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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   36359 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 10, 2023

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Is the BBC state sponsored media? N. S. Lyons says yes

And while the BBC claims it can operate with nearly three-quarters of its funding coming from the government (whoops, I mean "the public”) and still remain independent in its coverage, this is clearly nonsense. Any organization that relies overwhelming on a patron for its continued financial existence will do what that patron wants. Obviously. And thanks to leaked emails and WhatsApp messages we can peruse a real time record of how the government leveraged this deference during the pandemic, with, for example, an “IMPORTANT ADVISORY” email sent from senior BBC editors to reporters informing them that Downing Street was “asking” if they could please avoid using the word “lockdown” to describe shutting people in up in their homes – and thus only “curbs” and “restrictions” appeared in BBC headlines the next day. This has hardly been limited to pandemic exceptions. As one BBC inside source told The Guardian: “Particularly on the website, our headlines have been determined by calls from Downing Street on a very regular basis.”

Edit: Paging @SSCReader per this earlier discussion

I largely agree, although I still think there’s some value in holding these people to the same standards that they hold their counterparts in Bad Countries like Russia and Iran to. If you were to make this argument as a defense of Russia Today, saying, “The fact that they’re funded by the Russian government is irrelevant; the viewpoint advocated by RT is due to the kinds of people who work for RT, and the people who listen to it,” there is no chance in hell that the NPR audience would consider that defense remotely credible.

So, if they want to believe that “state-affiliated media” is a valid and useful category, then pointing out the obvious parallels is a useful way to humiliate and undermine them. I’m not necessarily saying this is the best approach - I think that maintaining intellectual coherence and actually having good arguments is probably more important than “owning the libs”, although my confidence in that view is fraying - but I do think it’s probably the best thing that Elon Musk can do, because these people are actively trying to destroy him, leveraging every bit of sophistry and media manipulation that they can muster; for that reason, Musk’s only relevant goal right now is to humiliate them, rob them of their power to control the narrative, and demoralize their audience in any way possible.

But NPR's quality is leagues above russian and iranian state media. And the latter are regularly censored on matters of minor corruption in ways the former is rigorously guarded against. There really is a kind of "state-run media" that the soviets had, and that Russia today has, that the US doesn't have today. Trying to pave over that distinction as an 'own' makes your concerns, even when otherwise correct, look silly and easily dismissible.

Musk’s only relevant goal right now is to humiliate them, rob them of their power to control the narrative, and demoralize their audience in any way possible

... It's just musk doing yet another epic musk thing, like "legacy verified. may or may not be notable". Robbing power? NPR continues to post exactly what they did a month ago, the same people as last month trust it or don't trust it, etc. Nobody's been demoralized.

(I didn't expect NPR to ragequit twitter though, that was dumb)

Trying to pave over that distinction as an 'own' makes your concerns, even when otherwise correct, look silly and easily dismissible.

It's correct! You agree it's correct! Letting people who hate you lie to your face and doing nothing, not even calling them liars, because you don't want to look 'silly' is cuckoo.

I agree that [NPR bad], although I'd phrase it more generally in terms of progressives/universa/etc. I do not agree that [NPR is state media implies NPR is bad] is correct. A smart liberal will just respond ... like above, "NPR often criticizes democrats, chinese media doesn't criticize Xi, my standards are reasonable". Is Xi Jinping said the COVID-19 pandemic is over, but the data says otherwise one of the top duckduckgo results for "site:globaltimes.cn Xi Jinping"? It is for biden / npr! Yeah, 50 stalins, but that's not the argument either elon or grandparent comments are making. You can't kill anything by striking at shadows!

Yeah, NPR is offensive to me in two independent ways, one of which is related to it being state-media and one of which is not: First, I don't like its political and cultural biases, which NPR happens to share with almost all other sources of news media regardless of funding source. I don't see NPR as significantly more pro-state than most of its privately-owned peers. Removing the public funding is not likely to improve NPR's reporting in any noticeable way.

But I also strongly object to the fact that I'm forced, at gunpoint, to contribute to the salaries of people who hate me and my values. It's not that state funding is necessarily corruptive of the final product (though it almost certainly is, to at least some extent), so much as the American people should not be forced to subsidize a news network that seems to actively despise them. Subsidies are bad regardless of whether the recipient feels obligated to the subsidizer or not.

These are two bad things about NPR, but only one of them has anything to do with its source of funding.

But I also strongly object to the fact that I'm forced, at gunpoint, to contribute to the salaries of people who hate me and my values

A fact check I skimmed implies that, generously, 23% of NPR's revenue is apparently ~ $309M. US federal govt revenue $4.90 trillion. That's 0.001450408163265306% of federal revenue - if you paid $50k in taxes, 72 cents of it went to NPR. Given half of the US loves NPR's values, "my tax dollars!!" isn't a good objection here. It's better for something like welfare

Who are you to decide how much @thorouglygruntled needs to pay for taxes before he can object? How much of his money goes into other people pockets, by force, before he can be against that?

It's not a numbers argument but a moral one.

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