Elon Musk Threatens to Reassign NPR's Twitter Account in Spat with Media Groups
Key Highlights :
Elon Musk has been in a spat with media groups since his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter last year, and it appears to have reached a new level this week. According to the non-profit news organization, NPR, Musk threatened to reassign NPR's Twitter account to "another company."
Twitter abruptly labeled NPR's main account as "state-affiliated media" last month, a term that's also been used to identify outlets controlled or heavily influenced by authoritarian governments. Twitter then changed the label to "government-funded media." NPR said that both labels were inaccurate and undermined its credibility -- noting the nonprofit news company operates independently of the U.S. government. Federal funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting accounts for less than 1% of NPR's annual operating budget, the company said.
In response to this labeling, NPR stopped tweeting from its main account and the last tweets on NPR's main account are from April 12. This prompted Elon Musk to email NPR reporter Bobby Allyn with the question, “So is NPR going to start posting on Twitter again, or should we reassign @NPR to another company?”
Twitter's online policy states that it determines an account's inactivity based on logging on -- not tweeting. Twitter says that users should log in at least every 30 days to keep their accounts active, and that "accounts may be permanently removed due to prolonged inactivity." Musk pointed to the NPR's choice to stop tweeting as reasoning behind possibly reassigning the account. Musk wrote in one email, “Our policy is to recycle handles that are definitively dormant. Same policy applies to all accounts. No special treatment for NPR.”
Twitter temporarily slapped other news organizations -- including the BBC and PBS -- with "government-funded media" labels. PBS also stopped using its Twitter account in response.
An article written by Allyn late Tuesday detailed the messages that the billionaire owner of Twitter sent regarding NPR's account. When asked by NPR who would be willing to use NPR's Twitter account, Musk replied, "National Pumpkin Radio," along with a fire emoji and a laughing emoji, NPR reported.
It is unknown if NPR has logged into its account, which currently has a blue check without the previous "government-funded media" label, since April. It is also uncertain if Musk will actually reassign NPR's handle, regardless of Twitter's published policy on account activity.
Experts warn of misinformation and further loss of credibility if Musk does reassign the account to another user. Zeve Sanderson, executive director of New York University's Center for Social Media and Politics told The Associated Press, “For journalism, there's not only brand safety concerns, but in addition to that, there are a ton of concerns around misinformation potentially being perceived as a lot more credible -- because someone (could be) tweeting from from the NPR handle when it's really not them."
Liz Woolery, digital policy lead at literary organization PEN America said that it is "hard to imagine a more potent example of Musk's willingness to use Twitter to arbitrarily intimidate and retaliate against any person or organization that irks him, with or without provocation."
This is the latest volley in what many experts describe as a chilling and uncertain landscape for journalism on Twitter since Musk acquired the company in October. In addition to removing news organization's verifications and temporarily adding labels like "government-funded media" on some accounts, Musk abruptly suspended the accounts of individual journalists who wrote about Twitter late last year.
It remains to be seen what the outcome of this spat between Musk and media groups will be, but it is clear that the actions of one of the world's most powerful tech billionaires have the potential to have a large impact on the credibility of news organizations.
