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

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

#441

Post by DrThunder »

datadata wrote: post #32

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

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.

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

#442

Post by AmericanChopper »

jacquesm wrote: post #355
nostromo wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

NPR needs money and they need editorial freedom, they seem to have both. I really can't fault them for that, editorial independence is the yardstick by which media should be judged unless there is outright ownership.

State funding of media, regardless of how it’s structured, creates an obvious conflict of interest with editorial freedom. Theoretically it’s possible for a state funded media company to exercise editorial freedom, just like it would be theoretically possible for a climate study funded by ExxonMobile to exercise academic freedom, but not without acknowledging that the conflict of interest exists. Maybe they are a high integrity organisation, but the existence of this conflict of interest isn’t really up for debate. Maybe it’s not necessary for any state funded media to be labelled on Twitter, but if you’re going to label any of it, then you should label all of it.

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

#443

Post by justin66 »

jjulius wrote: post #265
throwaway8582 wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But not the BBC, curiously You should check these things before posting. It says "Government-funded Media" right at the top of the page here: https://twitter.com/BBC

>It says "Government-funded Media"... It currently says "Publicly funded media", not "Government-funded Media", and that muddies the waters a bit - publicly-funded doesn't necessarily mean government-funded. Not sure if it said "Gov-funded" an hour ago when you commented or not, as the other person who replied to you suggests that changes to these statements appear to be pretty fluid at the moment.

"Publicly funded media" seems like a decent way of characterizing NPR. At some point one might question what Twitter and its users are getting out of all this labeling and relabeling, though. How many users are going to have an I had no idea NPR was publicly funded media but now I know epiphany when encountering that label?

> Not sure if it said "Gov-funded" an hour ago when you commented or not

I am pretty sure all the observations made on labels in this thread were accurate at the moment they were made.

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

#444

Post by throwaway202303 »

binarymax wrote: post #351
smotched wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"media"

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.

With section 230 protection because they are not an editorial news organization under the defined meaning

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

#445

Post by mavhc »

riffic wrote: post #316
tapoxi wrote: post #240

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.

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.

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

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

#446

Post by DrThunder »

jckahn wrote: post #244

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

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.

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

#447

Post by vicktour »

floatrock wrote: post #334
anderber wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By this logic there would so many companies that are "federally funded" that the label itself would become irrelevant.

Including SpaceX. Starlink is a cute and a useful consumer product, but most of their balance sheet is defense money or giving rides to nasa.

You could chuck most of Musk's portfolio into that category TBH. What ever company does that dumb tunnel idea and Tesla are the two additional companies that come to mind.

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

#448

Post by [deleted] »

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #333
starbase wrote: post #213

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…

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?

[deleted]

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

#450

Post by kodah »

starbase wrote: post #213

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…

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?

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