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Elon Musk threatened to reassign NPR’s Twitter account to “another company,” according to the non-profit news organization, in an ongoing spat between Musk and media groups since his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter last year.
“So is NPR going to start posting on Twitter again, or should we reassign @NPR to another company?” Musk wrote in one email late Tuesday to NPR reporter Bobby Allyn.
NPR stopped tweeting from its main account after Twitter abruptly labeled NPR’s main account as “ state-affiliated media ” last month, a term that’s also been used to identify outlets controlled or heavily influenced by authoritarian governments. Twitter then changed the label to “ government-funded media.”
NPR said that both labels were inaccurate and undermined its credibility — noting the nonprofit news company operates independently of the U.S. government. Federal funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting accounts for less than 1% of NPR’s annual operating budget, the company said.
The last tweets on NPR’s main account are from April 12 — when the news organization shared a thread of other places readers and listeners can find its journalism.
Twitter temporarily slapped other news organizations — including the BBC and PBS — with “government-funded media” labels. PBS also stopped using its Twitter account in response.
An article written by Allyn late Tuesday, the NPR tech reporter detailed the messages that the billionaire owner of Twitter sent regarding NPR’s account.
