Elon Musk's Latest Twitter Controversy: Labeling NPR as State-Controlled Media
Elon Musk acquired Twitter to promote the truth, along with free speech. But his company is now flagging National Public Radio as a US government-controlled media outlet, even though it isn’t true, according to the radio network.
On Tuesday night, Twitter slapped a “US-state affiliated media” label on NPR’s official account— a designation that was originally designed for state-sponsored media groups, such as Russia’s Sputnik and China’s Xinhua News Agency, which are known for peddling government propaganda.
Twitter introduced the label in 2020 to help users identify accounts with ties to a particular government. But for some reason, the company has expanded the label to NPR, a nonprofit, independent media outlet that says it receives(Opens in a new window) less than 1% of its funding from federal sources through grants.
The labeling now means tweets from NPR carry a “US-state affiliated media” designation, implying that the federal government is in control of the radio network. NPR has called on Twitter to remove the designation.
“NPR and our Member stations are supported by millions of listeners who depend on us for the independent, fact-based journalism we provide,” tweeted(Opens in a new window) NPR CEO John Lansing. “It is unacceptable for Twitter to label us this way.”
Twitter’s own policies(Opens in a new window) say a media organization should only receive the label when it’s clear a foreign government exercises control over its editorial content “through financial resources, direct or indirect political pressures, and/or control over production and distribution.”
The document adds: “State-financed media organizations with editorial independence, like the BBC in the UK for example, are not defined as
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