Twitter Now Categorizes NPR As 'Government Funded'

Twitter and its billionaire owner, Elon Musk, have backed off a controversial description of NPR as “state-affiliated media,” relabeling the news organization’s social media account as “government funded.”

The Washington Post reports the change, quietly made by the San Francisco-based company late Saturday, follows complaints from NPR and others that Twitter’s designation of NPR’s account as “state-affiliated” last week was an effort by Musk to disparage the Washington-based news organization. The state-affiliated label has traditionally been used by Twitter to describe government-run propaganda outlets, such as Russia’s Sputnik and RT and the Chinese Communist Party’s People’s Daily.

In addition to its unsavory connotation, the label appears to have been inconsistently applied. Several news organizations that receive government funding, as NPR does, have not been so labeled by Twitter.

NPR chief executive John Lansing formally protested the designation, saying NPR’s news operations are overseen by independent journalists and not by government officials. In response to Twitter’s unilateral decision to add the description, NPR declined to tweet and changed its Twitter bio to say that it was an “independent” news organization.

NPR didn’t respond to a request for comment Sunday. Twitter responded to an email seeking comment with a poop emoji, its automated response to all press inquiries.

The “government funded” label appears to be a new one for Twitter, representing a kind of compromise from Twitter’s previous labeling. It follows Musk’s admission that he actually didn’t understand NPR’s relationship to the government when he ordered NPR to be designated as state-affiliated.

In an email exchange with an NPR reporter on Thursday, Musk acknowledged that he was unclear about NPR’s relationship with the government when the platform affixed the state-affiliated label. Told by the reporter that NPR receives only about 1 percent of its annual revenue from the federal government, Musk replied: “Well, then we should fix” the designation.