Twitter slaps NPR with a dubious new tag: ‘State-affiliated media’

Is NPR “U.S. state-affiliated media”?

Twitter, and its new owner Elon Musk, seem to think so. Over NPR’s protests, Twitter placed that label on its account Tuesday night, implying that the Washington-based nonprofit news organization is somehow connected to, if not controlled by, the federal government.

The designation puts NPR, which has 8.8 million followers on the site, in the same category as propaganda outlets like the Russian-government owned RT and the Chinese Communist Party’s People’s Daily newspaper. Both are also “state-affiliated media,” according to Twitter.

Notably, however, Twitter has not slapped that label on several media organizations that are substantially funded by government. The Voice of America, the BBC and the U.S. military newspaper Stars and Stripes, among others, continue on Twitter without being designated as “state-affiliated” - a phrase with strong connotations of compromised editorial independence.

NPR does rely on some government funding, both directly and indirectly through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, an agency set up by Congress decades ago to fund public radio and TV with taxpayers’ money. CPB is slated to receive $525 million in its next fiscal year - money that goes to PBS, NPR and hundreds of public TV and radio stations. Conservatives have tried for years to “zero out” these federal contributions.

From its founding in 1970, NPR has asserted that it is editorially independent of any government agency or funding source (NPR also receives revenue from advertising and donations).

It asked Twitter to remove the “state” designation late Tuesday when it first appeared. In a statement Wednesday, president and chief executive John Lansing said: “We were disturbed to see last night that Twitter has labeled NPR as ‘state-affiliated media.’ ... NPR and our Member stations are supported by millions of listeners who depend on us for the independent, fact-based journalism we provide. NPR stands for freedom of speech and holding the powerful accountable. It is unacceptable for Twitter to label us this way.”

Aside from the unsavory suggestion that its reporting is tainted, a state-affiliated media organization faces practical consequences under Twitter’s rules. Twitter says it “will not recommend or amplify (such) accounts or their tweets,” a policy that could affect the account’s reach and that of its advertisers.

Twitter hasn’t explained why it placed the label on NPR, but its action appears to be consistent with Musk’s often arbitrary and punitive decisions regarding news-media accounts since buying the company last year for $44 billion.

It appears, however, to be inconsistent with Twitter’s own rules.

Twitter’s published rules define “state-affiliated media” as “outlets where the state exercises control over editorial content through financial resources, direct or indirect political pressures, and/or control over production and distribution.”

It adds: “State-financed media organizations with editorial independence, like the BBC in the UK and NPR in the U.S., for example, are not defined as state-affiliated media for the purposes of this policy.”

But another version of the rules published Tuesday eliminated NPR from that sentence.

Musk has previously targeted news organizations and journalists; in December, he suspended the accounts of about a dozen journalists at The Washington Post, New York Times, CNN and others for reporting on a controversial Twitter account that had tracked his jet travels, saying the journalists’ had provided “assassination coordinates” by reporting the story.

More recently, he began removing from some news organizations’ accounts the blue check marks that signal that their identities are verified. The news organizations have declined to pay Twitter for the previously free check mark. The New York Times, for example, is no longer checked; NPR is.

On Tuesday, Musk weighed in with a tweet about NPR’s new label. Over a tweet of a screenshot of Twitter’s rules about state affiliation, he wrote, “Seems accurate.”

Asked for further comment via email on Tuesday, Twitter’s press shop responded with the same automated response to every news-media request: a poop emoji.