So can the Federal Government exert pressure through "financial resources" or "indirect political pressure", per the Twitter policy? You bet. Does the NPR model naturally align itself to bigger government with more grant-making power? Definitely.
I think Twitter could have come down on either side. It's a grey area. But how could the NPR story fail to mention the $465 million?
See also https://www.npr.org/about-npr/178660742/public-radio-finance... where NPR makes the opposite argument, namely, that "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."
First, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) receives ~$128M for "Public Radio Station and Programming Grants", not NPR or NPR affiliated stations [1].
Second, CPB uses that money for grants to local stations, which then license content from NPR. This model was a direct result of NPR's funding crisis in the 1980's. Additionally, the amount a local station gets from the CPB depends on how large it is, with the average station only receiving 7.2% percent of its annual revenue from CPB grants [1]. Small rural stations get a much larger percent -- and most probably wouldn't be able to function without it hence NPR's "Federal funding is essential to public radio's service" statement.
I think people are arguing that is label makes sense are really losing the thread of the point of the label. Is it possible for the Federal government to exert pressure on the organization? Honestly, that's true of any person or organization that has any financial dealings that touch the US. It's really hard to argue in good faith that NPR is a mouth piece of the state like RT or Xinhua.
As with the "Twitter Files" this is just an attempt to normalize right-wing conspiracy theory under the facade of neutrality.
So NPR hires former IC members and then utilizes them to downplay or hype a story? I mean “give an analysis”…
A case quick case study on this for Wisconsin I did recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35294972&p=2#35295817
... in summary, our station seems to be about 1/3 funded directly by the the government (state+federal). It's obviously simpleminded to claim that NPR is directly and obviously a stooge of the federal government, but trying to deflect the question with the "99% non-federal funds" doesn't convince me of anything.
"State-affiliated" still seems highly inaccurate. Tesla get 3% of its revenue from government carbon credits. Are they labeling Tesla as state-affiliated?
The US petroleum industry as a whole (and the few individual companies I follow closely) receive a higher percentage of their income as subsidies from the US federal government than NPR does.
By this logic, they are more likely to yield to pressure from the US government than NPR and yet Twitter does not label their accounts as "government affiliated."
Tesla received $7.5B in federal subsidies last year on $81.4B of revenue. That's about 8 percentage points more federal funding than NPR received. Maybe we should label Tesla's twitter account as "government affiliated."
I can't find recent data, but through 2015, SpaceX received $4.9B in government subsidies, and SolarCity received $497M in direct federal subsidies. Maybe they should also be labeled "government affiliated."
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 for example, are not defined as state-affiliated media for the
purposes of this policy.
> Disclosure: This story was reported and written by NPR Media Correspondent David Folkenflik and edited by Acting Chief Business Editor Emily Kopp. Under NPR's protocol for reporting on itself, no corporate official or news executive reviewed this story before it was posted publicly.
https://www.npr.org/2023/02/22/1158710498/npr-layoffs-2023
This is a protocol specifically on "reporting on [themselves]" but it's a solid-ish example of the org not being a top-down controlled entity, and indeed, of making sure the org can report transparently on itself. NPR feels extremely not government controlled.
I am not British and don't have a good feel for the BBC, though I am fairly confident NPR can do government hit stories and such.
Q: At what point is Twitter itself a source of misinformation, or disinformation?
Q: At what point Could this labeling trigger reasonable legal action, around Twitter's apparent conscientious selective moderation => making Twitter "responsible" for everyone's tweets, by NPR?
NPR was literally created by an act of congress. You can't be honest and say in good faith it's not state affiliated.
> 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.
https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/state-affilia...
Twitter directly states that the label refers to editorial control, and that even state funded outlets where the state does not exercise editorial control will not get the label (the BBC is explicitly given as an example.)
So, no, your explanation of the labeling logic is not accurate.
So... your point is... congress once gave them a fair chunk of change and now they don't but that doesn't matter because they once gave them a lot of cash. That's like saying my parents still control me because they gave me an allowance in jr. high school.
Distribution is also clearly not controlled by the state, production is less clear but probably still not materially so.
Which leaves “state editorial control” as the likely cause of this. Many people would say the state doesn’t have editorial control of NPR, many others would say it does. Editorial influence likewise.
See also https://www.npr.org/about-npr/178660742/public-radio-finance... where NPR makes the opposite argument, namely, that "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."
In any case, Federal funding is just one clause of the “state controlled media” qualification and the argument for or against NPR receiving this status largely rests on the other clause that is concerned with state editorial control. This is a more subjective question and one that Elon (and thus Twitter) appears to have answered in the affirmative.
RT, Press TV, the Global Times
And I'm not trying to be cute here. If you're only looking at Western state media (all that you've listed) then you're getting a very one-sided view of the world.
And it's not just US institutions, they label the Al Jazeera English channel with "Al Jazeera is funded in whole or in part by the Qatari government."
I think what I'm saying is, if YouTube believed NPR got all of it's funding from the US Government, it would label it differently than it does. And YouTube's labeling seems to be incomplete (otherwise certainly the department of defense channel would have a label.) Which leads to my conclusion... maybe you shouldn't depend on YouTube as the arbiter of what is and what isn't funded by various governments.
> In response to an NPR email for this story seeking comment and requesting details about what in particular might have led to the new designation, the company's press account auto-replied with a poop emoji...
Sigh.
"How state-affiliated media accounts are defined
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."
“Public Radio and 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) that make up an important part of a diverse revenue mix that includes listener support, corporate sponsorship and grants. Stations, in turn, draw on this mix of public and privately sourced revenue to pay NPR and other public radio producers for their programming.
These station programming fees comprise a significant portion of NPR's largest source of revenue. The loss of federal funding would undermine the stations' ability to pay NPR for programming, thereby weakening the institution.”
[0] https://www.npr.org/about-npr/178660742/public-radio-finance...