Live data from Hacker News

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

wbur.org

591–600 of 1001 posts

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

#591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fir…

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…

I miss the opportunity to have my posts seen by people on Twitter, but I never had that many get seen in actuality.

Your "rather have no platform than that platform" resonates with me.

It would better if we had some way to follow the large number of valid sources of information from diverse variety of online sources within one application. Whether that ends up being Twitter, or some Federated system, I would prefer that it does not come under or remain under the control of a capricious overlord.

I absolutely understand the frustration of people who are on Twitter just to do the business of journalism, cause it does not seem like a place that is all that conducive to the market for journalism or other writing. It seems more like a public-access text-based cable-news-outrage outlet these days.

Whatever happens, someone please let me know where all the people working on AI end up, cause that's something I would like to follow without all the wailing and gnashing of teeth that happens on Twitter.

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

#592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's irrelevant, the label implies control like with the Russians and the Chinese, and that control simply isn't there.

1. "True but we think it's irrelevant" does not equate to "false". 2. "But america are the good guys" is the exact kind of thing you see uniformly from all American media including NPR.

You really believe that NPR and the BBC belong in the same basket as Russian and Chinese state media?

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

#593

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

Primarily, because NPR affiliate stations service areas where there aren't incentives for private stations. Meaning, without these public radio stations, these areas would be without news and the entertainment broadcasting NPR provides.

This isn't true for stations like WNYC, but it is true for much of the US.

The small affiliates need subsidies, because it costs a lot to run the stations.

NPR has done like, a million segments on this. It's interesting stuff. Easy to learn about!

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

#594

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.

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

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...

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

#595
post #342
post #317

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.

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...

[flagged]

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

#596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because not all government funding is federal funding. Random example from an NPR member station's web site: KCRW is supported, in part, by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Department of Arts & Culture. The Department's Organizational Grant Program helps fund a wide variety of arts, culture, and music programs that you hear on air each day!

I apologize for my imprecise language. The 13% I quoted includes "Federal, state and local governments". Again this is all on the web page we're all discussing, in a very easy-to-understand chart.

[flagged]

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

#597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

That's in reverse. Trump was Fox sponsored. Fox wasn't Trump sponsored. Fox doesn't need a "Fox affiliated media" label.

Maybe it needs a "NewsCorp/Murdoch affiliated" label.

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

#598

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Member stations are federally funded. Member stations pay NPR. To say that NPR doesn’t receive a significant portion of its budget from the federal government is a lie. This same argument is made whenever a politico mentions cutting funding to NPR. There is a large push to claim that NPR receives very little funding and it’s irrelevant to the network. But you can’t have it both ways. The lady doth protest too mightil…

Federally funded != State Affiliated. There is no one from the Biden Administration telling them what to say. By labeling them as such, Elon/Twitter are implying that NPR has a Goebbels-like figure running it, which is mendacious at best.

NPR was founded by the CPB, which was created with an act of Congress and is governed by a board of directors selected by the President. If it's "mendacious" to claim NPR is state affiliated, presumably it would be completely accurate and correct to state NPR, an entity that was founded and continues to be funded by a federal government body run by presidential appointees is "not state-affiliated"?

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

#599
post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, that's incorrect. You're comparing unstable funds vs stable funds. Income from a job is stable (relatively), income from other sources like say a monthly donation, is unstable. So yes, my example is still accurate: they rely on the 1k/mo as STABLE funding.

Where do you address the fact that npr says that “stable” funding represents only 1% of total funding?

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

#600
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 is not their primary line of business.

Because "tech" isn't a business. You don't sell "tech". Microsoft as an example is heavily diversified and as a software publisher they sell ERP software, operating system software, business productivity software, etc. Technology is what allows them to produce and run that software.

> A media company is the thing that produces media

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_media#Internet

Post reply on HN