Yes, and this gives their funders editorial control how?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
They aren't controlled by either party but I doubt that doesn't have an influence on their reporting.
Truly amazing how Conservatives always claim bias instead of stopping and thinking "Are we the assholes?"
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.
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.
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
> Govt-Funded is also not fair absent an indication of editorial control
But they're govt-funded. BBC is too.
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.
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 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?
I didn't say anything about editorial control.
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.
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)_/¯
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.
Really, it's a bit like 'but her emails' or 'Benghazi' at this point. Let's not pollute HN, shall we?
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
"receives a small amount of funding from the federal government but maintains editorial independence"
all true, so better than the current label