I haven’t written about NPR’s loopy you-must-get-our-permission-to-link policy because PNH and Cory have done a fine job of lambasting it thus far. Tom, over at IMproPRieTies, got a response from NPR when he asked them where they lost clue:
Second, as a journalistic organization we do not want our content associated inappropriately with, or appearing to endorse, issue action organizations.
For those of you playing the home version of the game, that means we don’t want the freakazoids in Congress howling for our funding to be cut if Human Rights Campaign, Greenpeace, or the ACLU mention a story we did on their website. Depending on the variety of reactionary you ask, NPR appears to be a tool of either Israel, the Palestinians, Our Corporate Overlords, Man-Hating-Feminists, G-Dless Communists, Zeta Reticulans, or the Axis of Evil. So you can see how some people can see a conspiracy theory in an inbound link.
But it’s clear from that letter that NPR doesn’t need clue, they need a spine.
