That could apply to a huge portion of all businesses on Twitter. How many of the F500 have benefitted from a gov't bailout or some other taxpayer subsidy. No one is really squeaky clean on this front.

Most F500 companies aren’t media companies, and the interests motivating any public statements they make are well understood by the public.

How many media companies got PPP loans? Probably all of them, right?

This is an excellent point. If you review my comment history I think you’ll find some of my most downvoted comments being about how rolling out the biggest infringements upon civil liberties since WWII, and then creating a financing program that media companies rely upon to survive, was one of the most corrupt things I’d seen during my life time.

Well, maybe.

Can you name any media company being truly independent? Or is any owner excluded from the potential list of dependencies?

I'm discussing government independence specifically, not whether companies are beholden to someone else.

Obviously all businesses are beholden to someone. Yes you should always have an interest in what/who companies are beholden to.

There's a reason Nike and Apple don't chastise the Chinese government.

Twitter is funny in this regard, why is Musk so keen on Russia and China?

To call NPR state-affiliated media to abuse the term to the point of incoherence. You may as well, by your own logic, say every media company ultimately has at least one dollar that's passed through the government and is thus state-affiliated. Thus they all deserve the label. Thus the label is meaningless, which incidentally, appears to be the point of this authoritarian-apolgistic nonsense.

It's continued abuse of language in the hopes of making it impossible for people to determine what's true -- in the hopes of making people give up even caring about facts.

I like how, nowhere in that entire two paragraphs were you able to explain why it's not state-affiliated when its funded by the government. All you did was try to shove the label off because other media is possibly also funded the same way.

I’ve left a number of comments on this thread arguing why this is not a reasonable comparison and so have other people. And you specifically were bringing up the topic of funding, so I was avoiding going off the rails too much.

If I have understood you correctly you were concerned by funding being cut off. Why would that not be a concern with other media, not receiving any government funds, as well? I also do not really understand why you are more concerned with government dependencies than with any other dependencies. Actually I think the latter dependencies might be the stronger influence on a media company, especially if it is a large part of the budget.

They do. If after 50 years of existence you can't come up with a single example of government interference then they're independent.

NPR continuing to publish programming critical of Trump during the Trump presidency, is a pretty strong indication they have editorial independence.

Heck, Voice of America also did the same and they are definitely state affiliated.

not necessarily. It just means it's not as bad as it would be in China or Russia.

NPR knew the democrats would be back in power in a couple of years...they weren't risking much by being anti-Trump. But they did gain goodwill from the democrats, which can extend them support every time they are in power.

I am not arguing for or against either side, I am just pointing out a flaw in your logic.

I think NPR is so solidly on the democrats side, that it's hard to distinguish what came first: the chicken or the egg?

> I am not arguing for or against either side, I am just pointing out a flaw in your logic.

I do not see a flaw in their logic:

> NPR continuing to publish programming critical of Trump during the Trump presidency, is a pretty strong indication they have editorial independence.

That is a strong indicator. An indicator that may not convince everyone by itself, but I do not see any flaw in their logic.

Threats were made by the Trump admin when NPR had unfavorable reporting.

'Trump proposes eliminating federal funding for PBS, NPR' https://thehill.com/homenews/media/373434-trump-proposes-eli...

They've clearly stepped it up after his term, so, no not really.