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Comment by eastbound | Hacker News Reader

Strange that labelling medias with their true funding diminishes their credibility so much that they’d flee to any place where this information is not disclosed.

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I suspect this is a bad-faith argument, but just to be clear, NPR get's a tiny fraction of its funding from the government *and* maintains editorial independence.

> The news organization says that is inaccurate and misleading, given that NPR is a private, nonprofit company with editorial independence. It receives less than 1 percent of its $300 million annual budget from the federally funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Being free of direct government funding does not make it free from editorial independence. You can listen and get an idea of their underwriting. They're clear to walk the line around a lot of topics to not upset their corporate and non profit overlords. We live in a corporatocracy and these companies and non profits are revolving doors for regulatory capture through lobbying and other methods.

If you really want to delve into how, where, and whom makes the news I suggest start by looking at the Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, and Reuters:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_agency

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Associated_Press

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agence_France-Presse

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reuters

> They're clear to walk the line around a lot of topics to not upset their corporate and non profit overlords.

That's true for virtually all news organization - public or private. NPR is not an outlier in this regard.

A significant percentage of NPR member station funding is from individual donations, NPR is obviously also very conscious about producing the type of content its audience expects. No media outlet on planet earth is free from the influence of its audience.

Editorial independence from government funding.

The problem isn’t that Twitter is labeling media with true funding. If it was, you’d be seeing under MSNBC or CNN or Fox News who their main sponsors are (which are probably bigger than NPR’s government contribution).

So by cherry picking only some funding sources to label with, that means that you are trying to present a narrative.

(or if Twitter is not trying to present a narrative, instead it means that they‘re just being naive)

what percentage of NPR’s true funding was from the government?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPR#Funding

I'm seeing about ~10% from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) which if I'm reading correctly is itself primarily funded by Federal grants.

As long as Twitter lists itself as a Qatari/Saudi backed social media company I suppose fair is fair and at least they are being consistent in how they apply the rules. I wonder if they will do so.

The label was "State Affiliated" not "publicly funded".

Yeah I'm sure it has nothing to do with months of the CEO putting out right wing agitprop and promoting QAnon conspiracies. He openly promoted GOP candidates on his media site.

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