Key Highlights :
1. NPR has been labelled as "state-affiliated media" on Twitter, which some worried could undermine public confidence in the news organization.
2. NPR said it was disturbed to see the description added to all of the tweets that it sends out, and called it "unacceptable for Twitter to label us this way."
3. Twitter's owner, Elon Musk, quoted a definition of state-affiliated media in the company's guidelines as "outlets where the state exercises control over editorial content through financial resources, direct or indirect political pressures, and/or control over production and distribution."
4. NPR does receive U.S. government funding through grants from federal agencies and departments, along with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
5. Until Wednesday, the same Twitter guidelines said that "state-financed media organizations with editorial independence, like the BBC in the UK or NPR in the United States, are not defined as state-affiliated media for the purposes of this policy."
6. Twitter's move came just days after Twitter stripped The New York Times of its verification check mark.
Twitter has labeled National Public Radio as “state-affiliated media” on the social media site, a move some worried Wednesday could undermine public confidence in the news organization.
Twitter said in a blog post Wednesday that it is applying a new label to NPR as part of its efforts to “identify and surface official government accounts,” which it said are more likely to be trustworthy.
Twitter said it has also updated its rules to prohibit “promotion or amplification of state-affiliated media content from your account.”
NPR said in a statement that the label “is not a judgement about the quality of NPR’s journalism, but rather a recognition of the important work that state-affiliated media do in their own countries.”
Twitter has long been criticized for not doing enough to prevent the spread of misinformation and propaganda on its platform.
