That funding page says 31% of NPR's revenue comes from programming fees from member stations. Some of the 8% "other revenues" and 5% "PRSS contract" sound like they may come from member stations too, so let's call it 40% total from member stations as a best guess.

Member stations themselves receive 13% of their revenue from the CPB (8%) and "federal, state, and local governments" (5%). Let's call that piece about 10% as a best guess of the federal-only part.

40% from member stations, which themselves get 10% from the Feds, is 4% additional from the Feds, bringing up NPR's federal revenue from the 1% they said to an all-in total of 5%.

It seems that NPR's statement is a bit misleading, but not that materially so.

(I'm as surprised as many of you may be, readers -- I thought they were much more federally funded as well.)

My accounting skills are less than amateur, so please point out anything I may have missed. I'm not quite sure if 40% of 10% computation is a sound representation of what's going on.

Those member stations choose to spend that money on NPR content. They are under no obligation (aside from standing contracts) to continue to give that money to NPR in the future. They could opt to license programming from other sources.

That's like saying a federal employee who chooses to donate some of their income to NPR is giving them government funding.

I agree to some extent, but when the federal government is funding similar organizations with a similar mission, they have a strong incentive to work together. Public radio stations are operated and listened to by the kind of people who like NPR programming.

It's more like a federal employee who works for NPR and believes in NPR's mission donating to NPR. Yes, it's not compulsory, but the money is flowing towards entities with closely related missions that have a strong incentive to cooperate.

But again, I agree with you that the voluntary nature of the cooperation makes it quite different from merely some kind of shell game.

An agency that is federally funded through 1 layer of intermediaries is still, in the most practical sense, federally funded.

As the article indicates, those stations receive an average of 8% from CPB, and 5% from Federal/state/local government. The other 87% comes from elsewhere - 43% of it as individual donations.

If they're "government funded" as a result, slap the label on Walmart and McDonalds. They can't operate without Federal funding, either. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/19/walmart-and-mcdonalds-among-...

Are you suggesting that Walmart and McDonald's receive more in government subsidies than they pay in taxes?

Yes, probably. Not only does Walmart receive significant wage and benefit subsidies for its employees, but they also receive income from customers using food stamps. In 2014 that food stamp spending was estimated to be $13 billion, far more than they pay in taxes.

- https://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2014/04/big...

I'm suggest Walmart similarly benefits from indirect Federal funding of their business, in the form of wages/benefits they don't have to give out to their employees receiving public assistance to be able to live.

By this logic there would so many companies that are "federally funded" that the label itself would become irrelevant.

Including SpaceX. Starlink is a cute and a useful consumer product, but most of their balance sheet is defense money or giving rides to nasa.

You could chuck most of Musk's portfolio into that category TBH. What ever company does that dumb tunnel idea and Tesla are the two additional companies that come to mind.

Does the federal government assert editorial control over NPR?

It doesn't matter in the slightest if they do this explicitly. NPR would be stupid to bite the hand that feeds it.

NPR gets 1% of funding directly from the government.

13% of the 31% (4%) they get from member stations comes from the government, for a total of 5%.

The "hand that feeds" NPR is mostly corporate sponsors and member stations' listeners.

39% of NPR revenue comes directly from corporations.

Another 12% comes from foundations (the wealthy donor class).

Only 31% of their revenue comes from member stations and only 13% of that comes from CPB or government sources, which totals up to 4% coming from the government.

So corporate interests fund NPR more than 10x times as much as the government.

Then why did NPR have a ton of content on their website about how absolutely critical federal funding was to their operation?

Because they don't want liberals thinking too hard about how much Archer Daniels Midland pays them.

And threats to their federal funding are also probably great for their pledge drives.

Scroll up the thread; your question is already answered. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35542645

Federal funding isn't critical to NPR, but it's important to the public radio ecosystem of small local stations, who get ~13% of their funding from government.

So evidently NPR disagrees with the "it's just a small percentage, who cares" judgement (until that judgment being on their website becomes embarrassing)

"We don't want our customers being unable to afford our products" is, I suspect, a common opinion among businesses. I'm not sure why you'd find it surprising.

Walmart wants people to spend their food stamps on their groceries. Tesla wants people to use the EV tax credits on their cars. They don't get accused of being government controlled because of it.

So NPR never criticizes the government?

Does that include Fox News when the Ad Council buys ads? Or when cable companies accept infrastructure subsidies?

That would make probably almost all businesses in the US federally funded, as the US government is the single largest employer of people, and those people spend their money at private businesses. The US government purchases things from private businesses.

Come on.

Yeah? Lockheed Martin could be reasonably described as "federally funded".

Sure, but then what's the point of bringing it up at all?

Because that's what the thread is about? If twitter marked lockheed as "government funded organization" I would not care