Twitter on Tuesday evening added a label to National Public Radio’s account on the social network, designating the broadcaster “U.S. state-affiliated media.”
The move comes as Twitter has announced sweeping — and unevenly enforced — changes to some of its policies, like the verification check mark system, under the ownership of Elon Musk, who bought Twitter in October for $44 billion.
Twitter’s guidelines define state-affiliated accounts as “outlets where the state exercises control over editorial content through financial resources, direct or indirect political pressures, and/or control over production and distribution.” Other news media accounts with the label include RT of Russia and Xinhua of China.
According to cached versions of Twitter’s published policy, for much of Tuesday the guidelines noted that NPR and the BBC of Britain did not receive the label because they were “state-financed media organizations with editorial independence.” The reference to NPR has since been deleted from that policy.
“We were disturbed to see last night that Twitter has labeled NPR as ‘state-affiliated media,’” John Lansing, the chief executive of NPR, said in a statement. “NPR stands for freedom of speech and holding the powerful accountable. It is unacceptable for Twitter to label us this way,” he added.
Isabel Lara, NPR’s chief communications officer, said the broadcaster was not notified that the label would be added to its account and learned of the change only when it appeared on Twitter. She added that NPR contacted Twitter and has not heard back. She noted that, on average, less than 1 percent of NPR’s annual operating budget comes in the form of grants from the government-funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting and other federal agencies and departments.
Mr. Musk did not respond to a request for comment, and an email to Twitter’s communications department was returned with a poop emoji autoreply. Mr. Musk tweeted in apparent support of the move, posting a passage from Twitter’s policy and saying it “seems accurate” in a reply to a user pointing out the label on NPR’s account.
As of Wednesday afternoon, NPR’s sub-accounts on Twitter, including those covering politics, music and health, were not given the “U.S. state-affiliated media” label.
Mr. Musk announced last year that he would remove check marks, which had denoted the accounts of celebrities, politicians and other notable figures, from many users’ profiles unless they paid an $8 monthly fee for the verification program known as Twitter Blue. Though the changes were set to go in effect on Saturday, most verified users have kept their blue checks.
Twitter took away the check mark from some accounts, including the main account of The New York Times. After Twitter users pointed out that The Times, which was among media companies including The Washington Post and Politico that had said they would not pay for check marks, Mr. Musk tweeted that he would remove it.
Lora Kelley
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