Sign Up
..... Australian Property Network. It's All About Property!
Categories

Posted: 2017-07-06 00:41:52

Updated July 06, 2017 12:03:49

The United States' public radio broadcaster has faced accusations of spreading propaganda after they marked the Fourth of July holiday by tweeting the nation's Declaration of Independence line by line.

For the past 29 years, National Public Radio (NPR) has broadcast on-air readings of the declaration.

This year, the NPR Twitter account decided to do things a little differently but the exercise was lost on many.

Clearly unaware of what the tweets were, a number of Twitter users slammed NPR for tweeting "trash" and accused the organisation of trying to push an agenda.

"Propaganda is all that you know how?" Twitter user John Lemos, who has since deleted his account but whose tweets were screenshot by Winnipeg Free Press reporter Melissa Martin.

"Try supporting a man who wants to do something about the injustice in this country #drainingtheswamp."

The Fourth of July is a national holiday in the US that commemorates the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776 by North America's founding fathers.

Twitter user D.G.Davies said tweets were "condoning violence" and "calling for a revolution".

After a barrage of replies to his comment, D.G.Davies realised his mistake and apologised for jumping the gun.

"I tweeted a VERY dumb comment," he said.

"But ask yourselves; if read to the average American, would they know that you were reading the DOI? I do know."

Many people did not realise what NPR were tweeting. Upworthy writer Parker Molloy took screenshots of one confused user, @trackerinblue, who thought NPR's Twitter account had been hacked.

As NPR continued to tweet lines of the declaration, @trackerinblue, and others who were at a loss, realised the content was the Declaration of Independence.

Others brushed off the tweets as spam.

User Darren Mills tweeted no-one wanted to read, "5,000 tweets about this trash".

In response to his comments, anonymous donors began sending money to NPR and various other media and charity organisations in Mills' name so he would receive the confirmation emails.

Mills, who describes himself in his Twitter bio as a "blackballed media journalist thanks to left wing/feminist job lynch mob", threatened to contact his lawyers about people using his details to make the donations.

In a statement to The Washington Post, an NPR spokeswoman said the point of the tweets was to mirror their broadcast tradition "as a way to extend to social media what we do on the air".

"The tweets were shared by thousands of people and generated a lively conversation," the statement reportedly said.

Topics: government-and-politics, social-media, offbeat, donald-trump, history, community-and-society, united-states

First posted July 06, 2017 10:41:52

View More
  • 0 Comment(s)
Captcha Challenge
Reload Image
Type in the verification code above