NPR quits Twitter over ‘state-affiliated media’ label row, first news organisation to do so

US radio NPR has announced that it will no longer post anything on its official Twitter handles following a tiff with the platform's CEO Elon Musk over the label assigned to it. NPR's chief executive says the decision has been taken to protect the network's credibility and to help it continue to produce journalism without "a shadow of negativity."

NPR CEO John Lansing said in an interview, "I would never have our content go anywhere that would risk our credibility."

Lansing added that there has been a degradation in the culture of Twitter where abusive content is rampant now, and this was one of the factors that contributed to NPR's decision to pull back.

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NPR has a total of 52 official Twitter feeds and is the first major news organisation to completely quit Twitter. NPR has been tied in a tussle with Twitter over it being labelled "state-affiliated media," a term used for propaganda outlets in Russia, China and other such countries.

NPR was surprised to see the label last week. One of NPR's reporters took up the matter with Twitter, responding to which Musk asked about how NPR functioned and acknowledged that he isn't fully versed with the way it worked.

The label was later changed to "government-funded media", but NPR says that isn't accurate either.

NPR says that it is a private, nonprofit company and has full editorial independence. Less than one per cent of its $300 million annual budget comes from the federally funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting, it said.

Lansing said that even if the label was dropped by Twitter, he isn't ready to return to the platform just yet since he has lost "faith in the decision-making at Twitter".

"I would need some time to understand whether Twitter can be trusted again."

However, he says that its journalists and staffers have the freedom to decide whether they want to continue using Twitter.

Lansing wrote an email to the staff, saying, "It would be a disservice to the serious work you all do here to continue to share it on a platform that is associating the federal charter for public media with an abandoning of editorial independence or standards."

(With inputs from agencies)

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