Elon Musk's head-scratching hostility toward the press escalated Wednesday after Twitter slapped a "US state-affiliated media" label on the account belonging to National Public Radio — a designation typically reserved for outlets such as Russia's RT and China's Xinhua.
NPR's CEO, John Lansing, slammed the decision as "unacceptable."
To be clear: While the broadcaster receives some funding from public institutions, the vast majority of its revenue comes from sources such as corporate sponsorships and NPR membership fees. Less than 1% of its budget comes from federal grants.
Twitter defines state-affiliated media 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."
When Twitter laid that policy out in 2020, it specifically named NPR and the UK's BBC as examples of a publicly funded broadcasters with editorial independence.
But on Wednesday, as a backlash unfolded to Twitter's decision, users noticed that Twitter had deleted NPR from the policy language.
Twitter, which under Musk has laid off most of its communications team, didn't respond to a request for comment. But Musk tweeted this afternoon, apparently standing by the decision.
But the 'why' of the NPR decision remains unclear. Some speculated that the label was retaliation for NPR opting not to take former President Trump's post-arraignment speech live on Tuesday, which caught the ire of the far-right.
Several media outlets reported that emails to Twitter's communications team returned with an auto-reply containing a poop emoji.
BIG PICTURE
Musk is using his $44 billion social media toy to troll news organizations and journalists he doesn't like. Last week, he singled out the New York Times by removing its "verified" blue check from its account after the newspaper refused to pay for the service (which, historically, has been free and reserved for accounts whose credentials had been vetted). Earlier this year, he temporarily banned a handful journalists from the platform.
All of this underscores the chaotic scene Twitter has become since Musk's takeover last fall. Did I forget to mention that earlier this week he replaced the Twitter bird icon with a Shiba Inu to pump his favorite cryptocurrency? Because he did do that.
In addition to gutting the site's staff, Musk appears to be making policy decisions on a whim, treating the company, which — I can't stress this enough — he paid forty-four billion dollars to acquire, like a personal blog for his own lame memes and bad jokes. He wants so desperately to be funny and popular that he'll settle for mercurial and notorious.
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