radio program like All Things Considered from NPR. But they might also use that money to purchase a radio program like Marketplace from APM, or This American Life from PRX, or be used to produce it's own programs like WBUR's Here and Now. So that money _might_ go back to NPR, but it might not.

The same thing applies to the Radio community service grants, they're unrestricted grants to _stations_ so NPR _might_ get some of that money but much of it probably go to pay local expenses, like the salaries of the radio engineers who keep the towers up and running.

What about the Radio Program fund? That looks like it's pretty much targeted to NPR. Certainly not 100% of it is going to NPR's new programming. Even being generous all de-funding this will do is specifically cut programs "that might not otherwise be supported by the marketplace". I suspect most of that money goes to things like The Splendid Table, and Growing Bolder (neither are NPR shows btw). Unless you want to argue with Rupert Murdoch and Ted Turner that news isn't a marketable product?

The Public broadcasting interconnection is paid to _stations_ to make physically acquiring content easier and a deal with NPR, APM, PRI, PRX and others reduced that cost _significantly_, so that line item dropped to 2M in 2022 from 78M in 2021.

Nothing in your document I believe NPR _claims_ they get about 13% of that portion of a station's budget (based on [WMFE's 2021 Audit](https://drive.google.com/file/d/121U2UFSI8eNYUg59TnZtELEhBL-...) "program acquisition" was about 16% of their total budget so NPR seems credible here) … so about ~$12M of the CPB funding, add in a chunk of the Radio Program fund let's say 80% or ~$6M … we're still at about $18M of the $107M … plus another 1% direct funding (or is that 1% the Radio Program fund?) and we're around 20% of the total CPB "public radio" budget ends up in NPR. Since the CPB's "public radio" budget is only about 25% of the total expenses from the CPB … is 5% of the CPBs expenses considered "significant funding"?

De-funding "public radio" won't mean that Morning Edition goes off the air, it means that the farm report for Ida Grove, IA goes off the air … and the wildfire reports for Billings MT … and close to home for me it means that Brendan Byrne won't be able to keep doing Are We There Yet and reporting on the rockets that keep going up funding my local community with something _other_ than tourism.

The numbers aren't wrong, your definition of "public radio" is wrong when you assume it's just NPR.

NPR quits Twitter after being labeled as 'state-affiliated media'

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