NPR Quits Twitter After Musk Labels Them Government-Funded Media (PBS Now Joins Them)

I have to admit I find this entire thing amusing. NPR should have been defunded decades ago. It’s purely leftist propaganda. And don’t even get me started on the whole “NPR voice inflection” thing. It makes my skin crawl with how fake it is.

To start our story, NPR just had to lay off a whole bunch of people in late March: NPR cancels 4 podcasts amid major layoffs

“We literally are fighting to secure the future of NPR at this very moment by restructuring our cost structure. It’s that important,” NPR chief executive John Lansing said in an interview. “It’s existential.”

NPR’s financial woes can be traced mainly to advertisers’ growing reluctance to spend money, particularly on podcasting, in an uncertain economy. Other media outlets, including Gannett, CNN and Vox Media, and tech powerhouses such as Amazon, Google and Meta also have had layoffs in recent months.

The easy money is drying up. Whether it’s FTX allegedly laundering money through Ukraine or one of the many “connected” banks that have recently “failed,” the days of easy-flowing money are coming to an end. We are going to see the impact of that all over and in places you might not expect.

NPR Refused To Cover Hunter Biden Laptop Story In October 2020

So you might remember that in October 2020 NPR refused to cover the Hunter Biden laptop story. This was the reason they gave at the time.

Why didn’t they report on the Hunter Biden story? Here are some possibilities.

• They were too stupid to see the Hunter Biden story was real.
• They are compromised and were ordered not to cover the story.
• They are such ideologues they couldn’t even impartially investigate and report on the story.

It’s one of the three. Which one do you think they would claim?

Twitter Labels NPR Government-funded Media

Elon Musk recently slapped a label on NPR (and the BBC, PBS, etc.) indicating that they are state-funded or state-run media. He’s changed the label a few times but here’s how it reads this morning.

I have to laugh because every time I see that label, it looks like a little toilet icon next to it. LOL!

Here’s what NPR said about their quitting: NPR quits Twitter after being falsely labeled as ‘state-affiliated media’. The bolded part is mine and my favorite line of all.

NPR will no longer post fresh content to its 52 official Twitter feeds, becoming the first major news organization to go silent on the social media platform. In explaining its decision, NPR cited Twitter’s decision to first label the network “state-affiliated media,” the same term it uses for propaganda outlets in Russia, China and other autocratic countries.

The decision by Twitter last week took the public radio network off guard. When queried by NPR tech reporter Bobby Allyn, Twitter owner Elon Musk asked how NPR functioned. Musk allowed that he might have gotten it wrong.

Twitter then revised its label on NPR’s account to “government-funded media.” The news organization says that is inaccurate and misleading, given that NPR is a private, nonprofit company with editorial independence. It receives less than 1 percent of its $300 million annual budget from the federally funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

By going silent on Twitter, NPR’s chief executive says the network is protecting its credibility and its ability to produce journalism without “a shadow of negativity.”

“The downside, whatever the downside, doesn’t change that fact,” NPR CEO John Lansing said in an interview. “I would never have our content go anywhere that would risk our credibility.”

Think about how out of touch you have to be at NPR to not realize what you are in the eyes of many Americans.

PBS has decided to join NPR in quitting Twitter to defend the honor of their “independent” organization. Here are some more articles related to all this.

• After Earning ‘State-Affiliated Media’ Label On Twitter, NPR Leaves For Chinese State-Affiliated TikTok from The Federalist
• Publicly Funded PBS Joins NPR In Quitting Twitter from Zero Hedge

Have you ever noticed the PBS logo is made up of NPCs? Or is it the other way around? Whichever it is, the NPC idea fits.

If NPR and PBS have true value, then they should be able to easily prove it in the marketplace of ideas. Earn your way like the rest of us have had to our entire lives.