The MRC Flips Over Elon Musk, Part 12: NPR Derangement Syndrome

The Media Research Center despises public broadcasting, so it was wildly giddy when Elon Musk arbitrarily labeled the Twitter accounts of NPR and PBS as "state-affiliated media," even though it violated Twitter's own labeling standards.

By Terry Krepel
Posted 8/2/2023

“Why one needs to have three NPR stations in Washington, DC; four in New York City, six in Seattle – and the list goes on and on. Why not just have one station in each city?

“But, then, it hits me. Wait a minute: this is National Public Radio – why don’t we have only one station for national public radio, not one thousand.

“And, I thought, well look, if you’re going to have a thousand NPR stations, I think we need to have one thousand Mark Levin stations.

For all his attacks on public radio, Bozell clearly doesn't understand how it works. NPR is not a monolithic national network with a 24-hour format that all its stations must air; in fact. it owns no radio stations at all. All are locally owned, most are owned by college and universities and the rest by community based boards or public TV operations. As NPR further explained:

Each Member Station determines its own format and schedule. In creating their broadcast schedule, Member Stations have several options. They may choose to select from NPR programs such as Morning Edition, All Things Considered or Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!; pick up programs distributed by other public radio producers, stations or networks; and/or create their own local programming. Stations create their schedules based on the interests and needs of their local audience. Some stations focus on news and information while others follow a music format – with programming ranging from classical, to jazz, to AAA or world music.

Let's look at the formats of the NPR affiliates in the Washington, D.C., area (Bozell claims there are three; NPR lists two). One station appears to run a large selection of NPR-provided news and talk content, while the other is very heavy on classical music and related original programming and appears to air little NPR-generated content.

Bozell's other claim that there should be "only one station for national public radio" is even more ridiculous; the average FM radio station has a broadcast radius of 40 miles, so one station can't possibly cover the entire country. Apparently Bozell thinks radio is like cable TV.

Bozell made sure to make Levin look like a victim by omitting the fact that Levin's show airs on approximately 400 radio stations across the U.S., so he has nothing to complain about. Further, all of NPR's affiliates are nonprofit stations, which have different FCC license requirements than the commercial radio stations on which Levin's show airs.

Alexander Hall wrote in an August 2020 post:

In an era where governments use news outlets to launder their state propaganda as objective news, one Big Tech company is now beginning to take a decent stand by labeling government and state-affiliated media.

Twitter Inc. announced that going forward, the company “will label some state-backed media accounts, as well as accounts belonging to ‘key government officials’ for certain countries, to create more transparency when governments and their leaders use the social-media platform to discuss important geopolitical issues,” Bloomberg reported August 6.

So far so good. But then Hall took it to a very stupid extent:

It remains to be seen what other state-affiliated outlets Twitter will label. How about NPR, which, as NewsBusters Executive Editor Tim Graham observed, “takes our tax dollars and then attacks adding the balance of our viewpoint as racist”? What about the PBS? BBC? Those three outlets fall within the United States and the United Kingdom, and none of them, as of the publishing of this piece, have labels.

The Graham piece Hall linked to to support his claim was a post a couple months earlier in which Graham whined about an NPR segment discussing journalistic objectivity. If you want to see what the MRC really thinks about journalistic objectivity, you only need to look at its former "news" operation, CNSNews.com, which was very much the right-wing propaganda outlet they want NPR and PBS to be.

Hall's evidence for his attack on PBS was a link to the MRC's short-lived attempt earlier that year to push for defunding of public broadcasting by complaining about how many medical supplies could have been bought with the $75 million it got from one of the coronavirus relief bills passed by Congress. But as ConWebWatch pointed out, at least some of that money went toward responding to the pandemic and protecting its employees -- meaning that the MRC was effectively rooting for public broadcasting employees to get sick and die. (And it ignored the fact that the MRC itself got more than $1 million in coronavirus relief, making the complaint doubly hypocritical.) Around that same time, Graham channeled his boss' rage and threw in with a column whining that the public broadcasting is "niche broadcasting by liberals for liberals" and attacking then-PBS journalist Yamiche Alcindor for asking President Trump tough questions during his coronavirus briefings.

The funny thing: If the MRC got its wish to turn PBS and NPR into the pro-Trump propaganda operations they desire, Hall would be attacking Twitter's "state-affiliated media" designation. Because the MRC cares nothing about journalism and cares everything about making sure its pro-Trump propaganda dominates.

Musk vs. NPR

Thanks to a change of ownership, the MRC got that wish. It had been getting irritated with Elon Musk's Twitter for doing the thing that the MRC's aggressive Musk-fluffing was designed to do: keep it and its fellow right-wingers from being held accountable for posting offensive content. Musk knew he had to distract from that growing critical narrative, and it was with what has usually worked: tossing out right-wing red meat. Joseph Vazquez eagerly took Musk's bait for an April 5 post under the hateful headline "GET WRECKED":

Elon Musk’s Twitter finally confirmed what the Media Research Center has been saying for years: National Public Radio is nothing but state propaganda.

Twitter slapped a “state-affiliated media” label on NPR’s account. Musk responded to conservative personality Benny Johnson celebrating that Twitter tore off NPR’s fake veneer of objective journalism. “Seems accurate,” Musk tweeted. MRC Free Speech America Vice President Dan Schneider took a blowtorch to NPR following the news.

“NPR is not just state media. It is a mouthpiece of the Deep State,” he said. “It has worked to deceive American taxpayers about its real role, but it’s so obvious that it really is just a state-sponsored tool for the left to silence half of Americans and create propaganda for the other half.”

During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Democrats inserted $75 million in the coronavirus stimulus bill earmarked for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to maintain NPR and PBS stations. This was on top of the $465 million already granted to the CPB (itself an increase of $20 million in annual funding). NPR even proclaimed on its website how “[f]ederal funding is essential to public radio's service to the American public and its continuation is critical for both stations and program producers, including NPR.”

One look at how NPR historically covered the COVID-19 pandemic illustrates why it’s a rubber-stamp for false government and deep state narratives.

Of course, neither Vazquez nor his superiors mentioned that the MRC got its own share of this COVID stimulus largesse, receiving as much as $2 million in pandemic relief money.

Given that Vazquez is also the MRC's designated George Soros-hater, it's unsurprising that he took a tangent into Soros derangement:

But NPR doesn’t just receive tax funding. It is also financed by some of the most notorious liberal billionaire activists in American politics, including Bill Gates and George Soros. MRC Business recently released a study on leftist billionaire Soros and his enormous influence over world media, including NPR.

Soros funds NPR directly, meaning that a Soros-funded organization also happens to simultaneously be a prominent news outlet. His direct funding of NPR gives him influence over NPR’s entire legion of at least 1,800 journalists and 400 reporters and editors in over 200 member stations across the country. The leftist content that NPR has been spewing as a result of both its state-funding and iberal billionaire funding has been nothing short of nutty.

Vazquez didn't mention that there may be "nutty" billionaires (cough*Mercer*cough) that have influence over his own content.

When NPR pointed out that Musk's new label violated Twitter's own definition of "state-affiliated media" and that the government does not dictate NPR's content, Vazquez raged in an update: "if a news outlet is getting funding from the government, it's not 'free press.'"

The next day, Curtis Houck cheered that a former Fox News personality (though not identified as such) reinforced Musk's anti-NPR narrative:

Wednesday night on NewsNation, On Balance host Leland Vittert battled woefully unprepared liberal strategist Kaivan Shroff on whether it was appropriate for Twitter to slap National Public Radio (NPR) Tuesday night with a “US state-affiliated media” label with Vittert noting it does, in fact, derive part of its budget from the U.S. government.

Shroff hilariously denounced the label, but unintentionally proved the label’s accuracy by proclaiming countries are better off with a state-run outlet to compete against everyone else.

When Musk adjusted his label on NPR to make it "government funded media," Luis Cornelio lamented it as a defeat in an April 10 post:

Twitter owner Elon Musk appeared to cave to leftist pressure and switched NPR’s “state-affiliated media” account label for the more euphemistic “government funded media.”

The move came days after NPR and left-wing allies decried Musk’s designation of NPR’s Twitter account as “state-affiliated,” a label used for outlets that vomit government-run propaganda. While NPR is not directly run by the government, the media outlet has routinely positioned itself as a mouthpiece for leftist causes and Democratic politicians, including the Biden administration.

[...]

“The label change is little more than a distinction without a difference,” said MRC Free Speech America & MRC Business Director Michael Morris. “One thing remains clear: NPR does the bidding of the left, including protecting leftist policy prescriptions and federal politicians, many of whom it relies on to receive grant money.”

Cornelio repeated earlier whining that "Democrats funneled $75 million through the coronavirus stimulus bill in 2020 to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for the purpose of supporting NPR and PBS stations" without also disclosing that the MRC also got government money or that Donald Trump, a Republican, signed off on all that funding.

When NPR decided it would no longer publish anything on Twitter due to Musk's capricious targeting of it, the MRC found this hilarious and decided that NPR -- not Musk -- was the bad guy, even though it had done nothing to provoke Musk. Curtis Houck ranted in an April 12 post:

On Wednesday morning, taxpayer-funded National Public Radio (NPR) upped the ante in its hissy fit against the Elon Musk-owned Twitter as, in light of the fact that Twitter added the “state-affiliated media” label to NPR’s account and then tweaked it to say “government-funded media.” The far-left crackpots are quitting the social media platform because Twitter was “falsely implying that we are not editorially independent.”

To reiterate, NPR quit Twitter in a childish fit of rage because the free speech platform accurately labeled them as government funded in the same way as wholly state-run media outlets in China and Russia are labeled. Therefore, staying would be a supposed affront to their “journalism”.

NPR and its litany of liberal defenders also purposefully left out the fact that Twitter has slapped the same label on BBC, who’s also incensed despite existing thanks to a royal charter and fee set by the government and charged to nearly every British business and household.

To reiterate -- correctly, unlike what Houck did -- NPR quit Twitter because Musk had a childish fit of rage and decided that he alone could decide how media organizations are labeled, ignoring that nobody -- not even NPR -- is obligated or mandated to use Twitter. (He also didn't support his assertion that NPR is "far-left.") Houck then maliciously described NPR justifying their decision as "whining" (though identifying no actual whining) and playing games with how NPR describes its funding:

On NPR’s website, media correspondent David Folkenflik took a pause from his life’s mission to kill Fox News to report his outlet “quits Twitter after being falsely labeled as ‘state-affiliated media’”.

Talk about some serious coping and seething. Folkenflik would probably hate if we shared links harkening back to the days when defunding NPR and PBS were seen as killing Big Bird.

Folkenflik explained the move extended “to its 52 official Twitter feeds” and parroted his bosses in whining it was offensive to NPR to being depicted with “the same term it uses for propaganda outlets in Russia, China and other autocratic countries.”

He insisted in a comical take that NPR isn’t “government-funded” and rather “a private, nonprofit company with editorial independence” that “receives less than 1 percent of its $300 million annual budget from the federally funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting.”

So, NPR receives money from a federal board? That sure seems like government funding. Also, what a relief to know tax dollars are so infinitesimal to NPR’s survival that it wouldn’t be a threat to their existence if Congress defunded and shuttered the CPB, which received $465 million in 2022.

Simply put, Folkenflik and his likeminded lemmings play accounting games.

Houck and the MRC might be taken more seriously as "media researchers" than they are if they didn't engage in such gratuitous, childish insults. And his attempt to claim that Folkenflik as a " life’s mission to kill Fox News" is rather hilarious considering his own life's mission to kill NPR, CNN and every other media outlet that's not as right-wing as Fox News.

Houck then bizarrely accused Folkenflik of engaging in "mind-numbing egotism and use of stochastic terrorism" by pointing out that journalists could be endangered by Musk's arbitrary relabeling." Of course, Houck couldn't be bothered to actually prove Folkenflik wrong, instead choosing to hurl even more immature insults instead. He concluded with one more petulant rant:

According to longtime NPR lefty Steve Inskeep, [NPR CEO John] Lansing stopped by Morning Edition’s production meeting to insist Musk’s site “no longer has the public service relevance that it once had” (meaning it’s no longer controlled by pro-censorship leftists).

Those cries you hear? That’s the sound of a liberal political strategy firm realizing they’ve lost control of a key medium to shovel their propaganda.

Houck seems weirdly outraged by all this, considering that absolutely none of it affects him personally. It's almost as if he's getting paid by the insult -- but by who, the MRC or Musk?

Speaking of petulant: Later that day, Tim Graham devoted a post to Musk reacting badly to NPR quitting Twitter (though, of course, that's not how he framed it) by repeating the right-wing mantra "Defund NPR":

For many years, NewsBusters has urged the Congress to "defund NPR." It doesn't mean taking away all their funding -- just the government funding. They often claim only two percent of their funding comes from government. In that case, why not give it up? Today, Elon Musk tweeted out "Defund NPR" in the wake of NPR's arrogant proclamations about how great they are. So now we have celebrity endorsers!

Musk tweeted an email from NPR’s tech reporter Bobby Allyn asking for comment on NPR’s decision to abandon Twitter. “Because of the label, NPR is quitting Twitter across all of our 50+ accounts. Our executives say the government-funded media label calls into question our editorial independence and undermines our credibility," huffed Allyn. "Some wonder if this will cause a chain reaction among news orgs. What’s your reaction?” He probably wasn't prepared for the answer.

[...]

But note Allyn begging for a "chain reaction" of liberal media following NPR off Twitter. CNN's partisan liberal media reporter Oliver Darcy tweeted "NPR becomes first major news org to stop using Twitter," as if they'll be the first of many. Will CNN be next? This shows that the leftist media are unhappy that Twitter has become a free-speech platform that doesn't bend to NPR whims -- like insisting the Hunter Biden laptop was a "pure distraction."

Like a feisty NPR liberal, Allyn cried hypocrisy at Musk: Tesla, "which has received billions of dollars in government subsidies over the years, does not appear to have the label."

NPR’s main Twitter account has (had?) 8.8 million followers. This means that Twitter has one less major national misinformer.

Needless to say, Graham didn't describe Musk as acting on a whim by arbitrarily relabeling NPR's Twitter feed for no reason other than an attempt to own the libs and generate right-wing clicks and attention.

Kevin Tober dutifully regurgitated Houck's malicious "hissy fit" framing when noting that other media outlets reported on Musk's hissy fit:

Hours after National Public Radio threw what NewsBusters managing editor Curtis Houck described as a "hissy fit" against the Elon Musk-owned Twitter and left the platform over being accurately described as "state-affiliated media" and later "government-funded media," CBS Evening News anchor Norah O'Donnell clearly seemed saddened by the left-wing outlet leaving. CBS later attempted to slime Musk's stewardship of Twitter by falsely claiming that "misinformation" on the platform was up 42 percent. They then omitted a BBC reporter getting called out by Musk when he couldn't point to an example of "hateful content" on Twitter.

[...]

Later on in the report, correspondent Jonathan Vigliotti whined about "rampant misinformation" on Twitter and cut to a BBC interview Musk gave where he addressed those false claims:

MUSK: I actually think there's less these days because we have eliminated so many of the bots, which were pushing scams and spam. And previously, previous management turned a blind eye.

Despite just explaining why claims of "misinformation" were untrue, Vigliotti pushed a bogus study claiming "accounts that often linked to false information have seen engagement increase 42 percent since Musk purchased the company last October."

Graham concluded the MRC's April 12 activity on the subject by having Houck on his podcast to rant some more. Graham tried to add his own purported zingers: "They like to think they are a herd of independent minds, but they sound like National Public Relations for Democrats. Or National Press Release." Never mind that both he and Houck are actively doing PR for Musk by allowing themselves to be distracted by his clickbait.

Musk folds, MRC reframes

When Musk completely reversed himself and dropped all labeling not just for NPR but for all similar media organizations -- even the ones that were clearly state propaganda, something the MRC insisted NPR was but could never prove -- a dejected Cornelio lamented even more in an April 25 post headlined "CAVING?"

Twitter 2.0 appears to be caving to leftist pressure by removing the “government-funded” labels it slapped on taxpayer-financed outlets like NPR.

Twitter owner Elon Musk initially supported labeling government-funded media labels for the outlets that receive funds from the government. Still — after pressure from the left — Twitter has removed labels that accurately described NPR and other news organizations as “government-funded.” NPR even actively promotes on its website how “[f]ederal funding is essential to public radio's service to the American public and its continuation is critical for both stations and program producers, including NPR.”

This is not the first time Twitter 2.0 caved to the left. Earlier this month, Musk slapped NPR with a “state-affiliated media” label but switched gears after left-wing backlash.

Cornelio didn't mention that Musk dropped the label for indisputable state propaganda, not just NPR -- or that an official with Russian state propaganda outlet RT praised Musk for doing so. Instead, he whined that people defended NPR:

NPR President and CEO John Lansing threw a hissy fit over Musk’s move by barring the company from publishing its news on Twitter, The Washington Post reported. “We were disturbed to see last night that Twitter has labeled NPR as 'state-affiliated media,' a description that, per Twitter's own guidelines, does not apply to NPR,” Lansing said. NPR opted to quit Twitter after the Twitter labels.

Even White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre rushed to defend NPR journalists at an April 5 press conference, claiming they “work diligently to hold public officials accountable and inform the American people.” “The hard-hitting independent nature of their coverage speaks for itself,” she decried. CNN’s Kaitlan Collins similarly defended NPR. “That’s not obviously NPR,” Collins said in reference to the definition of state-affiliated media. “NPR does great journalism.”

Cornelio then huffed, "The evidence of NPR’s left-wing, pro-Democrat talking points is endless" -- which disproves that it's state-controlled media, because if it were it would have offered Republican propaganda when Donald Trump was president. He then cited as an example of this a correspondent who " dubbed the Wuhan laboratory leak story one of the “biggest conspiracy theories” about COVID-19" -- which means that the narrative is nothing more than a right-wing talking point and certainly not a search for truth (and he didn't explain how, exactly, how the narrative is "left-wing").

When Musk tried to coerce NPR into tweeting again by threatening to give its Twitter handle to someone else -- even though NPR had not met Twitter's own standards for abandoning an account handle, which is based on logging into the account, not tweeting -- Cornelio misleadingly framed it in a May 3 post as NPR being "triggered" by Musk instead of the reality that Musk threatened NPR:

Twitter owner Elon Musk managed to trigger the leftist, taxpayer-funded NPR — again.

Musk pledged to transfer the username of NPR’s main Twitter account (@NPR) to a different organization or person with the same acronym according to email correspondence between Musk and NPR reporter Bobby Allyn. Musk’s comment came as a response to NPR’s hissy fit decision to abruptly quit Twitter after being accurately labeled as “government-funded.”

“So is NPR going to start posting on Twitter again, or should we reassign @NPR to another company?" Musk allegedly said in a Tuesday email. “‘Our policy is to recycle handles that are definitively dormant,’” Musk wrote in another email to NPR. “‘Same policy applies to all accounts. No special treatment for NPR.’”

Actually, Musk is the one who's throwing a hissy fit, but Cornelio won't tell you that, nor will he mention that there's no evidence NPR has abandoned its handle based on longstanding Twitter guidelines. Instead, he quoted a fellow MRC employee bizarrely claiming that Musk is trying to execute a power play (never mind that it violates Twitter corporate policies) and tried to insult the NPR reporter for pointing out facts:

MRC Free Speech America & MRC Business Director Michael Morris reacted to Musk’s actions against NPR. “I think what Musk is really doing here is putting a thumb on NPR to pressure it to reveal the true nature of its government funding,” he said. “If Musk does take @NPR’s handle, he shouldn’t give it back until NPR comes clean. #DefundNPR.”

Allyn further complained that journalists are no longer able to differentiate between what is “real and what is fake” now that blue check marks are available for all Twitter users, not just the elite.

“By recently making ‘verified’ blue checks available for purchase, Musk has created a turbulent social media landscape, blurring the lines for users between what is real and what is fake on one of the most influential social networks,” he wrote.

Allyn topped his child-like tantrum off by praising Twitter 1.0. (Yes, the same platform that muzzled a sitting president and colluded with the government to censor information amid the COVID-19 pandemic).

“For most of its 17-year history, Twitter has had rules that maintained a certain level of order and offered both individuals and organization some control over their presence on the platform,” the reporter claimed.

Yikes, cry more.

It's highly unlikely that Allyn or anyone else at NPR is crying over this situation -- that would be Musk, who is losing content because of his own impulsiveness and his insistence on putting right-wing clickbait and trying to own the libs ahead of sound business practices. But Cornelio won't tell you that either.