NPR won’t tweet from NPR until Twitter removes false “state-affiliated” label
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I'm not saying you owe $billionaire better but you owe this community better if you're participating in it.
Well first, we don’t exactly have wholesale government purges at the federal level. Second, how is it inaccurate to say NPR is affiliated with the government? It is.
Methinks the real reason behind the outrage is because the original use of the “state affiliated” label on Twitter was to give a subtle “watch out, these guys are probably spewing propaganda!” warning. Much the same way that the blue checkmarks are ostensibly “we’ve verified that this person is who they say they are” but over time it morphed into a “stamp of approval” for the person.
This wouldn’t have even been a big deal if Twitter had originally been direct with labeling, instead of trying to hide double meaning within labels that can act as dogwhistles.
Should Twitter as it stands today, apply the label more universally? Sure. But the fact that it didn’t in the past ties back to the original point, that Twitter wanted to label certain outlets as being propaganda mouthpieces while at the same time being able to hide behind “hey, we didn’t say _propaganda_, we just said _state affiliated!_”
https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/product/2020/new-label...
> Unlike independent media, state-affiliated media frequently use their news coverage as a means to advance a political agenda. We believe that people have the right to know when a media account is affiliated directly or indirectly with a state actor. State-financed media organizations with editorial independence, like the BBC in the UK or NPR in the US for example, will not be labeled.
It’s inaccurate given that the Twitter explicitly defines that label to refer to editorial control, not funding.
They are not technically state-affiliated as they don't take orders from the state, but are in effect state-aligned in all the ways that matter.
It's ideological alignment. To be more precise you could say they are ideologically-affiliated with the establishment elite.
NPR, as it happens, has run many stories that seemed aligned with the right or the left, depending on the subject. They're generally pro-military and pro-wealth, while being against racism and censorship, so it's not as if they're either all left-wing or all right-wing.
It's nowhere on the level of some countries but it's not exactly an independent media outlet and we shouldn't pretend it is.
(Fox News gets about the same percentage of revenue from MyPillow and Balance of Nature as NPR does from grants)
My joke here is way to seriously say that if simply receiving money from a source is enough to indict an organization, then we have a lot of work to do beyond NPR to be suspicious of everyone. But if the requirement is what it has traditionally been, showing actual evidence of influence or coercion, then to me that sounds like a more sensible way to do things.
It’s a label for the sake of clarity. CNN, Fox, etc should all get it too.
BBC should get it but for UK.
I don't think there would be anything wrong with a transparent listing of all funding sourced for every news organization, but this is something different from that.
how exactly do you think that sort of stuff happens in other countries?
To give two concrete examples of this you can look into the 7th Floor Group and Operation Mockingbird.
It is absolutely true that funding of this kind could "potentially" lead to control or coercion.
LOL. Considering that NPR/PBS receives money from pledge drives, that’s a long list indeed.
The reporting about the purpose of the label from yesterday where the reporter actually talked to the former executives involved with setting it up before they quit Twitter, was pretty clear. The tweet content was influenced by state.
Now the purpose of the label is meaningless. It's arbitrary. If Elon Musk can be convinced to change it for an NPR by an arbitrary reporter, as he apparently is being today, that NPR should not be labeled in the way that it is, then the significance of the label is thoroughly suspect.
https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/state-affilia...
State-financed media organizations with editorial independence, like the BBC in the UK or NPR in the US for example, are not defined as state-affiliated media for the purposes of this policy.
And days before It was apparently like how it is now, mentioning how NPR is excluded.
So, Twitter is changing its policies frantically.
And the whole point of this fiasco is that truth that you point out of state influence versus state funding. Twitter is fiddling with its own policies incorrectly.
NPR is an American public broadcast service. Wikipedia
"American" does not mean "The US government"
> State-affiliated media is defined as outlets where the state exercises control over editorial content through financial resources, direct or indirect political pressures, and/or control over production and distribution. Accounts belonging to state-affiliated media entities, their editors-in-chief, and/or their prominent staff may be labeled.
> State-financed media organizations with editorial independence, like the BBC in the UK or NPR in the US for example, are not defined as state-affiliated media for the purposes of this policy.
That wording is no longer in the current page. https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/state-affilia...
As noted in a sibling comment, that wording is still present in the China specific page: https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/state-affilia...
[1] https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2023/03/16/station-revenues...
1) the affiliate stations that broadcast in each market are very often government funded up to 100%. They pay NPR fees to broadcast their content and be the local “NPR station”. It’s essentially laundering government funds if they want to say they only receive 1%.
2) They are a non-profit. Most of their funding comes from donations. These are tax deductible donations meaning tax payers are indirectly funding them.
They make money otherwise too. But without the donations (which would not happen if they were not a non-profit) and without the government subsidized local stations, they’d not exist.
NPR exists in a country that largely respects the rule of law and has disclosure requirements, accountability to the public and congress. None of that exists with RT.
If twitter is going to have these labels it should differentiate authoritarian propaganda.
About 1/3 of their funding is from member station dues. Their member stations receive most of their funding via the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the board of which is appointed by the President (of the United States, not the CPB). CPB gets its money from congress.
“Funding for NPR comes from dues and fees paid by member stations, underwriting from corporate sponsors and annual grants from the publicly-funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting.”
“Although NPR receives only 1% of its direct funding from the federal government,[5] member stations (which pay dues amounting to approximately one third of NPR's revenue), tend to receive far larger portions of their budgets from the federal (through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting) and state governments.”
“NPR states it is not state-run media, and further states it operates independently of the U.S. government;[5] nonetheless, NPR indicates that federal funding is essential to NPR and that the loss of federal funding would weaken the network.”
Revenue streams matter because they have the ability to influence. Why is this controversial?
Most funding - no. Member stations do get a decent chunk of money from CPB, but not a majority. The majority comes from corporate (and private) sponsorships. Much like NPR as a whole.
One example:
https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/4c/1d/4e0c21b44d2aa963c25f8bc9...
I do appreciate how publicly funded and 401k entities are generally so open with their financials.
https://www.npr.org/about-npr/178660742/public-radio-finance...
Search for "Public Radio Station Revenues (FY20)" and you can plainly see a graph that states that 8% of their money comes from "Federal appropriation via CPB" and then another 5% comes from a combination of Federal, state, and local government sources.
The minute they get slapped with a state funded label they pretend that they only get 1% of their money from the government, in contrast to their reported finances for the past several decades. It is weasel word behavior to pretend that 8% of entirely federally sourced funds is irrelevant because it is passed through the CPB first (which is itself a state media agency, created by Congress in the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967)
"[NPR] differs from other non-profit membership media organizations such as the Associated Press, in that it was established by an act of Congress.[4] Although NPR receives only 1% of its direct funding from the federal government,[5] member stations (which pay dues amounting to approximately one third of NPR's revenue), tend to receive far larger portions of their budgets from the federal (through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting) and state governments.[6][7][8][9][10][11] NPR states it is not state-run media, and further states it operates independently of the U.S. government;[5] nonetheless, NPR indicates that federal funding is essential to NPR and that the loss of federal funding would weaken the network."[1]
So I could see an argument going both ways, technically it isn't owned and operated by the US Government, but it requires US Government funding to continue to exist and was established by an act of congress.
The stated purpose of the label was to identify state-operated news (ie, literal government propaganda outlets). NPR is very obviously not that, and it along with the BBC were literally Twitter's two examples of things that won't get the label.
Only if you're being disingenuous; this very much is not what is meant by "state-affiliated", since the state doesn't have any editorial control over NPR.
I'm not sure I see your point. The label is 'government affiliated' not 'government owned' or 'government operated'.
The argument for the label seems very clear. What would the argument against be?
Edit: I was mistaken: Twitter originally drew a line between state funded and state editorial control. From Twitter's blog in 2020, "State-financed media organizations with editorial independence, like the BBC in the UK or NPR in the US for example, will not be labeled."
[1] https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/product/2020/new-label...
Second, the BBC, which is primarily funded by the UK government, and whose applicants for top positions must be vetted by MI5, doesn't have a state affiliated media warning. So clearly funding source isn't actually a concern, unless it's NPR.
From Wiki's article on NPR: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPR
If that isn't state-affiliated, I don't know what is.
This is America: you can bite the hand that feeds you and still be fed.
Then Twitter should have, from the beginning, attached a big “propaganda warning” label on such sources instead of trying to make passive insinuations to the same effect using a label that has broad meaning. Looks like that backfired.
Even more amusing "NPR Health News" doesn't have this. So, am I just to believe that Twitter is incompetent?
Twitter is applying a label they themselves are defining. Twitter is selectively labeling because while also not knowing the finances of every entity in existence.
Also the actual Twitter policy, the way they've defined it, says that beyond taking funding, and an entity also must toe the line of the state. Which NPR does not.
So, it's inaccurate and therefore misinformation. Worse it's biased so it could be disinformation.
Indeed - apparently you don't.
> Twitter CEO Elon Musk said the platform's recent labeling of NPR as "state-affiliated media" might not have been accurate during a series of email exchanges that provided a glimpse into the billionaire's thought process on decisions that reverberate far beyond the social network.
> Regardless, as of late Thursday, the designation remained.
https://www.npr.org/2023/04/06/1168455846/elon-musk-says-npr...
Oh, and: "When reporters reach out for official comment from the company on news stories, Twitter's communications department replies with a poop emoji." Classy.
Sarcasm aside, NPR has been a reliable mouthpiece for what we might call "establishment state" narratives on subjects like Ukraine, "the pandemic," bank bailouts, and on and on, even up to the blatant US-sponsored coup attempt in Bolivia. Bringing on some token conservative commentator from the Hoover Institute or NYT Opinion pages to occasionally add some conservative take on social issues or even-more-right-wing-than-the-usual-neoliberals economic take doesn't really change that picture.
NPR is not "state affiliated", it is ideologically affiliated. In this it closely resembles many other public broadcasters, e.g. SR (Sveriges Radio, the Swedish equivalent to NPR) and SVT (Sveriges Television, the equivalent to PBS), NOS (Nederlandse Omrpoep Stichting, the Dutch public broadcaster), etc. Depending on the ideological colour of the current government these broadcasters either act as megaphones for the government or as channels for the opposition.
I just saw this: Elon Musk's new Twitter: a "verified" account that was previously suspended for spreading disinformation about the Bucha Massacre now spreading completely fictional quotes from Volodymyr Zelenskyy with over a thousand retweets and nearly 300,000 views.
https://twitter.com/JimmySecUK/status/1644048712753356800
Elon Musk is the new Rupert Murdoch, a menace to free societies
Musk’s Twitter Buy Makes No Sense – Unless It’s Part of Something Bigger. Brexit and Trump were initially seen as jokes, but the new owner of the social media giant could pose a serious threat to democracy – and a boon for Vladimir Putin
https://bylinetimes.com/2022/11/07/musks-twitter-buy-makes-n...
It's hard to understand Elon's politics without considering libertarianism, singularitism, technocracy, demagoguery, and populism.
2) If NPR receives government funding, isn't calling them state affiliated at least in the ballpark of reasonable labels?
3) Personally, I think the labels themselves should probably change. Rather than calling media entities state-affiliated, maybe Twitter could link to whatever public data is available about each media outlet's funding source. Rather than seeing "state affiliated", maybe people should see the percentage of funding a media outlet gets from government sources. If NPR gets ~4% of their funding from government sources, maybe adding that figure in as the label is fine. If RussiaToday gets X% of their funding from the Russian government, knowing that is helpful to assess their posts too.
Isn't that helpful context for deciding how likely it is that certain news stories are possibly biased or not?
And most of the print media is constantly eviscerating the PM, which would be an odd act of they cared which side if the bread was buttered.
Funding seems like a problematic metric for this. While it highlights an interesting factoid, funding does not necessarily correlate to editorial control. That information also isn't reliably available for all state broadcasters. And, for fairness, you'd have to label entities like SpaceX as well -- everybody is a media outlet on Twitter! -- which I don't think helps anyone.
I'm not seeing that. Funding is as close to an objective measurement of control as you could ever come up with.
A media entity can of course be biased towards a government, whether or not they get anywhere from 0 to 100% of their funding from the government, but the likelihood of government bias almost certainly increases with more funding.
If you see 99% of media outlets with < 1% of government funding, but then there's a few outlets with a large percentage of government funding, that's important information for weighing their journalism.
> And, for fairness, you'd have to label entities like SpaceX as well -- everybody is a media outlet on Twitter! -- which I don't think helps anyone.
Honestly, I think this is a jaw-droppingly phenomenal idea. Everybody is a political actor on Twitter, and I'm sure SpaceX and other corporations make tweets that are directly or indirectly weighing in on political and other issues that are relevant to them. Knowing that they have a dog in a particular fight is really important for weighing their tweets fairly.
People seem to forget that when twitter first started it became famous because charlie sheen was smoking crack and tweeting about it. I say we go back to that and stop pretending it’s anything more.
The argument is they're being short-sighted dicks.
Twitter was the social media of journalism and politics. Now it's the social media of Musk's ego.
That argument was being made to people who were opposed to the right of private platforms to moderate content, and who wanted the government to force them to act like a "public square" (using a false definition of the public square that assumes such spaces cannot be regulated) and make it illegal for them to present content using an algorithmic feed or to moderate any content beyond strict illegality.
No one complaining about what Musk is doing here is also insisting that the government redefine the fundamental nature of freedom of speech and force him to do so under threat of violence. So the dichotomy you're presenting here doesn't apply. Everyone understands that Musk has the right to do what he's doing, they just disagree with him doing it.