NPR quits Twitter after being labeled as 'state-affiliated media' • Hacker News Board

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

#581

Post by bdhe » Wed, Apr 12, 2023, 6:13 PM UTC

jrussino wrote: post #412

jfengel wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 may well have found that having trolls, clowns, and morons to enjoy his adolescent antics is worth $44B in pure enjoyment This is the most disappointing part. I have a hard time imagining that any of these billionaires are "good people" in a way that I would recognize. But before this Twitter thing I felt like at least I can respect the things Musk chooses to spend his time and money on. How much would that $44B…

Forget about Mars, what about spending that $44B to lobby the government to end poverty for children in the US, feels like a noble cause. Senators and Congressmen/women are bribed, excuse me, lobbied, for peanuts (< millions).

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

#582

Post by TobyTheDog123 » Wed, Apr 12, 2023, 6:13 PM UTC

whydoyoucare wrote: post #560

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 t…

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?

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

#583

Post by toss1 » Wed, Apr 12, 2023, 6:14 PM UTC

RobotToaster wrote: post #415

anonymouskimmer wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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

Went searching, could find a lot of In-Q-Tel investments, but nothing about an investment in SpaceX.

What I did find is that Mike Griffin, the aerospace engineer who became the top NASA administrator in 2005, had a previous job as president of In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s in-house venture-capital fund for national security tech.

He invested $500 million in commercial space, eventually $396 million eventually going to SpaceX, along with $454 million of outside capital and $100 million of Musk's own money in 2006. [0]

So, if there is in In-Q-Tel investment, it is logged behind the Crunchbase paywall. That said, In-Q-Tel is an excellent idea to produce better home-grown security technology, and I have no problem with it (not even with their publicized investment in Facebook, and I consider FB a plague on humanity — that's more of a slur on In-Q-Tel than In-Q-Tel is on FB).

[0] https://qz.com/281619/what-it-took-for-elon-musks-spacex-to-...

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

#584

Post by anonymouskimmer » Wed, Apr 12, 2023, 6:14 PM UTC

yossarian1408 wrote: post #543

anonymouskimmer wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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 fr…

1) They both blog, they just don't charge subscribers for the blog articles. The bias is very evident though, as they talk about themselves.

2) No, this is not what I meant. I meant easy loan terms, otherwise they would have just gone after less competitive loans in the open market.

3) Ask Elon? He gets to kill multiple birds with one Twitter purchase. Something Bezos can't do.

4) There's a distinction between "paying for something" and "paying someone who does something", and that distinction is editorial control. Ask artists and writers who sell works for hire by specification. And tell it to those who have had their accounts locked, even under Musk's ownership.

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

#585

Post by kodah » Wed, Apr 12, 2023, 6:14 PM UTC

preseinger wrote: post #530

kodah wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

[flagged]

Normal? That's not what I was talking about in this specific instance of Twitter though. Maybe you can make your point more clear.

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

#586

Post by kube-system » Wed, Apr 12, 2023, 6:16 PM UTC

wyager wrote: post #284

ceejayoz wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

Does that include Fox News when the Ad Council buys ads? Or when cable companies accept infrastructure subsidies?

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

#587

Post by alltwittersux » Wed, Apr 12, 2023, 6:16 PM UTC

preseinger wrote: post #540

h2odragon wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

[flagged]

Twitter very regularly censored people on the left (the real left, not neo-liberals). Just ask any Bernie Sanders fan how "fair" Twitter was prior to Musk.

Musk is just as bad though, just with his simp army and the alt-right.

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

#588

Post by yamtaddle » Wed, Apr 12, 2023, 6:17 PM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #553

mbesto wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tech companies: Here we go again...under this view, every company is a "tech" company. Does GE or John Deere write software for their hardware? Absolutely. Are they colloquially considered "tech" companies? No. Twitter is a media company (they distribute media). Tech is their operating model to deliver media. As is Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok, etc. etc.

> Does GE or John Deere write software for their hardware? Absolutely. Are they colloquially considered "tech" companies? No. Because tech is not their primary line of business. > Twitter is a media company (they distribute media). A media company is the thing that produces media, not the thing that distributes it. Cogent is not a media company.

Tech isn't twitter's primary line of business, either. The company's value derives from the users and the content they generate. Their tech isn't unique or impressive, and nobody's there for the tech, they're there for the content.

Meanwhile, some Deere buyers are there for the tech.

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

#589

Post by petsfed » Wed, Apr 12, 2023, 6:17 PM UTC

kodah wrote: post #450

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…

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.

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

#590

Post by fdschoeneman » Wed, Apr 12, 2023, 6:18 PM UTC

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...