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Here's what NPR's own website says about their federal funding:

"Federal funding is essential to public radio's service to the American public and its continuation is critical for both stations and program producers, including NPR."

"Public radio stations receive annual grants directly from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB)"

"The loss of federal funding would undermine the stations' ability to pay NPR for programming, thereby weakening the institution."

"Elimination of federal funding would result in fewer programs, less journalism—especially local journalism—and eventually the loss of public radio stations, particularly in rural and economically distressed communities."

https://www.npr.org/about-npr/178660742/public-radio-finance...

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Besides the fact that they receive only a tiny percentage of their funding from the government the bigger issue is that of editorial control and NPR is pretty clean as far as I can see. Unlike most of the other entities labeled 'State Affiliated Media'.

Naming NPR in one breath with those others is intentionally tarnishing them and playing to the crowd, which is something that Elon has been engaging in in a very specific manner since he took over Twitter. Trying to suggest that this is appropriate is edging pretty close to that cartoon about people jumping in to defend Musk in the most weird ways.

I don't see Tesla's account labelled as State Affiliated and yet, if we were to judge solely by the amount of funds received they would qualify long before NPR would.

If the public funding isn’t important to them, then don’t take it and become truly independent. Or keep the funding and be open about it.

I suspect most of NPR's followers are fine with their public funding, it's literally in the name. They're probably more upset about all their corporate funding.

Tesla’s funding is neither here nor there; it’s not a news outlet.

NPR needs money and they need editorial freedom, they seem to have both. I really can't fault them for that, editorial independence is the yardstick by which media should be judged unless there is outright ownership.

Money can be easily tracked. Editorial independence cannot be.

I actually think NPR has been captured by their audience in the same way MSNBC and Fox News has been. They know member donations are their biggest funding source, so they largely tell their audience what they want to hear.

Put another way, I don't think perfect editorial independence exists. Everyone knows where their bread is being buttered. Having a badge on Twitter saying you're independent would be entirely a judgement call.

> I actually think NPR has been captured by their audience in the same way MSNBC and Fox News has been.

Not even close from my outsider perspective.

> I actually think NPR has been captured by their audience in the same way MSNBC and Fox News has been.

I... don't know. When the topic comes up there sure are a lot of us NPR listeners who are in rather a love-hate relationship with it, leaning toward "hate". Half the time I'm listening I'm shaking my head at how very self-parody-like NPR they're being or yelling at them to stop doing such shitty coverage. Like, the best news on my local station, far and away, is when they rebroadcast BBC content. If I could tune into actual BBC stations when driving, I'd probably listen to that a lot more than NPR. These days especially, NPR's only got a very-few programs I'd bother to save from a fire, as it were, or that I even might go out of my way to listen to when not in the car.

It's just that there's not a lot of better news/commentary/talk programming on the radio dial.

I agree, but in many ways it's a product of syndication. When you get out of that influence (e.g., independently published podcasters) the scope of quality becomes _much_ broader.

I'm old enough to remember finding good-quality content on NPR, but I now look toward podcasts in the special interest I'm looking for to find good-quality audio-streamed information.

State funding of media, regardless of how it’s structured, creates an obvious conflict of interest with editorial freedom. Theoretically it’s possible for a state funded media company to exercise editorial freedom, just like it would be theoretically possible for a climate study funded by ExxonMobile to exercise academic freedom, but not without acknowledging that the conflict of interest exists. Maybe they are a high integrity organisation, but the existence of this conflict of interest isn’t really up for debate. Maybe it’s not necessary for any state funded media to be labelled on Twitter, but if you’re going to label any of it, then you should label all of it.

The NPR makes no secret of its funding. But stamping a label on it like this implies that they are at the same level as the Chinese and Russian official state channels and lapdog institutions, which is the effect that Musk is going for here, which clearly is unfair to the NPR.

Any attempt to whitewash even aspects of it is in part giving credit to it and I'm just not going to carry Musk's water on this. It's a petty move by a petty person, who uses the platform that he bought to further his new best buddies interests by fomenting distrust in media institutions that he can't buy or control.

NPR has exactly the same conflict of interest in regards to funding that RT has. You can make your own judgements about how influential that conflict is for different outlets, but the existence of it cannot be denied. If you think labelling the conflict of interest is worthwhile (as other social media platforms also do), then you have to do it for all outlets that have it. Otherwise you’re revealing that you’re actually pursing some other alternative agenda.

Personally I think it’s a stupid idea in general. But that’s because I’m against any organisation attempting to establish itself as an authority over the concept of the truth.

> NPR has exactly the same conflict of interest in regards to funding that RT has.

Sorry, but that is factually incorrect.

Media companies receiving public funding is a conflict of interest with editorial independence, both RT and NPR receiving public funding. These are facts.

The fact is that the one is a state sponsored mouthpiece and the other is a editorially independent organization.

If you have proof that the NPR is a mouthpiece for the US government then now would be a fine time to provide it, otherwise it is just trying to throw shade in the exact same way that Elon Musk is trying to.

There are many reasons other than funding to criticize RT, but RT and NPR have the same conflict of interested created by their funding sources. If you’re not able to appreciate this very simple fact then I would highly suggest you engage in some self-reflection.

Funding doesn't have to be a conflict of interest depending on how it's organised. But Twitter's own definition of "state affiliated media" is not about funding, but about editorial control, where NPR is independent. Labeling NPR as "state affiliated" is clearly wrong according to Twitter's own definition.

NPR is not Stars and Stripes, Voice of America or even the BBC. Assuming 4% in direct government funding (from all levels) as estimated elsewhere in the thread, plus some amount in government subsidization of donations to a registered non-profit; the fiscal contributions from government is meaningful, but not sufficient to assume it biases coverage.

Stars and Stripes has a mix of funding, including about half its budget from the department of defense, but has editorial independence; although I imagine it's hard not to be influenced.

Even Voice of America has safeguards for editorial independence, although its budget is fully state funded.

> State funding of media, regardless of how it’s structured, creates an obvious conflict of interest with editorial freedom.

How is this not true of any funding of media?

At least with government funding—even if there is outright editorial control—in a democratic country, you as a citizen have the ability to vote on how you think that funding and control should be exercised. Furthermore, it is massively easier to get laws in place that mandate transparency for government-funded entities than for private ones, so whatever influences there may be on their reporting would be much more visible.

The concern that media companies can have interests that don’t align with journalistic integrity does apply to any media company. Whenever you see Rupert Murdoch’s name being discussed, it’s probably in relation to this topic. However it is harmful in a unique way when the government creates a conflict of interest between editorial independence, and serving the states agenda, due to the way in which that undermines the principle that a democratic society requires freedom of the press.

put a better way, theoretically it's possible for an entity that has received a small amount of funds from the state, to be controlled by that state, just like SpaceX, which is state funded, could be controlled by that state, and just like theoretically I could give you a dollar and then control you, but any actual accusation of such or implication thereof would need actual evidence behind it, or else such conspiracy theories based only on incentives and no evidence can be dismissed out of hand.

No evidence of bias is required to establish that a conflict of interest exists. One reason that people are interested in knowing when a conflict of interest exists, is that is generally not possible to prove what influences are motivating decision making.

evidence of bias is required to establish bias, even if there's the appearance of a conflict of interest, which given the miniscule amount of funding in question here, doesn't even seem to be the case, either.

many conspiracy theorists will say that it's impossible to prove their conspiracy theory (in this case, any actual bias), but that's their problem, not the world's

maybe they can spend more time interviewing, investigating, doing statistical analysis, etc to find any evidence of their conspiracy theories, and less time just coming up with the theories?

I’m not alleging any bias. I’m stating that the funding model creates a conflict of interest, which is simply factually correct.

> given the miniscule amount of funding in question here, doesn't even seem to be the case

According to NPR themselves, federal funding is essential for their ongoing existence.

> Federal funding is essential to public radio's service to the American public and its continuation is critical for both stations and program producers, including NPR.

> The loss of federal funding would undermine the stations' ability to pay NPR for programming, thereby weakening the institution.

https://www.npr.org/about-npr/178660742/public-radio-finance...

if there is no bias, there is no issue, even if there is the appearance of a conflict of interest, which given the small portion of funding in question here, there doesn't even seem to be

I’m not alleging there is no bias either. The reason that managing conflicting interests is important in the first place is because it’s not possible to objectively measure their influence.

There is also not an “appearance” of conflicting interests here. There is factually a conflicting interest between relying on an entity for funding, and an expectation that you’ll provide impartial media coverage of them.

This exists regardless of how small you think this reliance is. But even then, your attempt to minimise it is directly contradicted by NPR, who claim it is “essential” to their ability to operate.

I'm not alleging that you're alleging that there's no bias either, but either you have convincing evidence there is, or we fall back to there not being any until you do (and your claims that the conspiracy theory is impossible to prove are unconvincing, many conspiracy theorists say the same thing)

As for your opinion about how much of a conflict of interest or appearance thereof, if you trust NPR as a reliable source on this matter, then we can trust them also saying they have editorial independence (read: no bias)

your assertions of an expectation are similarly unconvincing, it's literally just you claiming as such, when others recognize that, like I can receive a dollar and not be controlled by the giver, so can NPR

It's not up to them, the 4% of their revenue that comes from federal funds comes to them through member station payments. They don't control the member stations or how they are funded.

Also, how could they be any more open about this? If you listen to any NPR member station you'll hear an acknowledgement of federal funds like once an hour.

I am not sure what you mean by them being open about it. Looks to me that they are open about the funding they get. Them getting grants to service communities that are not profitable doesn't mean that they take marching orders from Washington.

I feel like you're acting in bad faith conflating "public" and "state" in this instance. Wikipedia is an apt comparison that receives the vast majority of its funding through donations. It has received grants, but it's not "state run media" at all.

If the bar for being state affiliated is receiving money from the federal government, then I'm sure every news outlet and business of reasonable size qualifies (especially after the PPP loans).

> they receive only a tiny percentage of their funding from the government

There are at least two ways they get government funding:

- direct funding from the federal government

- payment from member stations (at least 31% of revenue) who are themselves supported by government funding

Without looking at the funding sources of each NPR member station, it's hard to come up with a good estimate, but it's probably a double digit percentage, which exceeds what I consider 'tiny'.

Yes, and this gives their funders editorial control how?

I was so surprised by the first statement in your comment, that I stopped reading right there, and searched online to see if I could confirm/deny the statement. Then I wrote a reply without reading the rest of your comment.

I didn't say anything about editorial control.

That's the thing that matters. The funding isn't relevant, but making a ruckus about the funding is the tool through which Musk has plausible deniability that this was ever about editorial control. It is factually correct but conveys no information other than misdirection and you are falling for it hook, line and sinker. NPR has a lot of staffers, want to bet that at least a number of them have prior government employment on their CVs? Want to bet that some of them will leave NPR for government? That too would be utterly irrelevant, but you could make a nice argument about it and maybe even prove it to be factually correct. In the end it's all just noise and no signal.

State affiliated media are those media institutions that are editorially controlled by the nation state where they are based, and funding is secondary to that by a very large distance.

> you are falling for it hook, line and sinker

I haven't made any statement (nor drawn any conclusion) about whether NPR's content is controlled or influenced by any level of government. So I'm not sure what I've fallen for?

I've only talked about funding. That may be irrelevant, but I only talked about it in response to something you brought up ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The whole point is that this discussion is the result of a label that is applied maliciously, focusing on the label and/or the accuracy of the label misses the point: the label should not have been applied because historically it has been applied on entities that are vastly different from the NPR. So now you have to wonder why it was applied, instead of trying to figure out if it applies or not.

> So now you have to wonder why it was applied, instead of trying to figure out if it applies or not.

Now the question is whether you are willing to apply the same analysis to Twitter's decision to apply its "Hacked Materials Policy" in 2020 in order to block any discussion of the Hunter Biden laptop story.

See other comments on exactly that subject in this thread.

Really, it's a bit like 'but her emails' or 'Benghazi' at this point. Let's not pollute HN, shall we?

Asking this question is the only way of determining whether a person is acting from a truly principled position, or whether they are using situational ethics.

The only true principle is one that binds your allies and your opponents equally. If it only applies to your opponents, then it's merely a rationalization.

I'm interested in finding like-minded people who are committed to applying principles equally. It's the only way of mediating conflict that does not devolve into pure tribalism. Unfortunately few people seem to be interested.

I think you will find that dragging in unrelated subjects isn't going to help make your argument because you are trying to find purchase on the individuals that you are talking to rather than to discuss the subject matter.

Applying principles equally implies that the subjects are comparable, which may be the case in your world view but you will find that your worldview rarely if ever overlaps the worldview of another person. So instead of trying to match worldviews we discuss topics individually of each other so that there is room for less than 100% black/white differentiation. Given two subjects that two people may or may not agree on there will be four populations of results given a large enough sample size. Whether you believe that those people are able to rationally apply their own principles or not isn't really the question the question is whether they believe that they are doing so and cherry picking your subjects doesn't give you more grip on their worldview, it only serves to reinforce your own.

It sounds like you don't think anyone should ever have to defend the question of why they apply different standards to different cases.

Suppose we have two warring factions that both constantly accuse each other of wrongs that they also commit. How do we escape the cycle of escalation?

> How do we escape the cycle of escalation?

By looking at each case individually. Rules are fun to make but tend to not work as soon as things get a bit more complicated. That's why we don't just have laws but also judges.

Judges do the opposite of looking at each case individually. The overriding principle of common law jurisdictions is stare decisis, which is to apply principles consistently according to precedent.

For my part, I look at this as an iterated prisoner's dilemma. I want to live in a society that values fairness and equal protection above all, even when that means conceding things that I would prefer not to concede if I was acting in pure self-interest.

I'll be honest, at a base level it amuses me to see Twitter label NPR as "Government-funded media," and to see NPR get mad about it. But because I want to live in a fair society, I'm willing to set that base feeling aside, and take really seriously the question of whether this is truly fair or merely the petty and arbitrary actions of an unprincipled billionaire.

But this deal only works if the other side is willing to do the same. And I have seen too many rounds of this iterated prisoner's dilemma where the other side is happy to take the W when it benefits them.

If I ally with the people criticizing Musk, but those same people are not willing to cooperate in pursuit of fairness when power benefits them, then I am in the loser quadrant of the prisoner's dilemma. No thanks.

So unless I see critics of Musk appeal to general principles that they are willing to stand up for, across the board, I just get out my popcorn and enjoy the show.

The only reason in theory for a place to put a "state media" label is to imply the State has editorial control.

it sounds, then, that you'd agree with an accurate compromise:

"receives a small amount of funding from the federal government but maintains editorial independence"

all true, so better than the current label

yes

Why else do they get this source of funding that other networks don't have? (Though this is still just a theory and not reason to slap "govt-affiliated" on them. "Govt-funded" is fair.)

You should look into their origin story if you want an answer. And no, Govt-Funded is also not fair absent an indication of editorial control. The BBC in the UK, the NOS in NL, NPR in the United States, and so on are all official channels but they also have their own editorial staff and only in very rare cases does the government directly intervene in the production (and usually simultaneously on other channels as well). So this is simply Elon playing stupid games, which he seems to be very good at.

NPR was created after the signing of the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 aiming to increase public education through media, which doesn't really answer my question.

> Govt-Funded is also not fair absent an indication of editorial control

But they're govt-funded. BBC is too.

They get this source of funding because that is how they were created and entities that were created through a different mechanism (for instance: to become the mouthpiece for a political stream or for commercial reasons) are a different kind of animal.

The government allocates funds to many things that it may consider useful, such as health care, infrastructure and education. This does not necessarily imply that the government does this to create a mechanism of influence, as opposed to their counterparts in countries that are run as dictatorships. Naming the NPR in the same breath as the Chinese, Russian, Iranian and North Korean state media is mistaken at best and maliciously dishonest at worst. Knowing what I know about Musk it is a fair bet we're looking at the latter.

It should be under the same label as BBC, just govt-funded. Up to you what you think of that. State-affiliated means definite editorial control. Syria etc call those outlets education too.

And I'm pretty sure they'd have been fine with that, however, the BBC label reads 'Publicly funded media', not 'Government funded'.

"Publicly-funded" is fine too.

Primarily, because NPR affiliate stations service areas where there aren't incentives for private stations. Meaning, without these public radio stations, these areas would be without news and the entertainment broadcasting NPR provides.

This isn't true for stations like WNYC, but it is true for much of the US.

The small affiliates need subsidies, because it costs a lot to run the stations.

NPR has done like, a million segments on this. It's interesting stuff. Easy to learn about!

NPR, the national organization, receives federal funding. Maybe not a lot, but still more than anyone else.

> NPR has done like, a million segments on this

Yeah, and I've heard one of them, but are you really going to take NPR's own explanation for its funding without a grain of salt?

No I'm referring to them having open discussions about their logic for continuing to receive funding. They don't really do "explanations" with regards to their own operations, general it is a discussion about what is going on. They are a pretty transparent organization.

You'll be more persuasive you actually answer his question instead of further casting aspersions.

I don't have evidence of federal editorial control over NPR, nor does anyone have evidence of the absence, which is why I say that only "govt-funded" is a fair label.

If I'm giving you a regular flow of money that keeps you well fed and housed in a nice area, you're going to at least subconsciously care about how I perceive you and if I approve of the things you're doing, because I have the power to cut off that flow of money at any time.

This is why many wealthy individuals and organizations donate to both political parties. The implicit threat of losing a flow of money you've become accustomed to is more powerful that the vague promise of a new flow of money that you can currently live without.

Old money and power don't control things with a loud command, but with a subtle flash of facial displeasure.

Show how the NPR is pulling their punches when they report on the Federal government and I'll consider it. But from where I'm sitting - far outside of the USA - they offer some of the most balanced and clean reporting out there (and that includes the BBC).

I agree with your perception. There are many within the US that simply have a different window of what they find to be acceptable sources, topics, and opinions to entertain. The word 'balanced' implies a sort of central tendency, which can vary depending on what someone finds worthy of consideration.

They aren’t even slightly balanced anymore, especially their radio stuff. They took a hard turn left after Trump was nominated. They refused to report on the Hunter Biden laptop story. I didn’t hear a single positive thing about anything the Trump administration did during his presidency, only after the last election. You can’t turn on your local station without hearing some identity politics within a few minutes - either from them or NPR itself. They often only have one “side” being interviewed for their reporting.

It just so happens that Republicans want to pull their funding and Democrats don’t. That’s a bit of a chicken or the egg type situation.

It’s sad because they used to be pretty good, and were probably the last bastion of somewhat balanced reporting in our country.

So you thought they were pretty good until Trump came along and then they did a hard left? Have you considered the possibility that they didn't change at all and that their reporting was on the money?

People that urgently want to believe the Hunter Biden laptop story was somehow relevant tend to be hardliner Trump supporters and I find it hard to see how if that is their perspective they could be convinced that Trump has been a disaster for US politics if they haven't come to that conclusion on their own by now.

Think about it: Republicans want to pull their funding. Why would that be? Because they are reporting the facts and that is inconvenient to them? Or for some non-partisan reason that I'm currently unaware of? There is this quote by Colbert: "Reality has a left wing bias" or something to that effect. NPR reporting leans 'left' only if you are far to the right of center. For the rest of the world - me included - it is still center or center right depending on the context.

Republicans have been wanting to pull their funding for 60 years because they don't think taxpayers should be funding it.

They should not be receiving public funds if they are going to continue to produce ideologically inclined content. At this point, they are no different than a little neoliberal/progressive think tank. And an honest assessment of the content means that they lean heavily to the left.

I'm far from a Trump supporter - I don't consider myself to be a republican or a democrat. I like some policies from one side and some from the other, and I think in a lot of instances (like abortion) a compromise would be best instead of fully one way or the other.

I think Trump getting elected made a lot of people on the left that felt they had some "power" over elections feel like they somehow failed. Keep in mind how scared they were. This American Life did a show on how Trump could basically launch nukes whenever he wanted, for instance. We had years of "Russian collusion." Suddenly it became their mission to not only ensure it didn't happen again, but their opinion of republicans radically shifted.

If you can't tell that NPR is hard on the left then it's you who is off of the charts politically. The way they've treated the Trump administration vs the Biden administration is absolutely laughable.

This is all anecdotal, but this one hits home for me. As a longtime NPR supporter well before the 2016 election, I wholeheartedly agree with all your comments. There was a drastic change leading up to that 2016 mess. We shouldn't forget the comment section was shut down in 2015 as well. An abstraction layer was added to it as a solution, but it really seemed to take away from the site as there were a lot of great discussions and debates taking place.

I'm fairly anti-Trump myself, but he never lived in my head rent free - a spade is a spade. The bias can be heard within minutes of tuning in, which I still do every time I'm in the car. I treat it just like I do CNN or Fox, which is with a grain of salt.

All that being said, there is still a lot of really awesome content coming from them. This American Life is still one of my all time favorites.

> They took a hard turn left after Trump was nominated.

This would seemingly support that they are less than state controlled; The idea that the executive branch, the senate majority, and the house majority would be criticized by a state sponsored media in recent history suggests independence.

If Side A has wanted to defund you for decades and Side B, and you always paint Side A in a negative light and Side B in a positive...

They aren't controlled by either party but I doubt that doesn't have an influence on their reporting.

Have you ever happened to think that maybe everything Trump did was awful and un-American, and hence it was reported on ACCURATELY?

Truly amazing how Conservatives always claim bias instead of stopping and thinking "Are we the assholes?"

Every political administration in the history of forever has had good policies and bad policies.

He did a lot as far as medical pricing, forcing hospitals to have price transparency. Medications were also supposed to have pricing listed on their commercials - and did for a short while. It looks like the courts blocked it, from a quick Google. Regardless of whether you think tax cuts are a good thing, increasing the standard deduction made tax season a lot easier for many people.

Personally I think clamping down on illegal immigration is a good thing, though some may disagree. I've literally never heard one single word from NPR about any negatives from unchecked illegal immigration, but many, many, many sob stories from the other direction.

So, there's some examples. I find that most people that hate a politician mostly do it because they're on the wrong side. My wife's parents and sister were just railing against Desantis, even though they probably know very few of his policies as we're on the other side of the country - and what they do know are probably one-sided things from their preferred news sources.

And Hitler was a vegetarian. No amount of supposed "good" outweighs the absolute evil of the man. The same applies to Trump. The man is out-and-out Anti-American and is almost literally the embodiment of the seven deadly sins. I don't give a crap if her personally saved 1000 puppies from dying in a fire. It doesn't outweigh the rest of his actions.

> They refused to report on the Hunter Biden laptop story.

Because reporting on bullshit doesn't make you balanced. Balance isn't being in the middle of extremes, especially when the mainstream of politics in America for one party has gone off the rails.

discussing incentives is understandable (even though your analogy doesn't fit because the government's minor funding isn't what's keeping NPR funded)

suggesting that actual impropriety or improper influence occurs as a result is a conspiracy theory, and we'd need to see actual evidence that it actually happened to avoid dismissing it out of hand

I think if you study this and read up on, for example, the Trump administration's attempts to turn VoA into a compliant propaganda outfit via the administration's control of USAGM, you might conclude that it's actually really hard to manipulate public media in this way. It's not a perfect system but it's pretty well designed.

Why not just look at the NPR page we're discussing, which says 13% of public radio station revenue is from federal funds? 13% of 31% is 4%.

Edit: The 13% is from all government funds, not just federal.

Because not all government funding is federal funding.

Random example from an NPR member station's web site:

  KCRW is supported, in part, by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Department of Arts & Culture. The Department's Organizational Grant Program helps fund a wide variety of arts, culture, and music programs that you hear on air each day!

I apologize for my imprecise language. The 13% I quoted includes "Federal, state and local governments". Again this is all on the web page we're all discussing, in a very easy-to-understand chart.

NPR has a history of downplaying their government funding, I'm not sure if you should use them as your main source. I know in the past they've said it was around 5%, while independent investigations found it was closer to 20-40%

That's the source we're discussing here. If you have some evidence that they're lying about this then please post it, I would genuinely be interested to see it.

Thank you for the number. In context, the EU is 15% of revenue for most ad based tech platforms, and its regulation has shown unbounded control over them.

>- payment from member stations (at least 31% of revenue) who are themselves supported by government funding

I have a hard time understanding this as "state sponsored", much less as evidence that NPR has ceded editorial control. NPR estimates (and InfluenceWatch believes this estimate) that about 4% of their revenue ultimately comes from federal, state and local governments [0], via direct grants to NPR, and via grants to member stations that are in turn paid to NPR. InfluenceWatch, you'll note, is run by the Capital Research Center, a conservative think tank which has an axe to grind about NPR's apparent left-wing bias.

This feels a lot like the accusations against Bellingcat that they are state-sponsored/controlled. And I think those accusations are equally specious. Accepting money via indirect grants is not at all the same as accepting payment for invoiced work.

0. https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/national-public-ra...

Indeed. Meanwhile, the message has had its intended effect and NPR is now seen as 'tainted' by the people who would do a lot better to listen more to NPR than to various other far more biased news sources. It's the same old playbook, and Musk getting away with this is highly annoying.

It's still federally funded.

Twitter probably shouldn't have gotten into labeling who is and isn't state funded, but if they are, US/UK/NATO orgs should be fair game alongside the Russians and Chinese.

NPR labeling the "state-funded media" claim as "false" when its trivially, factually true is a bad look for them as a fact-based organization.

It's irrelevant, the label implies control like with the Russians and the Chinese, and that control simply isn't there.

1. "True but we think it's irrelevant" does not equate to "false".

2. "But america are the good guys" is the exact kind of thing you see uniformly from all American media including NPR.

You really believe that NPR and the BBC belong in the same basket as Russian and Chinese state media?

Fish don't know they're in water.

If you've been ingesting a narrative since middle school, and the BBC reinforces it, well that's just good neutral unbiased reporting.

It's always telling when people with narratives to push don't directly answer questions.

I don’t regularly read the BBC or NPR. I have watched the BBC skirmish with government over their independence and it’s an active fight (see Gary Lineker fighter recently, interesting, on Twitter).

Do you see these fights for independence in Chinese and Russian news channels? And do you really think them similar to the BBC and NPR?

You will never, ever see a mainstream western news org demonize the US the way they do to Russia and China routinely.

Are they the exact same? No, but they're not so different when you zoom out. You don't need explicit censorship when you can manufacture consent at the hiring and promotion stages.

Do you think the US, China and Russia similar?

I have a lot of criticism for the US, but the US can at least punish its rulers at the ballot box. The US isn’t chucking journalists out the window or vanishing them on a regular basis. Objectively, it’s hard say the three are similar, as two of those countries deserve more criticism. They are not the same when you zoom out.

I am not an American.

I could criticize or compliment all 3 depending on the topic or my mood.

If we're so much better in the west, maybe we can hold ourselves accountable and question our own biases.

If we are so much worse, why isn’t accountability and criticism a thing in a Russia and China?

Exactly, I have been trying to explain it to people here (Québec/Canada) Here people believe the CBC is an impartial view of reality, it’s through that filter they see all the events of the world.

Information that contradict their narrative become disinformation or conspiration. Or you get labeled racist/transphobe/Trump supporter at the first doubt

Give me little hope for our country at the moment.

It's not that it's impartial or unbiased. It's that it's not an editorial arm for the state. The United States doesn't even have a centralized, consistent state-run party that would exercise consistent pressure on NPR to publish certain stories or frame them in a certain way. It's an absurd comparison to link these to Chinese or Russian state-affiliated media.

NPR being state affiliated is false. NPR being funded by the state is not, but it leads people to believe that it's affiliated with the state, which is false.

Funding is a very important kind of affiliation, I would think.

It could be but it doesn't have to be. That's why editorial independence is a thing. And that's why you'll see broadcasters in Russia, North Korea, Iran and China try their level best not to criticize the ruling party and ruling individuals of the countries that they have their base in because if they did the consequences would likely be much further reaching than those related to funding.

The fact that this needs to be spelled out is a bit sad. One of the first things an editorial board of an actual news service does is to assert its independence, if it can't do that then they will resign in a very public way that leaves no doubt about what is going on.

For instance, the large number of people that resigned from Twitter when Musk took over (and that was besides the ones that he fired because he couldn't get them to do his bidding) made exactly such a statement.

State funded media is a phrase, it has meaning beyond the literal meaning of the words. Wikipedia's 'State media' page seems to have it covered:

> State media or government media are media outlets that are under financial and/or editorial control of the state or government, directly or indirectly. [1]

Even that page makes a distinction between state funded and state media[2], but that is not how youtube[3] or others [4], [5], and I am sure many others[6 time based google] do not make the distinction. For better or worse 'State funded media' is often interchangeable with 'state media' and NPR is not state media even if some of its funds come from the state.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_media#:~:text=State%20me.... [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_media#:~:text=Not%20to%2.... [3] https://misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu/article/state-media-wa... [4]https://www.prindleinstitute.org/2019/03/whats-wrong-with-st... [5] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/194016122092283... [6] https://www.google.com/search?q=%22State+funded+media%22&rlz...

What do you think about Al Jazeera's funding and level of control?

Trustworthy when it is about non-local affairs, hopelessly biased when it is about local affairs. But Al Jazeera doesn't really pretend to be unbiased. Sometimes I'm positively surprised by the quality of their reporting. But them being Qatar based the amount of local news that would affect me is nil. They definitely offer an interesting perspective on the world as seen from the Arabic perspective, meanwhile I'm well aware of the fact that their English language news isn't always a 1:1 with their coverage of the same subject in languages that I can not read unaided.

Replace "Al Jazeera" with "NPR" in your comment and you're also spot on.

Sorry, but aljazeera is on the level of RT. That you think otherwise just shows that you are more willing to ignore a biais when it is in your favor.

It has always been known in the arabic world that AJ is a complete puppet of the Qatari royal family (and even staffed by members of the royal family) and it can't be a coincidence that AJ's coverage is almost always a mirror image of qatari foreign policy talking points/positions. It is the equivalent of Saudi Arabia's Al Arabiya, just with more international presence.

Reading comprehension failure on your part, or we're in violent agreement which you somehow chose to voice as disagreement.

The point is that Al Jazeera exhibits a lot of bias on international issues that are relevant to the Qataris, not just local news. This includes US foreign policy, environmental things, and global economic policy. They are basically RT (think about how RT covered george floyd), but generally allied with the west.

not OP, but I watch Al Jazeera a lot, they're more fair than NPR, they at least invite the "other party" to the talkshow, no matter how ridiculous they sound (e.g. russian people supporting the war). NPR hasn't done that in years, they do a literal strawman: they quote what a republican said (or they replay a short part from a speech) and then the all democratic leaning attendees talk about the subject. It's laughable. I wouldn't just blindly trust Al Jazeera either, I would double check whatever they say, but at least I can learn about the world from a different perspective: they cover a lot from Africa, Asia, eastern Europe, which are places that Western Media usually ignores (unless it's something really big).

NPR is very high quality when it comes to art, science and other shows, but fails spectacularly when it's a political subject.

NPR has the opportunity to be a world class media group, like BBC and Al Jazeera, but they chose to waddle in mud together with the democratic party, estranging half of the US population - which could have been an easy win for them.

What you are saying is that NPR is left-wing, not "controlled by the government".

"controlled by the government" means: left-wing when the government is left-wing, right-wing when the government is right-wing. Was NPR right-wing when Trump was president?

If not, it is the proof that the label "government funded" is really really bad: it does not identify outlets that are biased by their funding, it just find an excuse to label as biased while not labeling as biased others than are as biased.

It does not mean NPR is not biased, but if you want to add a label to warn of a potential bias, you need to do it properly, and label ALL outlets that are similarly biased and identify properly the reason they are.

Funnily, NPR could also drop the 4% of revenue from government funding and continue to publish the same stories with exactly the same bias, and people who are arguing that NPR is biased should therefore argue then that NPR is not biased anymore.

I wasn't arguing that it's controlled by the government. It's somewhat controlled by the democratic party, which is 50% of the time in charge of the government.

I was mainly expanding on the fact that NPR chose to not represent 50% of the US population, and also miss having a chance of being a world class service, like the BBC or Al Jazeera.

I 100% agree that NPR is biased by left-wing ideology.

I don't really agree about "controlled by", that's like asking someone "who have you voted for" and after they said X, then saying "so you don't have any free will, you are just controlled by X". It's ridiculous: it's not because someone agrees with some party that the party controls them.

But being biased is not in itself a problem: every media is biased, only stupid people believe in neutrality. For example, giving 50-50 time to present each side's opinion is not unbiased: in a parallel universe where one side is, by chance, way bigger than the other (which is very easy to obtain as political trends are strongly based on charisma of few people), then, the 50-50 strategy leads to totally different coverage of the situation. The 50-50 strategy is not being neutral, it's being a sell-out that want to please everyone. Another example is these situations where the journalist gives equal share to a person that says "it's currently raining" and a person that says "it's currently sunny" (and, please, avoid "it can be raining and sunny at the same time", obviously, my example corresponds to a situation where it is not the case).

At the end of the day, it's not a problem: you have left-wing media, you have right-wing media, as long as they are not lying and that you don't have a society too stupid to live in an echo chamber, then, citizen are given all the information they need to make their own opinion. And if they are living in their echo chamber, the problem is not the existence of biased media, but a society problem.

But in this discussion, the problem is that the label is not "this company is ideologically biased", but "this company is controlled by the government". You cannot blame me for talking about the subject in question. The question of NPR being left-wing is irrelevant, but pushing this in the discussion is in fact even a problem: like if intellectually dishonest labeling are ok because NPR is left-wing.

NPR political coverage is not controlled by the democrats in the same way that an SPAC is not controlled by the politician it supports.

the claim is trivially and factually false

what are you talking about

Since when did Tesla start producing media? Specifically, media funded by the government? Can you provide proof of this funding and links to what they produced?

This comment is edging pretty close to that cartoon about people who can't help but try to find reasons to dislike Elon, because NPR told them to do so.

There's a bunch of state funded media in Europe, for example Scandinavian, German, UK, etc public service media orgs. They have standards for editorial independence and I think they are just as independent or more, as NPR.

Well Twitter is a private company and can ban/publish who they please under their own terms

That excerpt isn't about their funding. The CPB funds (in part) public radio stations.

Many of those public radio stations purchase NPR-produced content. (And from other similar providers like American Public Media (Marketplace), PRX (This American Life), etc.)

NPR's customers can't afford NPR's offerings without said Federal funding, which is why NPR's particularly interested in it.

An agency that is federally funded through 1 layer of intermediaries is still, in the most practical sense, federally funded.

As the article indicates, those stations receive an average of 8% from CPB, and 5% from Federal/state/local government. The other 87% comes from elsewhere - 43% of it as individual donations.

If they're "government funded" as a result, slap the label on Walmart and McDonalds. They can't operate without Federal funding, either. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/19/walmart-and-mcdonalds-among-...

Are you suggesting that Walmart and McDonald's receive more in government subsidies than they pay in taxes?

I'm suggest Walmart similarly benefits from indirect Federal funding of their business, in the form of wages/benefits they don't have to give out to their employees receiving public assistance to be able to live.

Yes, probably. Not only does Walmart receive significant wage and benefit subsidies for its employees, but they also receive income from customers using food stamps. In 2014 that food stamp spending was estimated to be $13 billion, far more than they pay in taxes.

- https://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2014/04/big...

By this logic there would so many companies that are "federally funded" that the label itself would become irrelevant.

Including SpaceX. Starlink is a cute and a useful consumer product, but most of their balance sheet is defense money or giving rides to nasa.

You could chuck most of Musk's portfolio into that category TBH. What ever company does that dumb tunnel idea and Tesla are the two additional companies that come to mind.

Does the federal government assert editorial control over NPR?

It doesn't matter in the slightest if they do this explicitly. NPR would be stupid to bite the hand that feeds it.

NPR gets 1% of funding directly from the government.

13% of the 31% (4%) they get from member stations comes from the government, for a total of 5%.

The "hand that feeds" NPR is mostly corporate sponsors and member stations' listeners.

39% of NPR revenue comes directly from corporations.

Another 12% comes from foundations (the wealthy donor class).

Only 31% of their revenue comes from member stations and only 13% of that comes from CPB or government sources, which totals up to 4% coming from the government.

So corporate interests fund NPR more than 10x times as much as the government.

Then why did NPR have a ton of content on their website about how absolutely critical federal funding was to their operation?

Because they don't want liberals thinking too hard about how much Archer Daniels Midland pays them.

And threats to their federal funding are also probably great for their pledge drives.

Scroll up the thread; your question is already answered. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35542645

Federal funding isn't critical to NPR, but it's important to the public radio ecosystem of small local stations, who get ~13% of their funding from government.

So evidently NPR disagrees with the "it's just a small percentage, who cares" judgement (until that judgment being on their website becomes embarrassing)

"We don't want our customers being unable to afford our products" is, I suspect, a common opinion among businesses. I'm not sure why you'd find it surprising.

Walmart wants people to spend their food stamps on their groceries. Tesla wants people to use the EV tax credits on their cars. They don't get accused of being government controlled because of it.

So NPR never criticizes the government?

Does that include Fox News when the Ad Council buys ads? Or when cable companies accept infrastructure subsidies?

That would make probably almost all businesses in the US federally funded, as the US government is the single largest employer of people, and those people spend their money at private businesses. The US government purchases things from private businesses.

Come on.

Yeah? Lockheed Martin could be reasonably described as "federally funded".

Sure, but then what's the point of bringing it up at all?

Because that's what the thread is about? If twitter marked lockheed as "government funded organization" I would not care

That funding page says 31% of NPR's revenue comes from programming fees from member stations. Some of the 8% "other revenues" and 5% "PRSS contract" sound like they may come from member stations too, so let's call it 40% total from member stations as a best guess.

Member stations themselves receive 13% of their revenue from the CPB (8%) and "federal, state, and local governments" (5%). Let's call that piece about 10% as a best guess of the federal-only part.

40% from member stations, which themselves get 10% from the Feds, is 4% additional from the Feds, bringing up NPR's federal revenue from the 1% they said to an all-in total of 5%.

It seems that NPR's statement is a bit misleading, but not that materially so.

(I'm as surprised as many of you may be, readers -- I thought they were much more federally funded as well.)

My accounting skills are less than amateur, so please point out anything I may have missed. I'm not quite sure if 40% of 10% computation is a sound representation of what's going on.

Those member stations choose to spend that money on NPR content. They are under no obligation (aside from standing contracts) to continue to give that money to NPR in the future. They could opt to license programming from other sources.

That's like saying a federal employee who chooses to donate some of their income to NPR is giving them government funding.

I agree to some extent, but when the federal government is funding similar organizations with a similar mission, they have a strong incentive to work together. Public radio stations are operated and listened to by the kind of people who like NPR programming.

It's more like a federal employee who works for NPR and believes in NPR's mission donating to NPR. Yes, it's not compulsory, but the money is flowing towards entities with closely related missions that have a strong incentive to cooperate.

But again, I agree with you that the voluntary nature of the cooperation makes it quite different from merely some kind of shell game.

There is also this part that you did not quote:

>On average, less than 1% of NPR's annual operating budget comes in the form of grants from CPB and federal agencies and departments.

It is irrelevant to most of the controversy, however. The original Twitter label declared that NPR did not have editorial independence from the government.

They don't. Just because you say you do doesn't make it so. When a big part of your funding comes from the people that can vote to cut it at any moment you do not have true independence.

This is as silly as the argument saying the 1st amendment isn't violated by social media when you have the government literally asking these companies for censorship.

Can you name any media company being truly independent? Or is any owner excluded from the potential list of dependencies?

I'm discussing government independence specifically, not whether companies are beholden to someone else.

Obviously all businesses are beholden to someone. Yes you should always have an interest in what/who companies are beholden to.

There's a reason Nike and Apple don't chastise the Chinese government.

Twitter is funny in this regard, why is Musk so keen on Russia and China?

To call NPR state-affiliated media to abuse the term to the point of incoherence. You may as well, by your own logic, say every media company ultimately has at least one dollar that's passed through the government and is thus state-affiliated. Thus they all deserve the label. Thus the label is meaningless, which incidentally, appears to be the point of this authoritarian-apolgistic nonsense.

It's continued abuse of language in the hopes of making it impossible for people to determine what's true -- in the hopes of making people give up even caring about facts.

I like how, nowhere in that entire two paragraphs were you able to explain why it's not state-affiliated when its funded by the government. All you did was try to shove the label off because other media is possibly also funded the same way.

I’ve left a number of comments on this thread arguing why this is not a reasonable comparison and so have other people. And you specifically were bringing up the topic of funding, so I was avoiding going off the rails too much.

If I have understood you correctly you were concerned by funding being cut off. Why would that not be a concern with other media, not receiving any government funds, as well? I also do not really understand why you are more concerned with government dependencies than with any other dependencies. Actually I think the latter dependencies might be the stronger influence on a media company, especially if it is a large part of the budget.

That could apply to a huge portion of all businesses on Twitter. How many of the F500 have benefitted from a gov't bailout or some other taxpayer subsidy. No one is really squeaky clean on this front.

Most F500 companies aren’t media companies, and the interests motivating any public statements they make are well understood by the public.

How many media companies got PPP loans? Probably all of them, right?

This is an excellent point. If you review my comment history I think you’ll find some of my most downvoted comments being about how rolling out the biggest infringements upon civil liberties since WWII, and then creating a financing program that media companies rely upon to survive, was one of the most corrupt things I’d seen during my life time.

Well, maybe.

They do. If after 50 years of existence you can't come up with a single example of government interference then they're independent.

NPR continuing to publish programming critical of Trump during the Trump presidency, is a pretty strong indication they have editorial independence.

Heck, Voice of America also did the same and they are definitely state affiliated.

not necessarily. It just means it's not as bad as it would be in China or Russia.

NPR knew the democrats would be back in power in a couple of years...they weren't risking much by being anti-Trump. But they did gain goodwill from the democrats, which can extend them support every time they are in power.

I am not arguing for or against either side, I am just pointing out a flaw in your logic.

I think NPR is so solidly on the democrats side, that it's hard to distinguish what came first: the chicken or the egg?

> I am not arguing for or against either side, I am just pointing out a flaw in your logic.

I do not see a flaw in their logic:

> NPR continuing to publish programming critical of Trump during the Trump presidency, is a pretty strong indication they have editorial independence.

That is a strong indicator. An indicator that may not convince everyone by itself, but I do not see any flaw in their logic.

Threats were made by the Trump admin when NPR had unfavorable reporting.

'Trump proposes eliminating federal funding for PBS, NPR' https://thehill.com/homenews/media/373434-trump-proposes-eli...

They've clearly stepped it up after his term, so, no not really.

Elon's playing word games. When the average person talks about State Affiliated Media they're referring to editorial control. As far as I know NPR has always had editorial control and goes to great lengths to maintain neutrality in their writing. They've certainly screwed up in major ways before, but compared to MSNBC, Fox, the NYT, NYP, and CNN I'd say NPR looks like a saint.

The irony I see here is that Twitter is on record as to being involved in suppression exercises around COVID, where they basically acted as the governments hands to suppress legitimate voices. Given that, Twitter needs to wear its own State Affiliated Media badge. Hell, what do you even call an entity that willfully suppresses valid and good information that is not favorable to the government? A state apologist?

I was going to mention Radio Free Europe as a really good example of egregious, western state-sponsored media, but then on a lark, I looked up how well regarded they are, bias-wise, and now I don't know what to think.

Hey, just want to say thanks for saying that you changed your mind. It's hard to do on public forums and just in general. It's even harder to say that you don;t know something. Thanks for saying this.

Western state-backed media is regarded highly by mainstream Western media watchdogs? You don't say.

That was kind of my read on it, which is what sent me into a tailspin. I ended up questioning all the tools I had to evaluate a source without taking it on as another job.

But it turns out that the difference in bias of RFE and any number of out-and-out propaganda mills is that if a story is inconvenient to RFE's agenda, they'll de-emphasize it. On the other hand, an out-and-out propaganda mill will just make shit up to fit their narrative.

So where I landed was that RFE was ultimately reliable, but subject to the same little human biases as NPR or AP News or the Financial Times, or any number of other sources that I do trust. Their main source of bias is a bit more of an elephant in the room, but if anything, it makes them a bit harder on their masters.

Don’t worry about the watchdogs. You can just read the content to see. It’s true they’re interested in human rights news, and authoritarian countries don’t look good on that subject. But the content is factual, and their reporters work at great risk.

Don’t worry about the watchdogs. Just read the content. It’s true that RFE/RL focuses on human rights and democracy, and authoritarian countries don’t look very good in those categories. But the reporting is factual, and their reporters run great risks. Several are in jail in Belarus, Russia, etc.

Turns out many democratic systems actually like politically neutral media that inform the public in the way they need to be informed in order to function in a democratic system. Healthy democratic governments abhor propaganda.

At least as of the time of this comment, no special label was applied to Stars and Stripes (50% funded by the US Department of Defense), Al Hurra (100% funded by the US Agency for Global Media), or CBC (>50% funded by the Canadian government).

Maybe that's just a mistake, and every news organization that gets a dollar of funding from any government will eventually get its own "Government-funded Media" label. Or maybe Twitter's new owner is being a petty little despot and didn't like a recent NPR story. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It would be helpful to add some numbers to your comment. 31% of NPR revenues are from member stations, and 13% of that 31% is federal funding. So ~4% of NPR revenue is indirect federal funds. This is, to give one example, substantially less than the portion of grocery store revenues that come from SNAP. Do we consider all grocery chains to be government sponsored businesses? Is Y Combinator government sponsored, since so many of its investments received money from the SVB bailout?

My answer would be yes, government support is essential for most businesses, but that makes this label useless in theory and malicious in practice when only applied to a tiny subset of government-funded companies.

Your quoting was rather disingenuous. How could you not quote the last line (regarding how much of their budget comes from this source), when you quoted almost all the rest regarding federal funding?

I love that people are trying to coat his actions in reason like "look at the numbers, it's not spite it's truth" and then Elon tweets "Defund @NPR" and makes them look silly.

And this proves they're not government funded / affiliated how?

Didn't they tweet that their funding by the government was so minuscule that they shouldn't be labeled state-affiliated? You cannot simultaneously say that while also declaring you can't exist to your full capacity without government funding.

The irony is that it's likely not minuscule. Although NPR claims its around ~5%, independent investigations usually put it closer to 20-40%

You might compare with a government contractor like SpaceX. Private organizations can depend on government funding without being fully government-controlled. Speaking of SpaceX as a privately owned company is still accurate. Calling it state-affiliated wouldn’t be entirely wrong (they work with NASA), but a bit weird.

In NPR’s case, their customers (public radio stations) receive a lot of government funding, so it’s one step removed compared to a government contractor.

NPR is a nonprofit with a board of directors that includes NPR member station managers, though. Control over NPR seems rather diffuse? Nonprofit boards are often kind of weird that way.

Why are you bring up non-media companies? That label was specifically for media. You know, the ones that are supposed to bring you neutral information.... which is why the label makes more sense for media companies.

Yes, every organization when faced with potential budget cuts refers to all of their budget as "essential". This should not be surprising.

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