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NPR temporarily stopped it's twitter accounts in a "state-media" beef with Elon Musk





Here is one that got Elon Musk Riled to go after News outlets like PBS and NPR. In this case it was PBS Newshour citing reports from the Associated Press about the lawsuits he is in related to Tesla.
 
Quite honestly, I don’t see how this move helps NPR. Why not stay on the platform and try to explain why Musk’s assessment isn’t accurate, or use the platform to promote the content they want their listeners to see/hear/interact with?
No news agency or talk outlet or media source should have to employ someone to continually refute questionable, if not borderline ridiculous, statements of the owner of a platform on which participation is entirely voluntary.

They’re better off leaving the platform entirely. Their audience knows where they are.
 
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They’re better off leaving the platform entirely. Their audience knows where they are.
If listeners can't find NPR on the radio or online in 2023 without the help of twitter, they're too stupid to be an NPR listener in the first place. Come on, it's a box with a tuning knob and a volume control. Or, wait for it--six letters separated by a dot There's even an app for those too stupid (or too lazy) to live!

God I miss Sam Kinison on days like today.
 
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And they too will lose a major source of publicity which they sorely need,

But every post they make has this negative label on it. Would you be willing to post here if every post you made had a label on it that said 'The person posting is a liar.' Wouldn't that bother you? Musk is labeling everything PBS and NPR posts is government propaganda, which is not true. Why would anyone accept that? Some might thing there's no such thing as bad publicity, but if you're in the news business, your credibility is all you have. The thing that makes it worse is that Musk has no evidence. At least when the old twitter labeled posts as misinformation, they explained why.
 
But every post they make has this negative label on it. Would you be willing to post here if every post you made had a label on it that said 'The person posting is a liar.' Wouldn't that bother you? Musk is labeling everything PBS and NPR posts is government propaganda, which is not true. Why would anyone accept that?
He’s playing a dumb game and will win the dumb prize of decreased user participation on a platform he wasted $40B on.
 
Quite honestly, I don’t see how this move helps NPR. Why not stay on the platform and try to explain why Musk’s assessment isn’t accurate, or use the platform to promote the content they want their listeners to see/hear/interact with?

They did that a week ago. They tried to explain factually to him directly how and why he's wrong. He doesn't care. You don't negotiate with a terrorist or argue with a baboon. They're going back to doing their job and distributing everywhere except twitter. No great loss.
 
But every post they make has this negative label on it. Would you be willing to post here if every post you made had a label on it that said 'The person posting is a liar.' Wouldn't that bother you? Musk is labeling everything PBS and NPR posts is government propaganda, which is not true. Why would anyone accept that? Some might thing there's no such thing as bad publicity, but if you're in the news business, your credibility is all you have. The thing that makes it worse is that Musk has no evidence. At least when the old twitter labeled posts as misinformation, they explained why.
Big A, in my lifetime, I've watched Democratic leaders get tarnished by people like Elon. ******bags like Rush, G. Gordon Liddy, Rove, Swift Boaters, etc. And 'nice' guys like Dukakis, Gore, and that worthless POS John Kerry all smile and take it all in stride. It didn't bother them. And like true Democratic leaders, all sank like the Edmund Fitzgerald (too soon?). OK, the Titanic.

Thankfully NPR isn't going along with this. They don't control Musk's platform, and they actually own one of their own, and have since 1970.

And Elon spending $40 Billion and making his enterprise worth 20 Billion tells me he fits in perfectly with other expert broadcasters like Audacy, Cumulus, and iHeart. They're all magicians. At least they sure know how to make money disappear.
 
One thing worth mentioning… if you look up NPR videos on YouTube, it comes up with a message that says “NPR is an American Public Broadcast Service.” That’s a little different than what you see on Twitter, but is it that different? Is the outrage happening because it’s coming from Elon Musk? Nobody seems to care that YouTube added a disclaimer (of sorts).
 
In the meantime alienating the customers who are predisposed to buy electric cars and solar panels. How many trumpists do that?
At the same time all the major automakers are going right to electric cars, no less! It’s the ultimate glass jaw getting pulverized back to sand.
 
One thing worth mentioning… if you look up NPR videos on YouTube, it comes up with a message that says “NPR is an American Public Broadcast Service.” That’s a little different than what you see on Twitter, but is it that different? Is the outrage happening because it’s coming from Elon Musk? Nobody seems to care that YouTube added a disclaimer (of sorts).

Here is what twitter is saying:

Government-funded media is defined as outlets where the government provides some or all of the outlet’s funding and may have varying degrees of government involvement over editorial content.

That is not the same thing as an American public broadcasting service. The government has NO control over NPR's editorial content. Saying that it does is a lie. That also damages NPR's credibility. There were great pains taken in the creation of public broadcasting in general and NPR in particular to PREVENT the government from controlling what they said. Meanwhile, VOA gets all of its funding from the government, AND has government control over editorial content, and they don't have this label.

UNDERSTAND?
 
Big A, in my lifetime, I've watched Democratic leaders get tarnished by people like Elon. ******bags like Rush, G. Gordon Liddy, Rove, Swift Boaters, etc. And 'nice' guys like Dukakis, Gore, and that worthless POS John Kerry all smile and take it all in stride. It didn't bother them. And like true Democratic leaders, all sank like the Edmund Fitzgerald (too soon?). OK, the Titanic.

Thankfully NPR isn't going along with this. They don't control Musk's platform, and they actually own one of their own, and have since 1970.

And Elon spending $40 Billion and making his enterprise worth 20 Billion tells me he fits in perfectly with other expert broadcasters like Audacy, Cumulus, and iHeart. They're all magicians. At least they sure know how to make money disappear.
Hopefully the platform can disappear altogether as well. It’d be the best thing for society.
 
Here is what twitter is saying:



That is not the same thing as an American public broadcasting service. The government has NO control over NPR's editorial content. Saying that it does is a lie. That also damages NPR's credibility. There were great pains taken in the creation of public broadcasting in general and NPR in particular to PREVENT the government from controlling what they said. Meanwhile, VOA gets all of its funding from the government, AND has government control over editorial content, and they don't have this label.

UNDERSTAND?
My guess is that the Fordranger guy is either playing you, or is addicted to the Kool Aid the angertainment people spoon feed him or her.

Oh, the person who led the way in creating the Corporation for Public Broadcasting which got NPR and PBS started?
None other than that non-wuss Democrat Lyndon Johnson. A Senator and President who knew how the sausage was made, and would have picked guys like Rush, Lee Atwater, and all those Swift Boaters out of his stool.
 
My guess is that the Fordranger guy is either playing you, or is addicted to the Kool Aid the angertainment people spoon feed him or her.

Oh, the person who led the way in creating the Corporation for Public Broadcasting which got NPR and PBS started?
None other than that non-wuss Democrat Lyndon Johnson. A Senator and President who knew how the sausage was made, and would have picked guys like Rush, Lee Atwater, and all those Swift Boaters out of his stool.
This board is hilarious sometimes. It’s a perfectly legitimate question. And frankly, from some of the reporting I’ve actually seen and heard from NPR, it amazes me that they have the audience that they do. And I say this as someone who voted Democratic in 2020 (to the surprise of most people here I’m sure).
 
This board is hilarious sometimes. It’s a perfectly legitimate question. And frankly, from some of the reporting I’ve actually seen and heard from NPR, it amazes me that they have the audience that they do. And I say this as someone who voted Democratic in 2020 (to the surprise of most people here I’m sure).
And I'm a left winger who isn't always well liked by people who supposedly vote my way. I'm more in the Bill Maher camp I guess, and some on the left don't like the hard truths that get said by him.
 
This board is hilarious sometimes. It’s a perfectly legitimate question. And frankly, from some of the reporting I’ve actually seen and heard from NPR, it amazes me that they have the audience that they do. And I say this as someone who voted Democratic in 2020 (to the surprise of most people here I’m sure).

None of that reporting reflected government involvement in editorial content, right? That's what we're talking about here.

Meanwhile you claim there's no difference between the label on YouTube and the label on Twitter. Do you still believe that?
 
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None of that reporting reflected government involvement in editorial content, right? That's what we're talking about here.

Meanwhile you claim there's no difference between the label on YouTube and the label on Twitter. Do you still believe that?
Sure, there is a difference, but they’re still funded partially from taxpayer money. For that reason, one could see why they get lumped in with “state” media (not as bad as CBC, which receives over 1.2 billion dollars per year). I don’t see it being too much of an issue for NPR though, as they’ve got a strong base of listeners and followers (a very loyal following, I might add). Personally, I’m not a fan of their content, but a label does nothing to dissuade me from checking out their content if I wanted to. They’re working hard to make this about facts, but this seems more like an attempt to push back against Elon Musk.
 
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