NPR stopped using TWA after getting a government funded media label

NPR has had a hard time with Twitter – and the public broadcaster has a tough time with the media, and the New York Times has criticized Twitter

If other media outlets follow in NPR’s footsteps, the move will undermine one of those key selling points, namely that of a central hub for news. The public is mostly funded by the UK’s BBC, which is why it has faced backlash over being labelled a government funded media outlet.

In a final series of tweets — its first in over a week — NPR noted other places its work can be found, including through its app and newsletters, as well as on other social media platforms.

In an email to NPR staff, Lansing said that millions of Americans depend on NPR and their local public radio stations for fact-based, independent, public service journalism. “It would be a disservice to the serious work you all do here to continue to share it on a platform that is associating the federal charter for public media with an abandoning of editorial independence or standards.”

In the new interview with the journalist, Musk almost appeared to be trying to compromise. He said Twitter would adjust its labels for the British public broadcaster to “publicly funded.”

It is the latest example of Musk having a hard time with the media. Twitter earlier this month also targeted the New York Times by removing the blue verification checkmark from its main account, after previously pledging to remove checks from all users verified under Twitter’s legacy system. Some journalists were upset when the platform restricted links from users to a popular newsletter platform.

Meanwhile, Twitter also appears to have removed some restrictions on Russian government accounts that had been put in place following the outset of Russia’s war in Ukraine. All news is a form of propaganda. Let people decide for themselves,” Musk said in a tweet commenting on the decision Sunday.

As Musk tries to shore up his business, he has said he had four months to live and that it was on the verge of bankruptcy.

Massive cuts to the company’s workforce have caused an exodus of advertisers who are concerned about increased hate speech. Musk has had a hard time persuading users to pay $8 per month for his subscription service.

It is not fun at all, and sometimes it can be pain, but the billionaire CEO suggested that some advertisers were returning to the platform.

The public radio network was not prepared for last week’s decision by Twitter. NPR tech reporter Bobby Allyn asked how NPR functioned, and when he was queried by the owner of Twitter, he asked how it worked. Musk allowed that he may have messed it up.

“At this point I have lost my faith in the decision-making at Twitter,” he says. I would need to know if it can be trusted again.

Leaves at Twitter: Government funded media-label for the National Public Radio Research Network (NPR), former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and a host of public radio interviews with Musk

PBS, which also receives money from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and the BBC, which is funded by a uniform license fee charged to British television viewers, are among those whose Twitter accounts were given the same designation.

Musk was asked if the “publicly funded” label would apply to NPR. The change was not made before the decision was made.

The exchange shows Musk as conciliatory and erratic. He also said that he’s sleeping on a couch at work, that he followed through on his promise to purchase Twitter only because a judge forced him to, and that he should stop tweeting after 3 a.m.

The whole point is not whether or not we are government funded. Even if we were not government funded, the point is still the same: independence, because all journalism has revenue.

There is no government influence on NPR’s board. There have been times when the network has tangled with both Democrats and Republicans. For example, NPR joined with other media organizations to press the Obama administration for access to closed hearings involving detainees held by U.S. authorities at Guantanamo Bay. “All Things Considered” host Mary Louise Kelly stood her ground when she questioned then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo about then-president Donald Trump’s actions in Ukraine.

Most of NPR’s funding comes from corporate and individual supporters and grants. It also receives significant programming fees from member stations. Those stations, in turn, receive about 13 percent of their funds from the CPB and other state and federal government sources.

At least three public radio stations preceded NPR to the exits at Twitter: Member stations KCRW in Santa Monica, Calif., WESA in Pittsburgh and WEKU, which serves central and eastern Kentucky.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/04/12/1169269161/npr-leaves-twitter-government-funded-media-label

PEN and the Voice of America: The Labelling of a Micro-Blogging Site as a State-Funded Media Organization with Editorial Independence

Journalism and freedom-of-speech groups have condemned Twitter’s labels, including PEN, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and the Committee to Protect Journalists.

State- financed media organizations with editorial independence, like theBBC in the UK or NPR in the US, for example, are not defined as state-affiliated media for the purposes of this policy.

That language has now been removed. NPR is one of several media that have recently been labeled as government funded. The U.S. Agency for Global Media has Voice of America as part of it. The editorial independence from government officials is part of the law.

“The label ‘government funded’ is potentially misleading and could be construed as also ‘government-controlled’ – which VOA is most certainly not,” VOA spokesperson Bridget Serchak said in a statement to NPR.

VOA will keep raising the issue of the distinction between the news coverage and its use of the word “um” in its talks with the micro-blogging site.

When pressed for how he justifies the disclaimer considering NPR receives meager funding from the government and has complete editorial independence, Musk veered into conspiratorial territory.

Musk wrote to Allyn that if she thought the government had no influence over the entity they were funding, then she had been spending too much time in the “Kilo-Aid”.

Musk’s push to label the network even ran afoul of the site’s own rules. A former executive who worked on the guidelines told NPR that they were decided on if the outlet had editorial freedom. The former executive said the labels were meant to give users an idea of whether or not the tweet they are seeing is propaganda.

The messy deliberations on display in Musk’s email exchanges over labeling NPR’s account are in line with his impulsive leadership style. His changes to the platform are sometimes announced in a way that is not uncommon, with both promise and reversal. Musk likes to troll like, so his statements are more likely to turn out to be jokes. He has announced that the effective date for the change in the check mark verification system is April 20. The date is an inside joke among people who smoke or consume marijuana.

Disclosure: This story was reported and written by NPR Media Correspondent David Folkenflik and edited by Acting Chief Business Editor Emily Kopp and Managing Editor Vickie Walton-James. NPR’s Bobby Allyn and Mary Yang contributed to this story. Under NPR’s protocol for reporting on itself, no corporate official or news executive reviewed this story before it was posted publicly.