Yesterday, NPR announced that it was leaving Twitter after CEO Elon Musk slapped a "state-affiliated media" label on its account—the same label used for outlets like the Chinese propaganda publication Xinhua, which has been described by watchdogs and scholars as the "eyes and tongue" of the Chinese Communist Party and "the world's biggest propaganda agency."
"NPR's organizational accounts 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," reads the statement from executives. "We are not putting our journalism on platforms that have demonstrated an interest in undermining our credibility and the public's understanding of our editorial independence." The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) followed suit, to which Musk replied: "Publicly funded PBS joins publicly funded NPR in leaving Twitter in a huff after being labeled 'Publicly Funded.'"
