Elon Musk hit back at National Public Radio after the broadcaster announced it will no longer publish fresh content to its 52 official accounts.
(Bloomberg) — Elon Musk hit back at National Public Radio after the broadcaster announced it will no longer publish fresh content to its 52 official accounts.
The Twitter owner posted a screenshot of an email from NPR reporter Bobby Allyn, who asked for Musk’s reaction on the potential for other news outlets to follow NPR off the platform.
In a follow up tweet, Musk wrote, “Defund NPR.”
NPR decided to leave after Twitter labeled the news outlet “state-affiliated media.” Twitter later revised NPR’s label to “government-funded media,” but the public radio network said that was inaccurate and misleading. NPR is a private, nonprofit company with editorial independence.
NPR was caught off guard by the label on April 5. The broadcaster reported that when it asked Twitter Musk about the decision, he admitted he might have made a mistake.
Today, Musk called NPR hypocritical in a tweet that included a screenshot of a Google result in which the broadcaster’s site says “federal funding is essential to public radio’s service to the American public.”
“Guess they won’t mind losing Federal funding in that case,” Musk said in another tweet.
US government spending accounts for less than 1% of its budget on average, NPR said.
NPR posted a tweet informing its millions of followers where else they could find the organization’s work.
NPR CEO John Lansing said he lost faith “in the decision-making at Twitter” but said individual NPR journalists and staffers could decide for themselves whether to remain active on the platform.
(Updates with tweets from Elon Musk thoughout.)
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