Musk admits NPR isn’t state-affiliated after asking questions he might have Googled

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Musk admits NPR isn’t state-affiliated after asking questions he might have Googled


NPR's Twitter profile with the newly applied
Enlarge / NPR’s Twitter profile as of April 9, 2023.

When Elon Musk slapped NPR’s Twitter account with a “US state-affiliated media” label final week, it shortly turned clear he did not know a lot about how NPR operates or the way it’s funded. After admitting the state-affiliated label was flawed, Musk modified NPR’s tag yesterday to “Government Funded Media”—though NPR will get lower than 1 p.c of its annual funding instantly from the US authorities.

The state-affiliated tag took NPR and lots of others abruptly, partially as a result of it contradicted Twitter’s personal coverage that cited NPR and the BBC as examples of state-financed media organizations that retain editorial independence. Twitter has traditionally utilized its state-affiliated tag to state-controlled information organizations like Russia’s RT and China’s Xinhua.

Twitter modified its coverage to take away the reference to editorial independence at NPR and the BBC, however did not scrub the previous language from one other Twitter assist web page that also describes each NPR and the BBC as editorially impartial. The BBC’s principal Twitter account can be newly labeled as “Government Funded Media” after beforehand having no label.

In emails with NPR reporter Bobby Allyn, Musk requested primary questions that he might have discovered solutions to with a fast Internet search. “He did not appear to grasp the distinction between public media and state-controlled media,” Allyn mentioned Friday in an interview with Mary Louise Kelly on the present All Things Considered.

Allyn continued:

He requested me at one level, quote, “what is the breakdown of NPR’s annual funding?” And he requested, “who appoints management at NPR?” These are questions you will get by Googling, however for some cause he wished to ask me. And additionally, let’s take a second and pause on these questions, Mary Louise, as a result of he made a serious coverage choice, proper? And after doing so, he’s simply now asking for the fundamental information. This will not be precisely how most CEOs in America function. Anyway, I answered his questions. About 1 p.c of NPR’s price range is from federal grants, and an impartial board appoints NPR’s CEO, who picks management.

Musk: Label “might not be accurate”

Musk might have gotten the NPR funding data from this NPR web page, which says, “On common, lower than 1 p.c of NPR’s annual working price range comes within the type of grants from CPB [Corporation for Public Broadcasting] and federal companies and departments.”

Corporate sponsorships are the highest contributor to NPR funding, accounting for 39 p.c of common annual income between 2018 and 2022. NPR will get one other 31 p.c of its funding in programming charges from member organizations. Federal funding not directly contributes to the latter class as a result of the publicly funded CPB supplies annual grants to public radio stations that pay NPR for programming.

Musk’s emails have been additional detailed in an article by Allyn. After Allyn informed Musk that NPR will get just one p.c of its cash from the federal government, Musk replied, “Well, then we should always repair it.”

“The working precept at new Twitter is just truthful and equal therapy, so if we label non-US accounts as govt, then we should always do the identical for US, nevertheless it appears like that may not be correct right here,” Musk wrote in one other e mail to Allyn.

NPR’s present government-funded label hyperlinks to Twitter’s coverage, which incorporates the Twitter’s definition of state-affiliated media accounts however would not present a definition of government-funded.

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