You knew it was going to happen sooner or later.
Ever since Elon Musk purchased Twitter and turned it into his little juvenile sandbox, he has been targeting, trolling and taunting media outlets. He has practically dared them to leave Twitter. And when they haven’t, it’s like he’s grinning and saying, “See? You just can’t quit me. You need me.”
Eventually, someone was going to say enough is enough. Someone was going to walk away from the social media platform. Someday it was going to happen.
That someone was National Public Radio. And that day was Wednesday.
In a statement, NPR, which has about 8.8 million followers, said, “We are not putting our journalism on platforms that have demonstrated an interest in undermining our credibility and the public’s understanding of our editorial independence. We are turning away from Twitter but not from our audiences and communities.”
In a letter to staff, NPR chief executive John Lansing said, “It would be a disservice to the serious work you all do here to continue to share it on a platform that is associating the federal charter for public media with an abandoning of editorial independence or standards. … Actions by Twitter or other social media companies to tarnish the independence of any public media institution are exceptionally harmful and set a dangerous precedent.”
Musk’s petty attacks on the media have been going on for quite some time, but his assault escalated last week when Twitter labeled NPR’s main account as “US state-affiliated” media. NPR and others immediately pushed back, correctly pointing out that it was ridiculous to compare NPR to state-run media such as Russia’s RT and the Chinese Communist Party’s CCTV. My Poynter colleague Kelly McBride, who also is NPR’s public editor, told The Poynter Report that the label was “complete and utter bull(expletive).” She added, “That term, state-affiliated media, means an arm of the government giving the government’s message. And there is no evidence to suggest that that’s what NPR does.”
To be clear, NPR is run independently of the U.S. government. As NPR’s Bill Chappell wrote, “… 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. NPR is an independent, non-profit media organization that gets the bulk of its direct financial support from two sources: sponsorships and fees paid by hundreds of member stations, as its website states.”
After all the pushback, Musk and Twitter changed NPR’s label last weekend to “government funded media” — another tag that is simply not accurate.
So on Wednesday, NPR had enough. Not only will its main account stop tweeting, but so will other NPR-related accounts, such as the official accounts for NPR Music, NPR Politics, “Weekend Edition” and so forth. Lansing told NPR’s David Folkenflik that it’s all about saving NPR’s credibility.
“The downside, whatever the downside, doesn't change that fact,” Lansing said. “I would never have our content go anywhere that would risk our credibility.”
Many NPR affiliate stations are following NPR’s lead and no longer tweeting.
Since NPR’s announcement, Musk told the BBC that he is considering changing NPR’s label, as well as the BBC’s, to “publicly funded.” Even if that happens, Lansing told Folkenflik that NPR wouldn’t immediately return to Twitter.
“At this point I have lost my faith in the decision-making at Twitter,” Lansing said. “I would need some time to understand whether Twitter can be trusted again.”
This all raises two questions. First, what about NPR’s individual journalists?
NPR is allowing its employees to do whatever they wish when it comes to Twitter. Tweet, don’t tweet, it’s entirely up to them.
The second question is: Could this be just the beginning? Could other media outlets join NPR by jumping off the platform?
PBS already has. Also listed as “government-funded,” PBS hasn’t tweeted since April 8.
Some news outlets have dropped in and out over the past few years. As The Washington Post’s Paul Farhi noted, “Fox News suspended its Twitter activity for 18 months in 2018 after protesters tweeted host Tucker Carlson’s home address, but it resumed in 2020. CBS News suspended tweeting for two days in November, shortly after Musk bought Twitter and began undoing years worth of security and anti-hate policies.”
We would have to assume that other news outlets are monitoring how not tweeting impacts NPR. One such outlet could be The New York Times. Last week, Musk removed the blue verified checkmark from the Times’ main account and called the Times “propaganda.” The Times continues to tweet its journalism to its 55 million followers.
