http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/05/us/npr-twitter-declaration-trnd/index.html
NPR calling for listeners to overthrow the government definitely would have made for an interesting Independence Day.
But the public radio network wasn’t calling for a revolution, and it wasn’t calling the President a tyrant. NPR was just doing what it has done for years on the Fourth of July: Reciting the Declaration of Independence.
The organization has read the historic document on the air for nearly 30 years to celebrate the holiday.
This was the first time the tradition was adapted to Twitter. NPR posted the declaration word for word. But seeing the iconic lines on a platform other than 241-year-old parchment left some users a little, well, confused.
A few people didn’t recognize the thread of 112 revolutionary tweets as one of our nation’s most influential pieces of writing. And without scrolling through NPR’s feed for context, some thought the news outlet was encouraging Americans to revolt.
“So, NPR is calling for revolution,” one user tweeted. “Interesting way to condone the violence while trying to sound ‘patriotic.’”So, NPR is calling for revolution.
Interesting way to condone the violence while trying to sound “patriotic”.
Your implications are clear.— D.G.Davies (@JustEsrafel) July 4, 2017
Others seemed concerned the organization appeared to take a political stance. One said the NPR journalists had a “mission,” and another designated them as “fake news.”
“Please stop,” one person commented. “This is not the right place.”
Another tweeted that NPR was pushing out propaganda.
Even the Trump supporters recognize that Trump is Tyrannical…
The blowback increased when the tweets reached the portion of the Declaration that outlined, in unsparing detail, all the ways Britain’s George III had wronged the then-Colonies.
“He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers,” read one line of the document.
“A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people,” read another.
Some people — presumably still in the dark about NPR’s Fourth of July exercise — assumed those lines were references to President Trump and the current administration
-
With Trumpian attempts at policy repeatedly running afoul of the constitution, it was only a matter of time before somebody called the document a "liberal conspiracy. "
-
"John Hancock was a Revolutionary...