American public radio NPR leaves Twitter after receiving ‘state media’ seal – 04/12/2023 – Market

The American public radio NPR announced, this Wednesday (12), that it will stop publishing content on Twitter after being classified by the platform as “state media” and “publicly financed media”, which “undermines” its ” credibility”.

“NPR accounts as an organization will no longer be active on Twitter as the platform takes steps that undermine our credibility by wrongly implying that we are not editorially independent,” NPR said in a statement. communicated.

The journalists and broadcasters that make up it “will be able to decide, for their part, whether they want to remain on the platform,” a spokeswoman for the network told AFP.

“We will not put our journalism on platforms that seek to undermine our credibility and the public’s idea of ​​our editorial independence,” adds NPR, which had 8.8 million followers on the network.

The radio had already protested last week after Twitter labeled it an “American state-affiliated media outlet”, putting it on the same level as Russian outlets RT, or Sputnik. Subsequently, Twitter changed its label to consider it a “government funded” body, as it also did with the British BBC.

Born in 1970 and very popular in the United States, NPR is funded primarily by advertising and sponsorship, as well as its network broadcasters. Less than 1% of its budget comes from federal sources, he says.

The change in NPR’s rating came a few days after the social network removed the verification seal from The New York Times.

NPR and The New York Times, two highly respected and followed outlets in the United States, are considered by some conservatives to be too “leftist” and “progressive.”

In an interview with the BBC on Wednesday, Elon Musk said Twitter’s management feels like a “roller coaster” and admitted “a lot of mistakes” six months after buying it for $44 billion.