> It receives less than 1 percent
Why do they keep saying they receive almost nothing, yet at the same time say government funding is essential to their operation?
Why do they keep saying they receive almost nothing, yet at the same time say government funding is essential to their operation?
It's state affiliated. Like Tesla. Like any company who received covid relief. Tax breaks etc.
Less than 1 percentage is simply not influential. It's disingenuous to say it's owned by the government.
> What business would turn around and say : "We don't need that 1%, you can have it back".
The one which would try to claim independence and non-influence from said entity?
So... everyone and everything is state affiliated and should be labeled as such?
That's obviously not the case. State affiliated should be limited to organizations that are influenced/controlled significantly by the state, which NPR is not. This is actually the definition that Twitter advertises.
NPR and PBS would not exist right now or in the future if their government funding grants were revoked. That puts a nonexistent bias on their editorial decisions. I seem to remember NPR "leaking"/breaking the story on WMDs in Iraq with one of their journalists directly quoting internal contacts in the Pentagon as their source. They are clearly far from immune to being used as agents of propaganda. That being said, I personally hold both NPR & PBS Newshour in very high regard. I do think that placing them in them in the same categorisation as RT or even the BBC is reductionist. Perhaps there should be varying levels of "state affiliated media" labeling.
NPR (and every other company) that relies on US roadways is giving the US govt levarage over the organization no?
there is a difference between a company that makes electric automobiles, and a company that influences the thoughts and (crucially) feelings of the populace through opinion and reporting.
we all agree that all of these things are true for government-dependent media organizations outside of the West, but for some reason many refuse to believe that the same thing happens here domestically.
https://cpb.org/aboutcpb/financials/budget
According to NPR's 2020 budget, total revenue was $275M, of which $92.7M was "Station dues, programming and digital fees".
https://media.npr.org/documents/about/statements/fy2020/Nati...
So ~ 1/3 of NPR's revenue is from member stations, and some percentage of that revenue is part of the $72M that the stations were granted from CPB.
Looking at WBUR's budget as a randomly picked example, its 2022 revenue was $39.7M of which $1.8M was grants. Let's call that 4.5%.
https://media.wbur.org/wp/2023/01/WBUR-Special-Purpose-Finan...
Let me pick another random station, WUNC. In 2018 its total revenue was $13.8M. of that CPB grants were $617.8K. Again, about 4.5%.
http://mediad.publicbroadcasting.net/p/wunc/files/wunc_2018_...
Using 4.5% as the percentage of of the $72M from CPB that ends up as part of the 1/3rd of NPRs revenue. 4.5% x 33% = ~1.5%.
I gather then that even though it's a small part of NPR's revenue, it's very high leverage in helping to keep all of the member stations afloat. I guess that's how they can simultaneously downplay the dollar amount while also speaking of how critical it is.
https://www.npr.org/about-npr/178660742/public-radio-finance...
I may have gotten my math wrong here somewhere, corrections appreciated.
I ignored the $24M and $7.3M of the CPB budget because I wasn't sure what to do with them, but you can read more about those here:
It's probably fair count some part of those dollars as part of NPR's funding, I just don't know how much.
Hard to say what percent of their funding comes from some governmental source but it’s all indirect and arms length.
A lot of folks confuse NPR With PBS which is publicly funded and many of NPR’s member stations are PBS affiliated.
PBS gets a minority of its funding from government, and a minority of what it gets from government from the Federal government.
But it gets a bigger minority of its funding from government than NPR does.
From wikipedia:
Although NPR receives less than 1% of its direct funding from the federal government, member stations (which pay dues amounting to approximately one third of NPR's revenue), tend to receive far larger portions of their budgets from state governments, and also the US government through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
31% of their funding comes from member stations. 13% of member station funding comes from government sources. In total that would make about 31% * 13% = 4%.
What is the source of this number? Also is 4% as opposed to 1% a change that alters any of the underlying fundamentals ?
Doesn't seem outlandish to call them government funded if the government is funding essential operations. Some of the same people who go on ad nauseam about how Tesla and SpaceX have received government funding are curiously resistant to the idea though.
Every organization on earth refers to every penny of its budget as "essential" as to not lose any of it. Obviously they could still exist and find a way to replace 1% of their total budget if necessary.
Untrue.
> Obviously they could still exist and find a way to replace 1% of their total budget if necessary.
They chose to represent themselves as having their essential operations funded by the government. Even if that was a lie, perceptions are very important when it comes to conflicts of interest, transparency, public funding, politics, and independence. The entire basis of their protest to Twitter is about the perception created by the "government funded" label. So lying to the public about something like that for an allegedly insignificant amount of money would be a singularly idiotic thing for NPR to do.
Right, organizations routinely admit they are getting too much funding and ask for it to be reduced. There are so many examples of this, perhaps you could provide just one?
> They chose to represent themselves as having their essential operations funded by the government
Again, so they don't lose that funding. I don't think any of them could have predicted a right wing billionaire would buy Twitter and give them a misleading label because he doesn't understand the difference between state and public media.
I have been in several situations where I have been asked to prioritize and categorize essential and non-essential funding. Not for public / public funded / government jobs, so it's not necessarily made public. But it obviously happens.
If they don't want to outright admit it so openly is one thing, but lying about their operations and public funding is quite another.
> Again, so they don't lose that funding.
That didn't address the content of my reply. You're just repeating the same thing again lol, so same reply applies.
> I don't think any of them could have predicted a right wing billionaire would buy Twitter and give them a misleading label because he doesn't understand the difference between state and public media.
The label that might mislead people into believing the government provides essential funding for their operation?
What you were asked to do sounds more like an audit, which isn't what i'm talking about. Government organizations (or non-profits, NGOs, etc.) don't announce to the world they don't need as much money as they are getting. Or if they do, i'm still waiting on an example.
> but lying about their operations and public funding is quite another
Don't know how you got there, clearly not what i'm saying.
> The label that might mislead people into believing the government provides essential funding for their operation?
I have a question. The House GOP tweeted out "Defund @NRP" - Elon tweeted the same thing a hour later, highlighting the "essential funding". How does that work? How does the entire right wing internet get behind the same talking points all at once?
Losing 1% (or 4% depending how you look at funding) will not make any organization go away, use basic logic. They are clearly saying that as to not disrupt future funding.
So, goalpost moving?
> Don't know how you got there, clearly not what i'm saying.
Sounds like you are. Either they're lying or the government funds essential operations.
> I have a question.
How about you address what I wrote first before you keep deflecting. I don't give a rats ass about "the house GOP" and they have nothing to do with what we're talking about.
> Also is 4% as opposed to 1% a change that alters any of the underlying fundamentals ?
> Public radio stations receive annual grants directly from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) that make up an important part of a diverse revenue mix that includes listener support, corporate sponsorship and grants. Stations, in turn, draw on this mix of public and privately sourced revenue to pay NPR and other public radio producers for their programming.
Sounds like it may be more than 1% in total?
This came more or less directly from our NPR station in DC as they talked about fund raising in their many, many drives. And this wasn't for the station itself, I believe this was for NPR, since they then went on to talk about how many stations, mostly in rural areas, had a funding inverse of that.
Basically, if you are listening to NPR outside a major population center, then its almost certainly because Federal dollars make that possible. And if you listen and contribute to a major station, then you are one of the few that pay the 90% or so of the budget for the content on NPR.
Less than 1% of NPR’s budget comes directly from the government itself through competitive grants, etc.
Some of the budget comes from member stations (presumably more than 1%) who themselves receive some level of state or federal funding. Those are the entities that receive ~10% of their budgets from a government of one kind or another (the rest coming from donations or other non-profit funding). But those stations can get content from a variety of other public radio sources. I believe NPR can (did?) handle some of the distribution of non-NPR content via their satellite services.
Originally NPR was directly funded by the CPB to a much greater extent. However that changed substantially in the 80s when the stations themselves started receiving funding from the CPB instead of NPR.
If that's accurate, then I'd love for NPR to explain the order of magnitude gap between their claim of 1% and that 10% figure. That's a huge difference.
to upon_drumhead: Federal funding laundered through sub-orgs that share the same "NPR" branding is still federal funding.
Member stations paying NPR is the bulk of NPRs funding.
>Most of NPR's funding comes from corporate and individual supporters and grants. It also receives significant programming fees from member stations. Those stations, in turn, receive about 13 percent of their funds from the CPB and other state and federal government sources.
Also, here's NPR's report on financing: https://www.npr.org/about-npr/178660742/public-radio-finance.... It also includes breakdowns of member station financing. 8% average from CPB, 5% from other government sources.
In short, it'd push them farther out of the ad niche they've carved for themselves, which could have serious revenue consequences beyond that 1%.
Megacorp -> NPR Megacorp -> Exec -> NPR Megacorp -> Political NGO -> NPR
In addition to the direct Federal grant which is under the control of the same politicians in turn owned by these corporations.
The idea that it’s some independent real news organization is a farce.
Hope that helps you visualize the situation.
More accurate would be saying I make a $100k/month of which $1k comes for a certain source, and then me saying that thousand is essential to my livelihood. I'd be lying if I said that; I make a whole lot less than $100k/month and I could easily forgo $1k/month today which just goes into my savings anyways.
Every penny of their income is important. If they had less content to provide to member stations, those stations would have less content and would pull in fewer donations. It then becomes a death spiral since less content results in fewer donations.
While federally originated dollars are a small portion of NPR's total income they're not unimportant since they can't be replaced by other sources. A 1% reduction in income means they need to reduce expenses by 1%.
In your analogy, $1k/month goes into savings. Losing that wouldn't break you financially. You're not spending your all of your income. If you were you'd need to cut your expenses by the $1k/month. In that case you'd consider that 1% pretty important.
Income from a job is stable (relatively), income from other sources like say a monthly donation, is unstable.
So yes, my example is still accurate: they rely on the 1k/mo as STABLE funding.