981–990 of 1001 posts
well done. losing NPR clearly is giving Musk pause.
By "clearly giving him pause" you mean he finally went to bed after spending the evening joking about BBC? (At this moment the last tweet is 8 hours ago after several tweets about BBC including dick "jokes")
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.
Email remains undefeated as the original, indestructible, federated social network. It's a shame about the flub with Google Buzz, that could've been the basis for something great.
https://cpb.org/appropriation/history
Funding from a benefactor is known to create bias.
I'm concerned about NPR's statements which almost resembles some kind of pathology, because the statements look like a mix of denial and/or rationalisation. We are seeing outright denial, that they only get a little bit of federal funding... or rationalisation like that funding is just a small portion of our tiny budget...
The fact is that in 2021 Public Radio received about ~$100 Million, and about the same in 2022. If these estimation are wrong, they are leaning towards the conservative side, and would likely go higher. I'm pulling the data from the CPB financial statements, and mostly glossing over the details, yanking data from the executive summary.
https://cpb.org/sites/default/files/aboutcpb/financials/audi...
Please, by all means dispute this data. I'd love to be persuaded that this is all somehow wrong. But right now it looks like NPR & PBS are both affiliated with the Federal government because they get significant funding from there, alongside donations.
For a smart man, this guy is a complete idiot.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) receives about half a billion dollars annually from Federal grants, and then channels that funding into subsidiaries like PBS and NPR. https://cpb.org/appropriation/history Funding from a benefactor is known to create bias. I'm concerned about NPR's statements which almost resembles some kind of pathology, because the statements look like a mix of denial and/or rationalis…
TL;DR: Based on the document you linked to the lions share of the money goes to _public radio stations_ in unrestricted grants to pay for their operations. Of the money that does trickle through that to program providers, NPR is only one of dozens of program producers and distributors, and NPR's own reporting on this seems to accurately portray the reality of how they are funded from independent stations.
Looking at the second link you provided theses are the expenditure programs that look related to public radio broadcasting in the us: Radio Program Fund, National program production and acquisition grants, Community service grants, and Public broadcasting interconnection system. There may be expenses in other categories but they don't appear to be directly related to public radio.
According to that document, these programs are:
Radio Program Fund represents expenses for the development and production of high-quality, new and innovative radio programs that might not otherwise be supported by the marketplace.
National program production and acquisition grants are restricted grants made to qualified public radio stations that must be used for the production, acquisition, promotion or distribution of national radio programs that are of high quality, creative and reflect society’s diversity.
Community service grants are unrestricted general operating grants made to qualified public television and radio stations.
Public broadcasting interconnection system [...] a new interconnection system to be used by both public television and radio stations to transmit and receive programming feeds [... as well as] “other technologies and services that create infrastructure and efficiencies within the public media system.
The line item breakdowns on these services for 2022 are Radio Program fund: 7,145,925 National program production and acquisition grants: 24,579,081 Radio community service grants: 72,446,561 Public broadcasting interconnection: 2,871,313 Total: 107,042,880
So it looks like the CPB spends slightly over 107M on _public radio_ in the united states.
Note that the "National program production and acquisition grants" specifically go to qualified public radio stations. NPR isn't a public radio station, and so doesn't directly get any of that money. That money would go to a local public radio station (here's a [list](https://radiostationusa.fm/formats/public)). A station like my own WMFE then would use that grant money to purchase a radio program like All Things Considered from NPR. But they might also use that money to purchase a radio program like Marketplace from APM, or This American Life from PRX, or be used to produce it's own programs like WBUR's Here and Now. So that money _might_ go back to NPR, but it might not.
The same thing applies to the Radio community service grants, they're unrestricted grants to _stations_ so NPR _might_ get some of that money but much of it probably go to pay local expenses, like the salaries of the radio engineers who keep the towers up and running.
What about the Radio Program fund? That looks like it's pretty much targeted to NPR. Certainly not 100% of it is going to NPR's new programming. Even being generous all de-funding this will do is specifically cut programs "that might not otherwise be supported by the marketplace". I suspect most of that money goes to things like The Splendid Table, and Growing Bolder (neither are NPR shows btw). Unless you want to argue with Rupert Murdoch and Ted Turner that news isn't a marketable product?
The Public broadcasting interconnection is paid to _stations_ to make physically acquiring content easier and a deal with NPR, APM, PRI, PRX and others reduced that cost _significantly_, so that line item dropped to 2M in 2022 from 78M in 2021.
Nothing in your document I believe NPR _claims_ they get about 13% of that portion of a station's budget (based on [WMFE's 2021 Audit](https://drive.google.com/file/d/121U2UFSI8eNYUg59TnZtELEhBL-...) "program acquisition" was about 16% of their total budget so NPR seems credible here) … so about ~$12M of the CPB funding, add in a chunk of the Radio Program fund let's say 80% or ~$6M … we're still at about $18M of the $107M … plus another 1% direct funding (or is that 1% the Radio Program fund?) and we're around 20% of the total CPB "public radio" budget ends up in NPR. Since the CPB's "public radio" budget is only about 25% of the total expenses from the CPB … is 5% of the CPBs expenses considered "significant funding"?
De-funding "public radio" won't mean that Morning Edition goes off the air, it means that the farm report for Ida Grove, IA goes off the air … and the wildfire reports for Billings MT … and close to home for me it means that Brendan Byrne won't be able to keep doing Are We There Yet and reporting on the rockets that keep going up funding my local community with something _other_ than tourism.
The numbers aren't wrong, your definition of "public radio" is wrong when you assume it's just NPR.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
NPR is listed as government-funded media, not state-affiliated media [0] A large part of their funding comes from congress -> corporation for public broadcasting -> local NPR affiliates -> NPR. It is indirect funding, yes, but they are very much funded by the US government. [0] https://mobile.twitter.com/NPR
It was changed to that. Originally the label was as given in the headline: "state-affiliated media".
"it was changed before this piece and before NPR decided to leave. Twitter acknowledged that label was incorrect and changed it. Then NPR had a temper tantrum and left and this piece implied they left over that label. It’s misleading at best"
Earlier quoted context omitted.
the account is media, and it's as state affiliated as NPR, if not moreso as for whether it's a media company , that's irrelevant and seems to be an attempt to move the goalposts
It's not irrelevant. I think it's a useful distinction. All companies have PR departments (except, of course, Twitter, which only responds with poop emoji.) Company PR departments generally report on the company and things which directly affect the company. They issue press releases and they comment on litigation and they celebrate anniversaries. Journalism organizations and public information outlets don't merely re…
folks reading posts by Tesla and SpaceX should know that aside from elmu's history of disingenuousness and outright lying, such posts are even more likely to be pro-government biased than NPR
so I agree: SpaceX and Tesla should be labeled according to the government which supports them, there's no shame in that.
The current CEO of NPR was the former global propaganda chief for the US government. This is a fact. If you think that is a coincidence, and NPR is totally not de facto state-media, I have a bridge to sell you. Props to Twitter's new leadership for doing what is ostensibly right, though who knows what their motivation is.
Same label as Chinese and Russian state media? This was not was an apolitical decision based on facts.