Top US broadcaster NPR to suspend all Twitter use after 'Government-funded Media' label

Photo/Twitter

United States' National Public Radio (NPR) Wednesday said that it would suspend all Twitter use. This comes a week after the micro-blogging website designated the broadcaster "U.S. state-affiliated media".

NPR is headquartered in Washington, with its. It serves as a national syndicator to a network of over 1,000 public radio stations in the United States.

The social networking giant has since changed the label on the NPR Twitter account to "Government-funded Media," a label it also gave to the BBC, the national broadcaster of Britain.

In a statement, the NPR said: "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."

The statement said that NPR will not put its journalism on platforms that have demonstrated an interest in undermining its credibility and the public's understanding of NPR's editorial independence.

Also read: Elon Musk says owning Twitter ''painful'' but needed to be done

The New York Times reported that in a letter to its staff Wednesday morning, John Lansing, NPR's chief executive, wrote, "Actions by Twitter or other social media companies to tarnish the independence of any public media institution are exceptionally harmful and set a dangerous precedent."

In a Twitter thread Wednesday morning, the broadcaster shared links to its newsletters and other social media sites.

In the past, Twitter had listed NPR and BBC as exceptions to its guidelines on state-affiliated accounts because they were "state-financed media organizations with editorial independence."