NPR quits Elon Musk’s Twitter over ‘government-funded’ label

National Public Radio is leaving Twitter after the Elon Musk-owned social media platform branded NPR’s primary account with labels that, according to the news organization, undermine its credibility.

Last week, Twitter designated NPR’s primary account as “state-affiliated media,” a label also used to identify media outlets controlled or significantly influenced by authoritarian governments, such as Russia and China. Later, Twitter changed the designation to “government-funded media” and assigned it to a few other institutions, including the Public Broadcasting Service in the United States and the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom.

NPR stated in a statement released on Wednesday that it “will no longer be active on Twitter because the platform is taking actions that undermine our credibility by falsely implying that we are not editorially independent.”