Nobel-Prize-winner F.A. Hayek in The Road to Serfdom wisely worried about the independence of the press when it is funded by the government.
(p. B6) Twitter on Tuesday [April 5, 2023] evening added a label to National Public Radio’s account on the social network, designating the broadcaster “U.S. state-affiliated media.”
. . .
Twitter’s guidelines define state-affiliated accounts as “outlets where the state exercises control over editorial content through financial resources, direct or indirect political pressures, and/or control over production and distribution.” Other news media accounts with the label include RT of Russia and Xinhua of China.
According to cached versions of Twitter’s published policy, for much of Tuesday the guidelines noted that NPR and the BBC of Britain did not receive the label because they were “state-financed media organizations with editorial independence.” The reference to NPR has since been deleted from that policy.
. . .
Mr. Musk did not respond to a request for comment, and an email to Twitter’s communications department was returned with a poop emoji autoreply. Mr. Musk tweeted in apparent support of the move, posting a passage from Twitter’s policy and saying it “seems accurate” in a reply to a user pointing out the label on NPR’s account.
For the full story, see:
(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the same date April 5, 2023, and has the title “Twitter Labels NPR ‘State-Affiliated Media,’ in Change to Policy.”)
Hayek’s book mentioned above is:
Hayek, Friedrich A. von. The Road to Serfdom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1944.