Elon Musk, the CEO of Twitter, Tesla, and SpaceX, took to Twitter on Wednesday to call for the defunding of National Public Radio (NPR). This comes after NPR revealed that it would be “stepping away” from Twitter after being labeled as “state-affiliated media.”
Although Twitter has since tweaked the label to “government-funded media,” the outlet had already made up its mind to stop posting on the platform.
Defund @NPR
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 12, 2023
Musk’s call to defund NPR was triggered by an email he received from a business reporter at the outlet, Bobby Allyn.
The email stated that NPR executives believed that the government-funded media label called into question the outlet’s editorial independence and undermined its credibility. As a result, NPR decided to quit Twitter across all of its 50+ accounts.
NPR is stepping away from Twitter, and this includes this NPR Politics feed. Please read the thread to find other ways to find our work, including:
NPR Politics Instagram: https://t.co/UJ2HzXYsR0
NPR Politics newsletter: https://t.co/mrWXwUrXrn https://t.co/5kmu5kGogV— NPR Politics (@nprpolitics) April 12, 2023
John Lansing, the CEO of NPR, explained that he made the decision to stop posting on Twitter because he believed it would be a disservice to NPR employees to share their reporting on a platform that associates the federal charter for public media with an abandonment of editorial independence and standards.
He added that he would never want their content to be posted anywhere that would risk their credibility.
NPR has described itself as a “private, nonprofit company with editorial independence,” emphasizing that it “receives less than 1 percent of its $300 million annual budget from the federally funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting.” The outlet has also changed its bio on Twitter to state that it is an independent news organization committed to informing the public about the world around us and that readers can find them every other place they read the news.
