Facebook Will Label Content From State-Controlled Media | Hacker News Reader

Facebook Will Label Content From State-Controlled Media

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27 pointsstephenhuey9 comments

What is the point of this? This is useless at best and dangerous at worst. I guess nobody from Facebook has ever read Manufacturing Consent...

In many countries, the state media is more accurate and less partisan than the corporate media. Australia and the US are both good examples of this.

What state media does the US have?

NPR for internal consumption, voice of X for external

NPR is not state funded or controlled. They receive a tiny amount from grants from organizations that are federally funded amounting to around 2% of their budget.

Probably a lot less than some of these large private media corps get in subsidies and tax breaks on both state and federal levels.

This is an interesting point and one could make the argument (based on these subsidies and tax breaks) that all corporate media in the US is a form of state media.

The key difference between US corporate media and state media in other countries being:

* In other countries: the government controls the state media outlets.

* In the United States: the corporate media outlets control the government.

"PBS has more than 350 member television stations, many owned by educational institutions, nonprofit groups both independent or affiliated with one particular local public school district or collegiate educational institution, or entities owned by or related to state government."

(Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PBS)

"Funding for public television comes in roughly equal parts from government (at all levels) and the private sector."

(Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporation_for_Public_Broadca...)

"Typically, NPR member stations receive funds through on-air pledge drives, corporate underwriting, state and local governments, educational institutions, and the federally funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB)."

(Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPR)

"Voice of America (VOA) is a U.S. multimedia agency which serves as the United States government institution for non-military, external broadcasting. It is the largest U.S. international broadcaster."

(Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_of_America)

Nowadays it feels like private media is even more partisan than state controlled media.

YouTube did the same. This seems like some feelgood thing more than something practical and useful.

Acceleration continues down the slippery slope many say doesn't exist for private businesses.

Sounds like an elegant solution since they do not need to counter points of views like Twitter did recently with Trump. But still provides valuable information.

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