Ever the petulant wannabe autocrat, Twitter owner Elon Musk threatened to reassign the @NPR handle to another company unless the public radio organization started to post on the social media platform again, according to reporting from NPR itself.
National Public Radio stopped posting on Twitter on April 4th, except for a series of tweets on April 12th in which it posted its account names on various other platforms, as well as a link to the app. Like many other organizations, NPR has broadcast stories critical of Musk’s takeover of Twitter, and it has not bought into Musk’s badging system, although the account has a legacy blue check mark.
More importantly to NPR, it is protesting a designation Musk assigned it as a state-controlled media outlet. While NPR does receive some federal funds, it is largely funded through member station fees and donations. In support of NPR, publicly-funded PBS and Canada’s CBC also stopped using Twitter after they too were so labeled by Musk.