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NPR won’t tweet from NPR until Twitter removes false “state-affiliated” label
- jqpabc123 4y agoMusk is the threat to free speech that the right wing warned you about.
- labrador 4y agoI had a list with a bunch of Twitters in support of Ukraine, including NAFO which those who support Russia find problematic. One day recently I went to my lists to find it gone. My other three lists were still there. 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 https://twitter.com/JimmySecUK/status/1644048712753356800 Elon Musk is the new Rupert Murdoch, a menace to free societies
- happythebob 4y agoElon Musk has been gaslighting as an "enlightened centrist" who happens to have rightwing views for years, I knew from the day he bought Twitter that his goal was to control digital media for the right.
- labrador 4y agoAt least he's out about it now. Dave Troy wrote an interesting article about it 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-no-sense-unless-its-part-of-something-bigger/ https://bylinetimes.com/2022/11/07/musks-twitter-buy-makes-n...
- misssocrates 4y agoOh? What's his take on climate change and sustainable energy?
- dekhn 4y agoHis views only partly align with conservatism and Republicanism (note that Peter Thiel identifies as a republican but is gay). There is a subset of the Republican party that thinks climate change is real and that we should prepare for it, not deny it, and sees sustainable energy as a desirable goal. It's hard to understand Elon's politics without considering libertarianism, singularitism, technocracy, demagoguery, and populism.
- prh8 4y agoJust like everything else from the right wing, every accusation is an admission
- logicalmonster 4y ago1) How is it a threat to free speech to give some helpful labels or context to Tweets? Pretty much all controversial social media topics get some kind of disclaimers, "fact-checking" or labels from sites like YouTube, Twitter, and others. 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.
- Pxtl 4y agoIn Canada, the federal government funds all major newspapers. Should they all be flagged as such?
- logicalmonster 4y agoHoly crap, yes. Isn't that helpful context for deciding how likely it is that certain news stories are possibly biased or not?
- asynchronous 4y agoBased on Canadian media’s relationship with the current regime, unironically yes.
- Pxtl 4y ago"regime". 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.
- logicalmonster 4y ago
- moose_man 4y ago[flagged]
- kardianos 4y agoThis is demonstrably false.
- moose_man 4y agoOkay, please demonstrate.
- anonuser123456 4y agoLike… his company launches US military hardware into space and doesn’t launch Russian Chinese military gear?
- moose_man 4y agoHe also publicly endorsed Putin's plan for Ukraine and prevented the Ukrainian government from using SpaceX hardware near the front line. Edit also he only doesn't launch Russian and Chinese gear because he knows the Federal Government would seize SpaceX. They would come in hard and force him to divest all ownership.
- asynchronous 4y agoThat is completely false, SpaceX fronted internet service for the entirety of Ukraine for the duration of the war up until recently. The only restriction was not using the actual dishes on drones or other weaponry, thus that the SpaceX constellations wouldn’t be considered a target for Russia.
- moose_man 4y agohttps://www.semafor.com/article/04/05/2023/twitter-falls-short-in-policing-russian-and-chinese-state-backed-media https://www.semafor.com/article/04/05/2023/twitter-falls-sho... https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-64579267 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-64579267 https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2023/02/spacex-now-says-they-dont-want-starlink-be-weaponized-ukraine/382797/ https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2023/02/spacex-now-say... https://www.vice.com/en/article/ake44z/elon-musk-vladimir-putin-ukraine https://www.vice.com/en/article/ake44z/elon-musk-vladimir-pu...
- workingdog 4y ago[flagged]
- moose_man 4y agoThey aren't state funded. They get most of their money from corporate sponsorship. They get some money from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, but the majority is from private sponsors. The public money they get is indirect so the layers of separation makes it hard to put them in the same category as BBC or Russian or State Media. They are so dependent on private sector sponsorship that they are laying people off now.
- pibechorro 4y agoStill state funded.
- falcolas 4y agoGrants amounting to less than 1% of their total funding is hardly "state funded".
- kbelder 4y agoFrom what I understand, state funding is 30-40%. It's just indirectly funneled to the main NPR org through member stations.
- falcolas 4y agohttps://www.npr.org/about-npr/178660742/public-radio-finances https://www.npr.org/about-npr/178660742/public-radio-finance... Perhaps worth reading from the horses' mouth as it were. Also, here's the financials for a member station near me: https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/4c/1d/4e0c21b44d2aa963c25f8bc9830b/fy21-kemc-audited-financial-report.pdf https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/4c/1d/4e0c21b44d2aa963c25f8bc9... Note that state contributions totaled less than 5% of their total revenue. The CPB grant, which could be stretched to be considered state/government contributions, was about 16% of their revenue. Given that member station contribution is 30% of NPR's total revenue, there's no chance that state funding is going to reach 30%-40% values.
- melling 4y agoRecently on Twitter I saw a doctored video of Joe Biden saying something about going after Trump. Twitter really needs to clean up the mess. There’s way too much noise. People need to get some sort of reduced rating for promoting false news.
- falcolas 4y agoFrom NPRs own article on the topic (which the submitted article seems to mostly paraphrase): > 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-nprs-state-affiliated-media-label-might-not-have-been-accurate 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.
- bombcar 4y agoIt auto-replies.
- pibechorro 4y agoExcept they are state affiliated.
- Analemma_ 4y agoOnly in a sense which removes all the usefulness of the phrase. If you're going to have the label at all, don't put it on NPR; if you're going to put it on NPR, better to just not have it.
- falcolas 4y agoDoesn't appear that way - they get a few government grants that amount to under 1% of their total funding (which is all publicly available).
- qgin 4y agoPretty clearly disingenuous on Twitter's part. Whether you agree with content on NPR or not, it doesn't change depending who is in power. It would have been nonsensical to apply this label during the last administration.
- rchaud 4y ago[flagged]
- dang 4y agoMaybe so, but please don't fulminate or call names or do flamewar on HN. I'm not saying you owe $billionaire better but you owe this community better if you're participating in it. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- gitfan86 4y agoNPR is pretty anti Trump. If anything they are anti government when Republicans are in charge.
- xienze 4y ago> Whether you agree with content on NPR or not, it doesn't change depending who is in power. 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.
- qgin 4y agoUnless we're listing out all the sources of funding the various media organizations have, what would be the new use of this label if not to say "watch out"?
- gnz11 4y agoVoA, which is the state owned news network, does not have this label.
- _dain_ 4y agothey should both have it
- KerrAvon 4y agodo you understand the purpose of the label?
- kneebonian 4y agoSo the Wikipedia says the following "[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. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPR
- kllrnohj 4y agoMore of Twitter is funded by Saudi Arabia than NPR is by the federal government, should Twitter also have a state-affiliated label? 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.
- fknorangesite 4y ago> I could see an argument going both ways 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.
- bhelkey 4y ago> So I could see an argument going both ways 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-labels-for-government-and-state-affiliated-media-accounts https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/product/2020/new-label...
- dv_dt 4y agoPerhaps NPR should start hosting their own mastodon/fediverse server. It makes a lot of sense for most news outlets to self host actually.
- mistrial9 4y agoremember the Iraq War coverage? sorry, NPR is state affiliated. National Pentagon Radio
- KerrAvon 4y agoIf fawning coverage of the Iraq War is the criterion, NYT, MSNBC, and Fox News are all also state-affiliated media.
- ncr100 4y agoI do and I don't think that I agree with your conclusion. Everybody was reporting that the war was going to be justified based on this shocking evidence which turned out to be false, thank you Collin Powell.
- Dalewyn 4y ago>It 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.[6] The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which created NPR in 1970, and still funds NPR, operates through 47 U.S.C. 396.[12][13] From Wiki's article on NPR: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPR If that isn't state-affiliated, I don't know what is.
- KerrAvon 4y agoThe intent of this label was to highlight government propaganda outlets and distinguish them from news organizations. NPR is editorially independent and should not have this label.
- dcow 4y agoHonestly at this point in my life I don’t believe anybody can be editorially independent of their funding source no matter how hard they try. A label indicating accounts who receive government money despite what they claim about editorial independence seems like the move. Otherwise all the “propaganda outlets” will just claim independence. If the BBC is heavily subsidized then label it.
- dekhn 4y agoSure, you can't be truly editorially independent, but I'd say any fair evaluation of NPR's coverage would show that it is not a state mouthpiece, like Voice of America. It's an establishment mouthpiece (the state and the establishment aren't completely overlapping). This is America: you can bite the hand that feeds you and still be fed.
- theknocker 4y ago[dead]
- rayiner 4y agoIt’s funny because back in the 1990s we called NPR “Radio Moscow.”
- colpabar 4y agoI am genuinely confused why stuff like this is such a big deal. Whatever happened to "twitter is a private company" and "twitter isn't the public square" and "if you don't like it just make your own twitter"? Why is twitter so important now? Why does everyone care so much about the blue checks now?
- _dain_ 4y agokto, kovo
- efields 4y agoBc despite Twitter devolving into a completely unusable product, it’s still massively influential. If we let this slide — which we keep doing with just about every change since last summer — the slippery slope turns into a waterslide.
- colpabar 4y agoIdk, it seems to me that if less people took twitter seriously we’d all be better off. If NPR stops tweeting, great! Hopefully all the other journalists leave too. 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.
- Pxtl 4y agoNobody is arguing they don't have the legal right to do this (unlike the people who were screaming about First Amendment Rights before). 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.
- krapp 4y ago>I am genuinely confused why stuff like this is such a big deal. Whatever happened to "twitter is a private company" and "twitter isn't the public square" and "if you don't like it just make your own twitter"? 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.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- bombcar 4y agoNPR has a related but not identical label on Youtube which they don't mind: NPR is an American public broadcast service. Wikipedia https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNyX-f7xE8I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNyX-f7xE8I (example)
- dekhn 4y agothat's because they're an American organization which is a public broadcast service. That label says nothing about their affiliation or their relationship to the state in terms of publishing propaganda. "American" does not mean "The US government"
- mastax 4y agoI think Elon will be fine with that, unfortunately.
- anonuser123456 4y agoNPR is state affiliated media. That doesn’t mean it is state directed propaganda. There is an asymmetry with organizations like NPR vs. say RT however. 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.
- moose_man 4y agoIt's not like NPR shies away from calling out the US government for bad behavior, a lot of their coverage is very critical. It is completely editorially independent.
- anonuser123456 4y agoI’m not saying they are bad journalists. But they are deeply tied to the state. 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.
- moose_man 4y agoNPR receives only 1% from public money. They are closer to being Gimlet than being the BBC. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPR
- anonuser123456 4y agoFrom your link: “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.”
- vancan1ty 4y agoNPR stations on average receive somewhat over 10% of their revenue from government sources [1]. [1] https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2023/03/16/station-revenues_custom-d2f670b6236283f24cac7ab93379d7cc3833501c-s800-c85.webp https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2023/03/16/station-revenues...
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- throw7 4y agoI don't care for NPR or twitter. Twitter actually says in their rules that NPR is not "state affiliated". https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/state-affiliated-china 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.
- ncr100 4y agoYesterday that same page was different, Not mentioning NPR as an exclusion. 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.
- moose_man 4y agoNPR has far more editorial independence than the BBC.
- Pxtl 4y agoThe fact that he flagged NPR before BBC tells us everything we needed to know.
- calvinmorrison 4y agoThey're not state affiliated, they're just 1% funded by the federal government, their child programs are sponsored by PDX which is funded by other federal programs, a series of shadowy foundations (macarthur etc) who are basically storage facilities for out of work government insiders, who all seem to march in lock step to whatever the US elites are thinking. Yeah. it's propaganda. Let's split hairs though
- rabite 4y agoNPR's immediate claim that only 1% of their money comes from federal funds is a bald-faced lie. It's completely contrary to the claims they've made on a regular basis, that are present right this second on their own website. https://www.npr.org/about-npr/178660742/public-radio-finances 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)
- misssocrates 4y agoIt it was 1%, they would drop it to 0%. 1% wouldn't be worth the conflict.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- shagie 4y agoFrom earlier this week - About government and state-affiliated media account labels on Twitter - https://web.archive.org/web/20230402012604/https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/state-affiliated https://web.archive.org/web/20230402012604/https://help.twit... > 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-affiliated 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-affiliated-china https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/state-affilia...
- lvl102 4y agoSeems Elon is mad organizations are not paying for Twitter. Boy did he overpay.
- the_third_wave 4y agoIt would have been pure silliness to accuse NPR of being a "state channel" when Trump was president now wouldn't it? 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.
- clircle 4y agoIf NPR is so concerned about being called stated-affiliated, and if their government funding is really <1% of their revenue, then they should just say "no thank you" to anymore government money.
- archagon 4y agoOr they could just not use Twitter and continue to take the money? I fail to see the problem here.
- clircle 4y agoThey could certainly do that, obvs no problem for me!
- nemo44x 4y agoThat’s clever accounting for a couple reasons. 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.
- VagueMag 4y agoLook, NPR isn't state affiliated because it also gets lots of money from various foundations and corporations which are themselves built using massive amounts of state funding. If you add those extra steps it's totally different! 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.
- cirrus3 4y agoWhat's Twitter?
- byyll 4y agoin this thread: Americans pretend their media couldn't be state biased while RT and Chinese journalists are 100% biased.
- beej71 4y agoIf NPR were state media, I'd expect them to have run a lot of pro-Trump propaganda while Trump was in office. But this I did not see.
- RickJWagner 4y ago[flagged]