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Comment by mmanfrin | Hacker News Reader

Studies have shown that in liberal democracies, state supported* [e: I forget the exact term used] media tends to be the least editorially biased (individual reporters and journalists still have biases) and most educational (e.g. BBC, NPR). I wonder what the word "state-controlled" means in this context.

I also wonder if they consider owned by the head of state to be state-controlled (e.g. RT, Al-Jazeera)

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Keep in mind that this doesn't apply to content in general, only to ads. Ads represent a financial investment in targeted content that's designed to sway specific people's opinions. That's pretty much the definition of propaganda. I'm okay with even trustworthy news sources being prohibited from doing that.

No, it applies to content.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323322256_Media_Pol...

e: My mistake, thought you were talking about my point, not about Twitter's policy.

That link is pointing to a research paper on the intersection of media and politics, not Twitter’s advertising policy for state run media?

They meant that Twitter's new policy applies only to ads.

> This policy will apply to news media entities that are either financially or editorially controlled by the state

I don't think any of the entities you are referring to qualify based on this definition.

Neither NPR nor the BBC are "state run". NPR is funded by the state as well as private donations (don't know as much about the BBC), but it's an important distinction, especially in this context.

Apparently the new rules dont apply to state funded independent media, just state controlled. So here in Australia for example, the ABC / SBS government funded (but independent) media would be safe.

> I also wonder if they consider owned by the head of state to be state-controlled (e.g. RT, Al-Jazeera)

That would effectively ban any publicly traded news like Fox, CNN, etc, wouldn't it? I'd assume most American politicians own shares or invest in indexes that do (like the S&P 500). Unless you define ownership as majority share or something.

> Studies have shown that in liberal democracies, state run media tends to be the least editorially biased

Rather than pretending to be unbiased, I'd rather my news sources disclosed their biases clearly so that I can take them into account.

Then you get news sources that maximize their bias as a competitive differentiation. This is how we got MSNBC and fox news etc.

NPR is state run?

made by congress, publicly funded, stations owned by public universities. ownership wise, its a lot like pbs.

No, it's not. Most of NPR's funding comes from member stations paying dues. Most of the money funding member stations comes from individual donations. A relatively small proportion of funding does come from government grants, but it's misleading to say that NPR is "state funded" (implying complete or majority funding form the state), much less state run.

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