Effectively, this went precisely as most of us would have anticipated it to.
Earlier this month, NPR stopped posting content material to Twitter after the platform labeled its account as “state-affiliated media,” the identical designation that’s used for media organizations in China and Russia, the place the federal government has autonomy over the media firm.
After NPR defined that this was inaccurate because of the reality the corporate is a personal nonprofit with editorial independence, Twitter modified its label to “government-funded media.” NPR says that that is additionally inaccurate on account of it solely receiving “1 p.c of its $300 million annual price range from the federally funded Company for Public Broadcasting.”
In response to those designations, NPR has made the choice to stop publishing its reporting on the social media platform. Based on NPR CEO John Lansing, “I’ve misplaced my religion within the decision-making at Twitter…I would want a while to know whether or not Twitter will be trusted once more.”
“The draw back, regardless of the draw back, doesn’t change that reality,” NPR CEO John Lansing stated in an interview. “I might by no means have our content material go anyplace that may threat our credibility.”
In an e mail to the corporate’s workers, Lansing stated that the transfer to depart Twitter is being made to guard its credibility.
“It might be a disservice to the intense work you all do right here to proceed to share it on a platform that’s associating the federal constitution for public media with an abandoning of editorial independence or requirements.”
In response to its resolution to depart the platform, Elon Musk referred to as to defund NPR. The hashtag #Defund is trending on Twitter on the time of writing. NPR isn’t the primary main information group to depart an aggregation service like Twitter — The New York Instances famously left Apple Information some time in the past.
Whereas Elon Musk is making an attempt to crater lower than 1% of NPR’s funding, Twitter is coping with a bug that’s making users’ private tweets public.
