Twitter’s free speech record has been mixed under Elon Musk. One of the Musk-era innovations at Twitter is to name government-affiliated media outlets as “state-affiliated media.”
This designation was applied to Russian and Chinese propaganda outlets by Twitter, as well as the BBC and NPR.
NPR’s poor babies complained so Twitter changed its designations to reflect their needs.
NPR didn’t like this, so NPR decided to take the ball and pout and go home.
NPR made the world aware via an article on NPR. (Ways to get involved in the story. This isn’t tacky at all.
“NPR will cease posting new content to its 52 official Twitter accounts, making it the first major news agency to be silent on social media,” writes David Folkenflik. He is writing in the third person about NPR.
Folkenflik writes that NPR couldn’t handle the “government funded” designation because it implies that NPR may have a bias.
John Lansing, NPR CEO, emailed employees: “It would be disservice to your serious work here to continue sharing it on a platform which is associating federal charter for public media an abandonment of editorial independence and standards.”
Folkenflik continued, “The news organisation says that is inaccurate, misleading, given NPR is private, nonprofit company without editorial independence.” It receives less that 1 percent of its annual budget of $300 million from the federally-funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting.” Okay. We are correct. We are not able to accept that $3 million in federal funds could be considered government funding.
NPR has gloated in the past about its dependence on taxpayer money, which is odd.
Influence Watch reports that NPR claimed that federal funding was essential for public radio’s service of the American public. “NPR’s website emphasizes that local journalism depends on federal funding.”
Musk noted that NPR has since changed its tune.
NPR’s website, which was taken down by the company, stated that federal funding was essential for public radio.
Instead of promoting its “editorial independence on Twitter,” NPR asks listeners to follow it via TikTok — the Chinese Communist Spyware social media platform.
NPR: “We don’t put our journalism on platforms which have shown an interest in undermining …”our credibility
NPR, sorry, we can see through your childish pouting, foot-stomping towards Twitter, and your narcissism when making the story about you. We don’t sympathize with you.
NPR: Do you believe that Twitter’s actions are a threat to your credibility? You are now in the world conservative media has known for many years.
Twitter and big-tech conglomerates and social media outlets can undermine anyone. PJ Media is one of the many conservative outlets. It works this way: Tech giants can withhold money from articles if they see certain words, phrases or topics. We lose money reporting the truth, and that money is used to pay freelance writers and staff. (I won’t play Sarah McLachlan’s “Angel” or tug at your heartstrings by telling sad stories.
Then there are the “fact-checkers”. These are people who call out sources for getting facts wrong but also serve as gatekeepers to The Narrative(tm) by imposing fact checks on items that may be true but not convenient to the left.
