NPR said that it will no longer post its content on Twitter in response to the decision by the platform under Elon Musk to relabel it as "state-affiliated" media.
The public radio network told staffers on Wednesday that it would no longer publish fresh content on its 52 Twitter accounts.
NPR had been labeled as "state-affiliated media" by Twitter, causing an uproar. The label was used to identify news outlets affiliated with authoritarian governments, such as Russia's Sputnik. The platform later changed the title to "government-funded media," but the news network challenged the label, saying it was a private company and has independent editorial decision-making.
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"It would be a disservice to the serious work you all do here to continue to share it on a platform that is associating the federal charter for public media with an abandoning of editorial independence or standards," NPR CEO John Lansing told staff in an email.
Lansing said that NPR would not immediately return to the platform if the label was removed. "At this point, I have lost my faith in the decision-making at Twitter," he said. "I would need some time to understand whether Twitter can be trusted again."
While NPR as a company would not post to Twitter, Lansing said that individual staffers and journalists should decide for themselves if they wish to continue using the website.
NPR was not the only outlet affected by this label change. PBS was given a similar label, as was the BBC. Musk said in a BBC interview that he's trying to be "accurate" and offered to change the label from "state-affiliated media" to "publicly funded" for the BBC.
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Separately, Musk has said that Twitter will strip several old accounts of their verified check marks. Musk said that all of the check marks will be removed by April 20. If news outlets wanted to keep their check marks, they would be forced to pay additional fees to receive them. Several news outlets have declined to pay.