NPR isn’t biased because of its government funding
Conn Carroll
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Elon Musk has once again succeeded in driving more users away from Twitter, this time alienating NPR by first assigning it a “state-affiliated media” label before downgrading it to “government-funded.”
NPR CEO John Lansing informed NPR staff of the decision Wednesday morning before telling NPR’s media reporter David Folkenflik, “I would never have our content go anywhere that would risk our credibility.”
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Both sides are being ridiculous.
If you are on Twitter consuming political news, your mind was made up about NPR’s credibility as a news source long before Musk decided to put any label on it. This is an organization, after all, that refused to cover the Hunter Biden laptop story because it took it upon itself to label the story a pure distraction. NPR was never so shy when it came to the family members of Republican candidates.
That said, how is NPR any more or less biased toward Democrats than non-government-funded outlets such as the New York Times or the Washington Post, NBC News, CBS News, ABC News, or USA Today?
Is NPR’s government funding really what is driving its political bias? I see no evidence to think so. And what do the “state-affiliated media” or “government-funded media” labels really accomplish? If NPR is “state-affiliated” and Donald Trump is president, does that mean Trump controls NPR’s editorial content? Of course not.
So then what is the point of the label except to annoy NPR?
I’m not going to defend every reporter at NPR. There are certainly some terribly biased people over there, and their work is obvious for what it is. But they also have fair and decent reporters who make my news feed better. NPR will reportedly leave it up to its reporters to decide if they will keep using Twitter. I hope they all do. Twitter can use all the users it can get.