NPR severs ties with Elon Musk’s Twitter

NPR and Twitter are at the point of no return in their relationship since Elon Musk took over the social media platform.

Last week, the big blue bird app decided to label NPR as “State Affiliated Media.”

The network took offense because that is the same description given to propaganda outlets belonging to nations like China and Russia on the app.

After some serious backlash, NPR’s label was revised to “government-funded media” -- but the non-profit was still not satisfied.

Citing that it receives less than one percent of its $300 million budget from federal agencies, NPR refused to be labeled as “government-funded” and made the decision to go silent on Twitter.

NPR and their affiliate stations now plan to halt Twitter activity and redistribute their social media personnel in the next two weeks.

Alexandra Applegate, a morning edition producer at the NPR-affiliated KCRW spoke to Annenberg Media about the breakup.

Alexandra Applegate: “Public radio stations really rely on our on our credibility. Right? Like I said, our our duty is to our listeners. And if they don’t believe that we’re credible or what we’re saying is credible or the news that we’re putting out there is credible, they think it’s coming from the government or from some spokesperson rather than our reporting, then that’s a problem. So I think the the reasoning is more about wanting to protect the credibility of the journalism and the journalists that that work here.”

NPR will completely remove itself from Twitter in the next two weeks, the company said in a statement.

For Annenberg Media, I’m Chris Bibona.