Twitter Called Out For Labeling NPR ‘State-Affiliated Media’ Despite Own Guidelines — So They Changed The Guidelines

AP Photos

Without explanation, Twitter added a label to NPR’s account deeming it “U.S. state-affiliated media,” a designation that puts the nonprofit media company in same category as state propaganda outlets like Russia’s RT.

NPR believes the designation was done by mistake. A spokesperson for the outlet told Mediaite: “This must be a mistake as it contradicts Twitter’s own guidelines. We have reached out to Twitter to have the label removed.”

Indeed, as Twitter users pointed out in response to the new label, the platform’s own guidelines held that “State-financed media organizations with editorial independence, like the BBC in the UK or NPR in the US for example, are not defined as state-affiliated media.”

Those guidelines were stealth-edited, however, after the change to NPR’s status, to remove the reference to the American media company.

Unlike RT and other outlets that have typically been labeled “state-affiliated” by Twitter, NPR has editorial independence from the U.S. government, which funds just 1% of NPR’s budget.

It is unclear why Twitter would change NPR’s status (Requests to the platform’s communications team now receive a poop emoji as an auto-reply).

Elon Musk, the billionaire Tesla CEO who bought Twitter last year, has feuded with the press in recent months. Over the weekend he stripped verification from the New York Times after the paper said it would not be paying for a blue checkmark.

On Tuesday, Musk replied with an exclamation point to a user criticizing NPR over a report alleging “European right-wing politicians” are pushing “a conspiracy theory that elites want people to eat bugs.”

“NPR is worse than the propaganda of Maoist schoolchildren during the cultural revolution,” the user wrote in a lengthy thread criticizing NPR.

UPDATE 11:48 a.m.: NPR CEO John Lansing issued a statement calling the Twitter label “unacceptable.”

——