NPR's official Twitter feeds have gone silent. The news organization cites the social media platform's decision to label NPR as "state-affiliated media."
To be clear, outlets like NPR are absolutely state-affiliated media. For example, in 2000 NPR and CNN allowed the US Army’s Psychological Operations division to place military members in the newsroom as interns as part of a media training program:
I’m fairly certain that if a Russian or Chinese media company had a history of hosting military psyops people in its newsroom, or if hired ex-military and ex-intelligence officers as commentators, it’d get the ‘state-affiliated’ label on platforms like Youtube, Facebook, Twitter etc. without any controversy.
To be clear, outlets like NPR are absolutely state-affiliated media. For example, in 2000 NPR and CNN allowed the US Army’s Psychological Operations division to place military members in the newsroom as interns as part of a media training program:
I’m fairly certain that if a Russian or Chinese media company had a history of hosting military psyops people in its newsroom, or if hired ex-military and ex-intelligence officers as commentators, it’d get the ‘state-affiliated’ label on platforms like Youtube, Facebook, Twitter etc. without any controversy.