The US broadcaster NPR ceases its activity Twitter after a confrontation with owner Elon Musk on ice. The more than 50 NPR accounts with the short message service should no longer be supplied with current content, as the broadcaster announced on Wednesday. NPR recommended users to use the in-house App or others online platforms to use.
Musk had the NPR account tagged as a state-controlled media organization in line with the Chinese news agency Xinhua or the Kremlin TV channel Russia Today placed. After criticism, the marking was changed. It is now said that NPR is a government-funded media organization. That too is at least misleading: Less than 1 percent of the annual NPR budget of 300 million dollars comes from state funds.
Editorially independent
NPR also said the new classification undermined the network’s credibility by falsely implying that it was not editorially independent. Therefore, no more journalistic content will be published on the platform.
Also the UK public broadcaster BBC was initially referred to in his account as being funded by the government. In an interview with the BBC on Wednesday night, Musk announced that he would change the label to “publicly funded”. The BBC had also protested the wrong award on Twitter.
The tech billionaire and boss of the electric car manufacturer Tesla feels that he has been treated unfairly, especially by the US media, for a long time. For its more than 134 million Musk serves Twitter followers as an amplifier for right-wing political views. Musk recently accused the media of being “racist” towards whites. Speaking to The New York Times, he said its “propaganda” was “not even interesting” and called the content of the newspaper’s Twitter profile “diarrhea.” The New York Times Twitter account was also unchecked for verification.
