This is the same NPR that sold it's subscriber list to the Democratic party. In the US, the government has no business paying for speech, especially partisan speech.
Like most of the rest of the media, NPR is no longer liberal (in respect to protecting personal human rights, economic freedom, observable truth and government institutions) but rather Liberal causes (restricting speech against protected classes, skeptical of free markets, relative truths, tearing down government institutions).
To be fair, this was a long time ago - it's a quick reminder that I am a lot older then I remember - in the late 90s, NPR and CPB member stations were caught selling their membership lists. There was a compromise that preserved CPB and NPR funding in 1999 that explicitly forbid them from doing so:
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1999-jul-21-mn-58123...
> in the late 90s, NPR and CPB member stations were caught selling their membership lists
The article specifically says partner television stations and apparently some sold their lists to Republican campaigns too ("including the 1996 presidential campaign of Sen. Bob Dole").
Your initial statement "NPR that sold it's subscriber list to the Democratic party" doesn't appear to be correct at all if this was the end of the story.
Ok. This seems to be well before my time on the Hill.
Imo, you can't really compare NPR in 1999 with NPR in 2024 - almost everyone who was senior in the organization back then will have already retired 15-20 years ago, and their funding structure today is much more donor and advertiser driven than it ever was in the 1990s.
So you blew the disinformation whistle, find out that it happened, but then argue from statute of limitations that it doesn't matter. But if NPR agreed with the type of argument you're making, then I don't think they would make a point of covering stuff like reparations-related grievances constantly.
Trust comes more easily for individuals / news organizations / political groups when we're all more focused on the framing of arguments on their own merits, with less focus on the in-groups/out-groups of who those arguments are against or who they are supporting.
Asking for a source isn't "blowing the disinformation whistle". It is a healthy thing. We should be skeptical about what we read on anonymous forums. Curiosity to know more and attempts to vet information is a good thing.
Also the source doesn't back up the claim at all. The linked article:
1. Isn't about NPR. It was about some affiliate Corporation for Public Broadcasting TV stations.
2. Points out it wasn't exclusive about selling to democrat campaigns. As mentioned in the article, Bob Dole's campaign was involved.
The post invoked disinformation. And having lived through it - and being a NPR and PBS fan at the time, I can tell you the vast majority of the sales where to democratic organizations before a whistle blower went to the press.
Regardless, know you know. And knowing is half the battle.
You can go straight to the source, i.e. the audited FY2023 financial statement[0]. You're right that revenues from CPB contracts amount to single-digit million dollars (roughly $7mm in 2023) a year, out of >$300mm of total annual revenues; but also from the same document:
> National Public Radio, Inc. (“NPR Inc.”) a nonprofit membership corporation incorporated in 1970 following passage of the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, as amended
> [American Coalition for Public Radio, a wholly-owned subsidiary,] supports the educational mission of publicly funded, noncommercial, educational radio stations, networks, and systems (collectively, “Public Radio”) [...] aims to secure robust federal funding
One can register some legitimate disappointment in a "national public" radio organization, breathed into law by Congress, turning into something rather nakedly partisan. That only 1% of revenues come from tax dollars has little to do with that part.
> That only 1% of revenues come from tax dollars has little to do with that part.
If the public creates something but doesn't fund it very well, that thing has to go out and find other kind of funding, which means they have to sing for their supper. This will most definitely influence their content and reporting, because otherwise they simply don't get to exist at all.
That's a fair point, but the other perspective is that perhaps the organization grew far beyond its original remit, and is now run by its insiders for the benefit of its insiders, a la Robert Conquest's laws. The public not willing to fund it "very well" could be an indication that the organization itself should remain small and bounded by its charter.
$210mm of $323mm, or roughly two thirds, of 2023 expenses incurred by NPR were for employee compensation and benefits. $58mm of the compensation were unrelated to content production and distribution; that is, booked under SG&A and not COGS. $42mm of it was for management. At least 26 individuals made a salary of more than $250k[0]. I suppose their singing voice is quite good, to receive such a supper.
They collect a lot of donation money during their funding drives, it’s obvious they have a fan base. College radio stations also get a funding source via NPR, and they provide a venue for local programming, but yes, colleges are going to be way to the left of…anything really. If people didn’t want NPR, it would be gone already, but the fact that those people aren’t everyone…well, the only kind of news that wouldn’t offend anyone would be as dry as C-Span.
I don’t really have a radio in my car anymore so it’s a moot point, I just stream whatever short newscast they have while driving just to catch up. I get the feeling that a lot of drivers are like this now, and they might be scrambling for a new model to match, and that’s going to cause some content upheaval (and if they didn’t adapt, they wouldn’t exist now, we wouldn’t be talking about them at all).
do you know why "mm" (which to me means "millimeters") is used with $ values? I mean, a house can be $ 250K, a mansion might be $ 1.1M, and our national debt might be $ 34.4T. OK, I understand those.
How does 'mm' equate to 'M'? And if it does equate, why not use 'M' as a simpler way to designate a quantity of "millions" ?
Western finance/accounting industries adopted ‘M’ from the Roman numeral for 1,000 to mean “thousand”. MM (or mm) meaning “thousand thousand”, or a million.
Separately, when the French invented the metric system they used the Greek prefixes for multiples (kilo, derived from the Greek for “thousand”, being the best known). Which is why ‘k’ denotes thousands in most other industries.
Conversely, the metric system used Roman prefixes for submultiples, which is where centi- (same root as Centurion) and milli- come from.
As for SI, I have never liked the 'non-thousands' submultiples e.g. centimeters. I think it's confusing. You have km, m, and mm. factors of 1,000. Seems reasonable. Just like we have F, mF, uF, nF, pF for capacitors.
I think the various units are there because people like 'comfortable' numbers; e.g. people seem to prefer 8.9 cm to 89 mm ('8' is a number between 1 and 9, the most preferred numbers -- because we can count them on our fingers?).
Like most of the rest of the media, NPR is no longer liberal (in respect to protecting personal human rights, economic freedom, observable truth and government institutions) but rather Liberal causes (restricting speech against protected classes, skeptical of free markets, relative truths, tearing down government institutions).