We missed the first rule of corruption: Follow the money.
Yesterday’s confessional from longstanding NPR insider Uri Berliner, and especially my response to it, largely overlooked an important component of the story about NPR’s corruption. And as luck would have it, we can also observe a related anniversary about it.
Almost exactly one year ago, NPR decided to leave Twitter in a huff after Elon Musk branded them as “state-affiliated media.” Even after Musk suggested he might change the label to “publicly funded,” CEO John Lansing said it was still “inaccurate and misleading,” despite the fact that NPR does receive funds from the US federal government for its operations. Both labels apply literally; NPR was conceived and is operated on the basis of public funding to compete against private news organizations.
NPR insists that it’s a private company now, but even they admit that at…
