NPR CEO explains why the news organization is quitting Twitter: 'At this point I have lost my faith in the decision-making at Twitter.'
AP Photo/Charles Dharapak
- NPR said it will not post to its Twitter feeds anymore after being labeled "state-affiliated media."
- Twitter had changed NPR's label to "government-funded media," which NPR said is still "inaccurate."
- The news organization's CEO John Lansing said he's lost his "faith in the decision-making at Twitter."
NPR said it's not posting to its 52 official Twitter accounts anymore after the social media platform labeled the news organization as "state-affiliated media" and "government-funded media" last week.
NPR's CEO John Lansing said quitting Twitter will allow NPR to continue producing journalism without "a shadow of negativity," NPR reported.
"The downside, whatever the downside, doesn't change the fact," Lansing told NPR. "I would never have our content go anywhere that would risk our credibility."
On April 8, four days after giving NPR the "state-affiliated" label — a description usually reserved for outlets like Russia Today and China's Xinhua News Agency — Twitter changed the label to "government-funded media," after CEO Elon Musk admitted that the social media platform might have been wrong. Russia Today is funded and run by the Russian government, and Xinhua is the official state news agency of the Chinese government.
Twitter's Help Center formerly mentioned NPR and the BBC as examples of state-financed media organizations that have editorial independence and therefore wouldn't be labeled as "state-affiliated media," but mentions of both news organizations have now been removed.
NPR said that the new "government-funded" label is still "inaccurate and misleading," considering the organization is private, nonprofit, and has editorial independence. Lansing told the news outlet that even if Twitter removes the label, NPR won't immediately come back.
"At this point I have lost my faith in the decision-making at Twitter," Lansing told NPR. "I would need some time to understand whether Twitter can be trusted again."
Staff and journalists who work at NPR can decide if they want to stay on Twitter, Lansing told NPR. In an email to NPR staff, Lansing wrote that that "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," NPR reported.
In a statement shared with Insider, NPR said its "organizational accounts will no longer be active on Twitter because the platform is taking actions that undermine our credibility by falsely implying that we are not editorially independent."
"We are turning away from Twitter but not from our audiences and communities," NPR said in the statement. "There are plenty of ways to stay connected and keep up with NPR's news, music, and cultural content."
In what could be its last Twitter thread, NPR shared links to its app, newsletters, and other social media platforms.
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Reviewed by mimisabreena
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Thursday, April 13, 2023
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