Twitter Flags NPR As 'State-Affiliated' Media

Twitter added a "state-affiliated media" tag to NPR's main account on Tuesday, applying the same label to the nonprofit media company that Twitter uses to designate official state mouthpieces and propaganda outlets in countries such as Russia and China.

NPR operates independently of the U.S. government. And while federal money is important to the overall public media system, NPR gets less than 1% of its annual budget, on average, from federal sources.

Some background: Twitter started using the label in the pre-Elon Musk days of 2020 for transparency, defining state-affiliated media as “outlets where the state exercises control over editorial content.” Up until Tuesday night, its policy explicitly said that state-funded media operating with editorial independence, like the BBC and…NPR did not fall into the category. But, like a newly dumped ex cleansing their grid, Twitter seems to have deleted all mentions of NPR from the policy.

Elon Musk

Why now? According to The Morning Brew...Twitter, which has no PR department, hasn’t said why it started lumping NPR in with news sites notorious for spreading government propaganda, like China Daily and Russia Today. But Musk tweeted, “Seems accurate” in response to a tweet about the new label.

Whatever Twitter’s reasons, NPR’s chief communications officer told the NYT that less than 1% of the org’s yearly operating budget comes from government-funded grants. Most of the organization’s funding comes from individual and business donations. Other media orgs that receive substantial government funding, like Voice of America and the US military newspaper Stars and Stripes, don’t have the label, the Washington Post noted.

The label’s addition not only suggests to the NPR account’s 8.8 million Twitter followers (and anyone who views it) that its reporting is less than credible, but it also means NPR will not be amplified via Twitter’s recommendation algorithm.

This is part of a pattern for Musk’s Twitter: The site recently took away the main New York Times account’s verification badge while leaving them on for other news outlets after the Times said it wouldn’t pay for the blue check. And several reporters who criticized Musk had their accounts suspended last year.