Taking the “Public” out of National Public Radio
Wow. How I missed this one until now I don’t know. NPR doesn’t want you to link to them without permission. [Link goes to Wired article]
For the record, no one needs any permission to link to me. And I assume I get to link to anyone I please. In fact, I have an entire website dedicated to linking.
Now, this is an odd one. Some of the commercial sites have squawked about deep links before; they say you’re ruining the user experience they’ve carefully crafted by linking beyond the front page. They probably just want to protect their advertising revenue, tho.
But NPR’s argument really throws me:Asked if a link from someone’s noncommercial homepage would bother the company, Dvorkin said: “It depends on your homepage — what if you’re an advocate for left-handed socialist diabetics? We wouldn’t want to give support to advocacy groups.”
What kind of sense does this make? A link from my site to NPR is them supporting me? When I write about news I think of hyperlinks as a sort of citation. Like a bibliography. Or as a way to direct someone’s attention somewhere. But I’m not exercising editorial control over anything.
So, why don’t you write the NPR Ombudsman and ask a few pointed question. Come on! Let’s make those clue phones ring.