NPR stops using Twitter after Elon Musk's "state-affiliated media" remarks

The National Public Radio (NPR) on Wednesday said that it would stop using Twitter at all. The NPR's remarks came a week after Twitter owner Elon Musk designated the broadcaster as "US state-affiliated media," reported New York Times.

Notably, Twitter has updated the description of the NPR account to read "Government-funded Media," the same description it gave to the BBC, the national broadcaster of Britain.

Isabel Lara, NPR's chief communications officer, said in a statement, "NPR's organizational accounts will no longer be active on Twitter because the platform is taking actions that undermine our credibility by falsely implying that we are not editorially independent."

"We are not putting our journalism on platforms that have demonstrated an interest in undermining our credibility and the public's understanding of our editorial independence," she added.

John Lansing, NPR's chief executive, in a letter to staff on Wednesday morning wrote, "Actions by Twitter or other social media companies to tarnish the independence of any public media institution are exceptionally harmful and set a dangerous precedent."

NPR also shared links to its newsletter and other social media sites in a Twitter thread on Wednesday morning.

Twitter previously recognised NPR and BBC as exceptions to its rules regarding state-affiliated accounts because they were "state-financed media organisations with editorial independence."

According to Lara's statement from last week, less than 1 per cent of NPR's yearly operating budget comes from grants from the federally financed Corporation for Public Broadcasting and other departments and organisations.

In the past, several media outlets have had their Twitter accounts suspended. Fox News temporarily stopped tweeting for 16 months after Tucker Carlson's home address was published on Twitter in 2018.