NPR is leaving Twitter after Elon Musk decided to label the news organization as a government-affiliated entity on the social media platform.
“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,” the media outlet said in a statement on Wednesday.
NPR’s Twitter account, which has 8.8 million followers, is still live. It posted several tweets today—presumably its last—that encourage users to listen and read about NPR articles from other sources, such as by downloading the NPR app.
“We are turning away from Twitter but not from our audiences and communities,” the radio network added in the statement. “There are plenty of ways to stay connected and keep up with NPR's news, music, and cultural content.”
NPR is bailing on the platform a week after Twitter decided to tag its account with the label “US-state affiliated media.” Twitter originally created the label to help users identify tweets from state-controlled news agencies, such as China’s People’s Daily and Russia’s RT.com, which are known for circulating government propaganda. But Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk, expanded the label to NPR, even though the radio network operates as an independent news organization.
The radio network receives less than 1% of its funding from federal grants (though it does receive funds from member stations, which can also receive government funding), but Musk argues that the money means NPR is a biased source.
After some pushback, Twitter removed the “US-state affiliated media” from NPR’s account only to replace it with a new label that says “Government-funded Media.”
“If you really think that the government has no influence on the entity they’re funding then you’ve been marinating in the Kool-Aid for too long,” Musk reportedly told an NPR reporter, who learned Twitter relied on Wikipedia to determine which media outlets should receive the government-funded labeling. (It added a similar label to the BBC's account.)
In response, NPR’s official Twitter account has been quiet since the controversy began, which prompted some to wonder if the radio network was preparing to leave the social media platform. On Wednesday, NPR confirmed the speculation.
“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,” NPR said in its statement.
The decision is notable, given that most major news outlets have a presence on the platform. It's become a vital way for media organizations to reach their audiences during breaking news events, though it hasn't traditionally driven much traffic to their sites.
We reached out to Twitter for comment, but the company currently auto-replies to all press inquires with a smiling poop emoji. So far, Musk hasn’t responded to NPR’s decision, but he's made his feelings on the media overall pretty clear.
“There’s like something in journalism that they’ve been trained to basically never write a positive story about anything,” Musk said during a Morgan Stanley conference last month.
UPDATE: Musk has tweeted, calling NPR "hypocrites" for protesting the government funded media label.