Musk admits NPR isn’t state-affiliated after asking questions he may have Googled

Enlarge / NPR’s Twitter profile as of April 9, 2023.

When Elon Musk slapped NPR’s Twitter account with a “US state-affiliated media” label final week, it shortly grew to become clear he did not know a lot about how NPR operates or the way it’s funded. After admitting the state-affiliated label was improper, Musk modified NPR’s tag yesterday to “Authorities Funded Media”—despite the fact that NPR will get lower than 1 % of its annual funding immediately from the US authorities.

The state-affiliated tag took NPR and lots of others without warning, partially as a result of it contradicted Twitter’s personal coverage that cited NPR and the BBC as examples of state-financed media organizations that retain editorial independence. Twitter has traditionally utilized its state-affiliated tag to state-controlled information organizations like Russia’s RT and China’s Xinhua.

Twitter modified its coverage to take away the reference to editorial independence at NPR and the BBC, however did not scrub the previous language from one other Twitter assist web page that also describes each NPR and the BBC as editorially impartial. The BBC’s most important Twitter account can also be newly labeled as “Authorities Funded Media” after beforehand having no label.