NPR, Twitter, and the Public Radio Network: After Trump, Musk, the BBC, and Russia, the World Overstretched

NPR suspended its use of the social media site after it clashed with Musk over a new label applied to its accounts.

NPR said in its final series on social media that it can be found on other platforms as well as through its app and newsletters.

NPR’s chief executive says the network is protecting its credibility and its ability to produce journalism without a shadow of negative stories by not talking on social media.

In an interview with the BBC Tuesday, Musk acknowledged the pushback, saying, “I know the BBC … was not thrilled about being labeled ‘state affiliated media.’”

It’s just the latest example of Musk antagonizing media outlets. Twitter earlier this month also targeted the New York Times by removing the blue verification checkmark from its main account, after previously pledging to remove checks from all users verified under Twitter’s legacy system. And the platform riled some journalists when it briefly restricted users from sharing links to a popular newsletter platform, a move it quickly walked back.

Meanwhile, Twitter also appears to have removed some restrictions on Russian government accounts that had been put in place following the outset of Russia’s war in Ukraine. “All news is to some degree propaganda. Let people decide for themselves,” Musk said in a tweet commenting on the decision Sunday.

The chaos comes as Musk attempts to shore up Twitter’s business, which he has repeatedly said was on the brink of bankruptcy and had just “four months to live” following his takeover.

Twitter has faced an exodus of advertisers, who have been concerned about increased hate speech on the platform and massive cuts to the company’s workforce. Musk took on an uphill battle to convince users to pay $8 per month for the platform’s subscription service.

The CEO said it is difficult to run the company and that it can be painful, although he believes some advertisers are returning to the platform.

The decision by the social networking site took the public radio network by surprise. When Bobby Allyn asked how NPR was doing, Musk asked how it worked. Musk allowed that he might have gotten it wrong.

He says he has lost his faith in decision making at the social networking site. “I need time to understand whether it can be trusted again.”

Leaves Twitter: Government-Funded Media-Labels for the News and Reporting in the Presence of Trump and Pompeo

PBS and thebbc, which both receive money from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, are among the ones whose accounts were given the same designation.

Musk replied that the “publicly funded” phrase would apply to NPR as well. The change was not made before NPR’s decision on Wednesday morning, however.

The BBC exchange showed Musk as alternately conciliatory and erratic. He also said that he’s sleeping on a couch at work, that he followed through on his promise to purchase Twitter only because a judge forced him to, and that he should stop tweeting after 3 a.m.

“The whole point isn’t whether or not we’re government funded,” Lansing says. The point is to keep the integrity of the journalism even if we are government funded.

NPR’s board is appointed without any government influence. And the network has at times tangled with both Democratic and Republican administrations. NPR joined with other media organizations to push the administration for an access to closed hearings about prisoners at the American naval base in Cuba. And “All Things Considered” host Mary Louise Kelly stood her ground in questioning then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo over then-President Donald Trump’s actions in Ukraine despite being berated by Pompeo.

Corporate supporters and grants make up the majority of NPR’s funding. It also receives significant programming fees from member stations. Those stations, in turn, receive about 13 percent of their funds from the CPB and other state and federal government sources.

A number of public radio stations preceded NPR to exit at Twitter: Member stations KCRW in Santa Monica, Calif., WESA in Pittsburgh and WEKU in Kentucky, which serve central and eastern Kentucky.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/04/12/1169269161/npr-leaves-twitter-government-funded-media-label

The Labels of Government-Funded Media and Voice of America: A Statement to the NPR Media Correspondent Brent Serchak

Journalism and freedom-of-speech groups have condemned Twitter’s labels, including PEN, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and the Committee to Protect Journalists.

State-financed media organizations with editorial independence, like the BBC in the UK and NPR in the US, are not defined as state-affiliated media for the purposes of this policy.

That language has now been removed. In addition to NPR and the BBC, Twitter recently labeled the U.S. broadcaster Voice of America as government-funded media. Voice of America works for the U.S. Agency for Global Media. The editorial independence from the government is a requirement of law.

“The label ‘government funded’ is potentially misleading and could be construed as also ‘government-controlled’ – which VOA is most certainly not,” VOA spokesperson Bridget Serchak said in a statement to NPR.

Serchak says VOA will continue to raise the distinction in talks with Twitter as the label “causes unwarranted and unjustified concern about the accuracy and objectivity of [its] news coverage.”

When pressed for how he justifies the disclaimer considering NPR receives meager funding from the government and has complete editorial independence, Musk veered into conspiratorial territory.

Musk told Allyn that if he thought the government did not have an influence on the entity they were funding, then he had been in the wrong place for a long time.

Musk’s push to label the network even ran afoul of the site’s own rules. According to an NPR interview, the deciding factor in issuing the designation was whether the outlet had editorial freedom. The labels, the former executive said, were intended to give users context that a tweet they are seeing may be propaganda.

Musk’s impulsive leadership style is apparent in the messy deliberations he had over whether to label NPR’s account. His platform changes are announced by tweet, with sudden reversals and never coming to fruition. Because Musk likes to troll, there is always a chance that his words will be jokes. The new check mark verification system will be in effect on April 20. The date is an inside joke among people who smoke or consume marijuana.

Disclosure: This story was reported and written by NPR Media Correspondent David Folkenflik and edited by Acting Chief Business Editor Emily Kopp and Managing Editor Vickie Walton-James. Mary Yang and Bobby Allyn were involved in the story. Under NPR’s protocol for reporting on itself, no corporate official or news executive reviewed this story before it was posted publicly.