Live data from Hacker News

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

wbur.org

401–410 of 1001 posts

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

#402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 spec…

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.

It's not up to them, the 4% of their revenue that comes from federal funds comes to them through member station payments. They don't control the member stations or how they are funded.

Also, how could they be any more open about this? If you listen to any NPR member station you'll hear an acknowledgement of federal funds like once an hour.

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

#403

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.

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

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

#404
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.

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

#405
post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Email stands as a notable counter-example.

If people wanted email 2.0 they wouldn't have flocked to social media 1.0 and begun doing most of their correspondence through messaging instead of email.

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

#406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 Br…

Being free of direct government funding does not make it free from editorial independence. You can listen and get an idea of their underwriting. They're clear to walk the line around a lot of topics to not upset their corporate and non profit overlords. We live in a corporatocracy and these companies and non profits are revolving doors for regulatory capture through lobbying and other methods.

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

#407
post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Like wordpress.org has wordpress.com, they could have had this commercial domain. They could even have had a signup form on their .org website that would return “Your account has been created! Yours is on [xyz].com! But don’t worry, it will connect to other accounts from all others of the federation.”

> Like wordpress.org has wordpress.com, they could have had this commercial domain.

soo... mastodon.social? the instance listed as first option, clearly marked as being run by the Mastodon company?

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

#408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 doubl…

Yes, and this gives their funders editorial control how?

Why else do they get this source of funding that other networks don't have? (Though this is still just a theory and not reason to slap "govt-affiliated" on them. "Govt-funded" is fair.)
Post reply on HN