By: KEVIN JOLLY
Staff Writer
Radio giant NPR announced on April 12 its official quitting of Twitter along with its other owned accounts. NPR gave a few different reasons why they decided to pull out of the social media site, but the main one was that the Twitter CEO, Elon Musk, had made the decision to give NPR’s various accounts the “State-Affiliated Media” label; a title usually given to accounts owned by state media from authoritarian countries. When NPR inquired the new Twitter CEO about the label, Musk responded that he may have been in the wrong and later changed the label from “State-Affiliated Media” to “Government-Funded Media”. He also claimed that he may change the label further to “Publicly Funded”, but NPR owners had already made their decision. One NPR reporter emailed Musk about his reaction to NPR’s pulling out, and a few hours later Musk tweeted out the reporter’s email to his millions of followers as a CEO, along with the inflammatory message, “Defund @NPR”. After this ordeal, NPR made the official announcement that the “Government-Funded Media” label along with another questionable decision-making from leadership had made Twitter an untrustworthy, erratic, and blatantly hostile partner to host NPR’s content and that remaining on the platform would do too much damage to NPR’s credibility as a brand. NPR sent a message to their staff, “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.” For this article, let’s examine whether the initial claim from Musk that NPR is “State-Affiliated” or even “Government-Funded” has any merit, and what the whole situation means for American media.
So what are the criteria for making something “State-Affiliated Media”? Twitter offers its definition as being “…outlets where the state exercises control over editorial content through financial resources, direct or indirect political pressures, and/or control over production and distribution.” The label has previously been reserved for notorious examples of state media like those from Russia or China which are controlled and produced by the government, but under the new leadership from Musk, Twitter has been applying the label much more liberally. The label acts as a disclaimer of sorts, that you should take what you’re about to read with a grain of salt, which is why NPR responded so strongly. NPR’s content being ranked among authoritarian media and audiences being warned to discredit NPR’s content on a site as massive as Twitter inflicts catastrophic damage to NPR’s brand and reputation. In an industry like news and media where trustworthiness is everything, it shouldn’t be understated how substantially a label like “State-Affiliated Media” can ruin public appearance. But Twitter gives us a decent outline of how we can measure NPR in terms of state control.
The initial claim was that NPR was “State-Affiliated”, which doesn’t hold up well, considering NPR is a private corporation, completely independent and free from direct government influence by law. Twitter knew just as well how outlandish the label was too, quickly changing the claim to NPR instead of being “Government-Funded” which implies that NPR is indirectly influenced financially through federal money. This label is more seemingly believable but still misleading and unfactual. It is true that NPR was heavily involved with and funded by federal powers throughout the 70s and 80s, but after a financial crisis and consequent modification of relations in the 90s, NPR now receives less than 1% of its $300 million budget from CPB (Corporation for Public Broadcasting). This alone proves the allegation’s integrity as shaky, but even more so with the context that CPB funding is commonplace and the norm for almost all radio and other public media all over the US, with CPB granting support to over 1,500 local media stations, usually much more than just 1% too. Unless the allegation is that almost all media in the entire US is “Government-Funded”, such a small amount of funding from CPB can’t be enough to warrant such a label. In fact, as a non-profit, the majority of NPR’s budget comes from public donations to local stations. NPR isn’t exactly just an independent radio station, but rather the organizer of their membership of over 50 local stations. For example, if you personally are a listener or donate to NPR, chances are you probably actually listen to or donate to KVPR, which is our local radio affiliated with NPR for central California, not necessarily NPR itself, although they do present national radio too. Whether you’re a fan of NPR or not, whether you think it’s biased, the claim that NPR is run by or influenced financially by the state is blatantly false.