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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'

#731

Post by d23 »

DrThunder wrote: post #465
generic92034 wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you name any media company being truly independent? Or is any owner excluded from the potential list of dependencies?

I'm discussing government independence specifically, not whether companies are beholden to someone else. Obviously all businesses are beholden to someone. Yes you should always have an interest in what/who companies are beholden to. There's a reason Nike and Apple don't chastise the Chinese government.

To call NPR state-affiliated media to abuse the term to the point of incoherence. You may as well, by your own logic, say every media company ultimately has at least one dollar that's passed through the government and is thus state-affiliated. Thus they all deserve the label. Thus the label is meaningless, which incidentally, appears to be the point of this authoritarian-apolgistic nonsense.

It's continued abuse of language in the hopes of making it impossible for people to determine what's true -- in the hopes of making people give up even caring about facts.

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

#732

Post by keneda7 »

eat_veggies wrote: post #573
yossarian1408 wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 SpaceX and Tesla do not publish news 2.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…

> Musk allows organisations free reign to critique anyone and anything they like That's why you were not allowed to like or retweet posts that linked to substack, right?

Also take a look at what goes on in India. If I remember correctly it took under 5 days before the whole "its going to be a free speech platform" came crashing down. I honestly like Musk overall as I believe he started companies to better humanity but to claim Musk allows organizations or people free reign on twitter is crazy at this point.

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

#733

Post by thordenmark »

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.

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

#734

Post by reso »

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.

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

#735

Post by anonymouskimmer »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #723
ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If a media outlet is being funded by the government then readers should know that because it could affect their coverage close, if there is evidence their coverage is actually being affected, readers should know that because that is what should inform their decision in some cases, where the funding constitutes a large portion of total funding, it may be appropriate to add a disclaimer

What kind of evidence are you looking for here? The effect of financial incentives on human behavior is well-established. Meanwhile case-specific evidence is largely unavailable. Reporters would be loathe to admit to being cowed, but are also aware that corporate executives make decisions on things like promotions and timeslots based on the bottom line, or in less well-funded entities that a loss of funding can direc…

> So you make people aware of the incentive, because that's all you're really going to know about in practice.

Ad Fontes tries to rate news media on the type of reporting it does and the general political skew. This doesn't capture everything, but it can be done. Except for specific topics I think it's slightly better than incentives in general, though incentives are important too.

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

#736

Post by labrador »

clsec wrote: post #630
labrador wrote: post #367

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 publi…

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

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.

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

#737

Post by skrowl »

d23 wrote: post #716
yossarian1408 wrote: post #502

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…

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.

NPR was, quite-literally created by an act of the United States congress.

It receives DIRECT funding from the United States government.

Twitter was generous in changing the label from "State-affiliated" media (given that it was literally created by the US Government) to "Government-funded media".

There is no possible argument against the "Government-funded media" label that makes sense. They're government funded. NPR's parent company, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, is also government funded. Neither of these funding points are debatable (aka Full stop).

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

#738

Post by Jenepas »

passwordoops wrote: post #707
Jenepas wrote: post #694

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Ok, so to amend OP's original point: Should Twitter come with a label as "state-owned" considering both the Qatari and Saudi governments hold a significant stake in the company?

Personally yes, when i hear everyone clamour for transparency, I want brutal honest transparency, so yes twitter handle and twitter docs should clearly mention that they are owned by Saudia and terrorist Qatar.

Same with DW News, Al Jazeera, Middle East eye and Gulf news.

I've always wondered, without pure transparency, who will guard the guards?

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

#739

Post by Georgelemental »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #655
woooooo wrote: post #563

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

NPR being state affiliated is false. NPR being funded by the state is not, but it leads people to believe that it's affiliated with the state, which is false.

Funding is a very important kind of affiliation, I would think.

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

#740

Post by scarface74 »

d23 wrote: post #722
scarface74 wrote: post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

As biased as Fox News is, it would be completely ridiculous to call it state-affiliated media.

How much more “state affiliated” can you get than when Trump was in office he spent most of his day watching FoxNews and called it when he didn’t like the coverage and they acquiesced?

This is not some conspiracy theory. It was very much out in the open.

Even more recently, the house speaker gave Fox preferred access to the Jan 6th video.

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