It's pretty funny that two big dramatic things in #USPolitics right now is Thomas taking vacations with friends (how dare he not disclose that?!) and NPR accepting money from the US government (how dare #Twitter disclose that?!).
Well, funny might not be the right word.
It's sad. But this is Fediverse.
You have both complaints factually backwards.
It's funny because even these news organizations are admitting that they are state-funded--and seriously who even denies that?--as they maintain that the state funding they receive is small.
It's one thing to say we should be clear that the funding is a small part of the budget. It's another to deny that they funding they received doesn't happen.
@volkris it's a play on words. If you were gifted just the books for your university courses from the State and had to pay the tuition and all the rest, you wouldn't say your education is "state-funded", would you?
I absolutely would!
Hell just today I was hearing an ad from a liberal arts college in the US that is very proud of not being funded by the US government at all, including indirectly through students taking out subsidized loans.
Funding is funding. NPR accepts funding from the federal government, so it is federally funded, and there's nothing wrong with pointing that out. They are welcome to stop taking that money, in which case they would no longer be federally funded, but apparently it's worth it for them to take it. And there's nothing strange about that.
It's like, NPR often runs little disclaimers that they accept money from other organizations that they report on, so why not embrace this one too?
And again, it's always this weird thing where they keep trying to say it's such an insignificant amount of money... which fine, then if it is so little, maybe they should stop taking it so that they can have total independence from a government that they would be reporting on.
But so long as NPR and PBS accept government funding, they are main government funded. Again, not there's anything wrong with that.
@volkris "so long as NPR and PBS accept government funding, they are main government funded" is a leap in reasoning, I think.
And if musk wants to brand state-funded organizations, what about Tesla or SpaceX? Tesla made more money out of the credit carbon scam than out of car sales, not to mention all the subsidies, the tax credits granted to Tesla buyers, etc...
It's pure hypocrisy from Musk.
Already in May 2015:
https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-subsidies-20150531-story.html
SpaceX is also government funded. I don't know what that bit of whataboutism really contributes to the debate.
One issue is that SpaceX is not positioning itself as an independent group with reporting that would be holding government accountable. That's the conflict of interest that the press has when it accepts money from the organization it reports on.
Like SpaceX, NPR accepts government funding. Like SpaceX NPR is literally government-funded. There's nothing weird about owning that choice.
@volkris Tesla doesn't. Maybe you're perfectly fine with powerful and rich people creating rules for the others and exempting themselves, like Thomas or Musk, and that's totally your right, but many people are getting tired of being made fools of, hence the outrage on the fediverse which seemed to puzzle you.
When Musk sets up a press agency that takes government money without labeling it, then you'd have a point.
But the conflicts of interest being labeled here just aren't the same between a press agency and a car company.
@volkris then, according to your own logic, if a news organisation should be labelled "state-funded" when it receives 11% of its funds from the State, a Supreme Court Justice should be labelled "GOP-bought" when they have accepted important gifts from a Gop donor. This judge should not only disclose it, but advertize it, no? Because of these same conflicts of interest.
You do know the job of a Supreme Court justice is not to report on the GOP... right?
Like, you know those are different career paths that do completely different jobs in different institutions with different rules and different checks on their roles in society?
But most directly, journalists appeal to the public. Justices appeal to the legal institution and to Congress. Completely different interests involved.
I can go on and on about how illogical that comparison is, about how those apples and oranges are worlds apart.
@volkris the job of a Supreme Court Justice is to interpret the Law. And they do it according to their own beliefs and values, or according to the beliefs of those who bought them. It's politics, same as when a news organization reports on the state. Who they report to is irrelevant. A GOP billionaire can fund a media outlet (like the Mercers with Breitbart) to steer public opinion or buy a judge to influence the laws, the goal is the same and the technicalities you mention do not matter.
@volkris @Alexandrad1
Are we having yet another discussion about "Independent Media"? I agree there's never been such a thing as truly Independent Media.😎
@lola no?
I don't know what you're referring to.
@volkris Of course, the friend often didn't go on the vacations, just paid for them, and they were super lavish and he just happened to be a billionaire with business before the court more than once.
NPR has always, always had some govt subsidy. this is a big reveal now? I think NPR is probably just saying "yes we get some, but it's not enough to cover our budget, and it's not making us prejudicial."
The excuses that NPR has been putting out have been particularly silly.
It just always strikes me that, if the government funding is so miniscule then the journalistic organization should stop accepting it just to kill that as a controversy.
But I guess the contributions must not be so minuscule since they keep accepting the controversy to take the money.
@volkris There's always the hope that a more sympathetic govt might up the donation to NPR and PBS which I think they should. I think they we need public broadcasting.
Right but they can't have it both ways.
Either they are government funded to a significant amount or they're not.
If the funding is significant great! They need to own that they are government funded. If the funding is not significant, then they need to cut it off because it doesn't matter because it's not significant.
They just can't have it both ways.
@volkris even if it's ten percent that's not govt funded, that's govt funding ten percent. 90% still comes privately.
That is not relevant really.
The question is, if they are 10% government funded, is that 10% so important to them?
If it is so important to them, then I guess they are subject to being influenced by the government to keep it. If it is not so important to them, then maybe they ought to not take it.
It just comes down to their choice.
B government funded or don't be government-funded. It's up to them to decide how important that is, and if it is important then they are signing that deal.
They just need to be honest about it.
@volkris They are not subject to being influenced by the government to keep it because they're approach to politics and life has gone on unchanged whatever the administration. It's part of the deal, the understanding, that they'll be objective. They have integrity there. If they seem "too liberal" to you, it's not because they're pleasing the govt--they were the same when Bush and Trump et al were there--it's because in their objective reporting they're seeing the actual state of the USA.
I mean that's nice, but if this money is so irrelevant then they should let it go.
But if it is so important for them to keep, then they are beholden to the government.
You can say whatever you would like, but I'm just talking about the conflict of interest involved in this funding.
@volkris There never has been a conflict of interest. They are supposed to be publicly funded. They were created to be publicly funded. It's a publicly funded media venue. Donations and govt. They do it without acting on any conflict of interest. So there isn't any. The money is relevant--for paying ten per cent of their bills. They are nonprofit.
Of course there's a conflict of interest! They are reporting on the government that is giving them money. That is absolutely a conflict of interest, regardless of whether it was intentional or not.
@volkris But they show no bias. They never have. They do own it--it's in their list of funding sources. But it's not such a significant amount. The reason they downplay it is because they want the public to step up and donate. They don't want to give the impression that "we don't have to donate because the govt has that covered." Regular folks constitute their main source of income.
We can disagree about whether they show bias. IMO they're bias is just dripping from them, but that doesn't actually matter here. We can speak purely about the magnitude of the funding, whether it is significant or not.
Is the funding significant?
Again, questions about how they are trying to spin it in the PR, their strategies to get money out of individual donors, all of that, is beside the simple question, is their level of government funding significant or not?
It's great that they are trying to downplay it. I think it's funny that you acknowledge that representation as a positive thing, but whatever.
It all comes back to the question of whether the level of funding is significant or not.
@volkris I think it'd be great if they were 100% govt funded. They are a little on the liberal side, but then they sometimes give some rightwing operatives a voice too. I think their bias is toward accuracy and accuracy is progressive.
@volkris They're not influenced. It would be evident if they are. It isn't. When I was in the Coast Guard, as a young man, I was "government funded". It didn't affect my vote.
Whether they are or are not is a separate question.
I just focus on the simple fact that they are accepting funding from government, and if the amount is so small has to be irrelevant then why take it at all? Unless it's enough to be significant, in which case why deny it?
They are trying to have it both ways, and we should call them out on that.
If they are accepting a significant amount of government funding then they should own it, they should proudly say that the public is supporting them and they are doing good work with that public funding.
Or if they are not accepting a significant amount of government funding then why accept it at all?
@volkris Also, I read that: Presently, NPR receives funding for less than 1% of its budget directly from the federal government, but receives almost 10% of its budget from federal, state, and local governments indirectly.
So almost ten per cent from this or that govt.
@volkris
In other words:
1- how dare a Supreme Court judge not respect the law ?
2- how dare Twitter categorize a news organization as "state-funded" when it's not?
Some people care about law and order, apparently.