National Public Radio (NPR) announced on Wednesday morning that it would no longer publish any of its work on Twitter after CEO Elon Musk labeled it as “state-affiliated media” on the social media platform.

The media and news organization took issue with this label because it is “the same term [Twitter] uses for propaganda outlets in Russia, China and other autocratic countries.”

However, “national” and “public” are literally part of the organization’s name.

After considering this issue, Musk reclassified NPR as “government-funded media,” a label that NPR claims is “inaccurate and misleading” because “NPR is a private, nonprofit company with editorial independence” and it “receives less than 1 percent of its $300 million annual budget from the federally funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting.”

In a statement, NPR said that Twitter “is taking actions that undermine [their] credibility by falsely implying that [they] are not editorially independent.”

Political commentator Ian Miles Cheong posted NPR’s statement to Twitter, reminding everyone about the time “NPR refused to cover Hunter’s laptop because it was not ‘newsworthy’.”

Bobby Allyn, a business reporter for NPR, emailed Musk to ask what his reaction is to the organization quitting Twitter. In response, Musk tweeted a screenshot of the email and wrote, “Defund @NPR”.

Musk followed this up with another tweet showing that, on NPR’s own website, they literally say that federal funding is “essential” to their organization, completely contradicting their argument.

“What have you got against the truth?” Musk asked NPR.

Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) shortly joined NPR’s movement to leave Twitter after they were also labeled “government-funded media.”

PBS spokesperson Jason Phelps announced the organization’s decision, saying, “PBS stopped tweeting from our account when we learned of the change and we have no plans to resume at this time. We are continuing to monitor the ever-changing situation closely.”

However, they were quickly exposed for being just as hypocritical as NPR.

Twitter user @TexasLindsay_ posted screenshots of PBS’s tweets over the years in which they pleaded for their followers to support their federal funding.

For some reason, both liberal news outlets were furious by Twitter simply allowing the public to see who funds them. If it really is such a small percentage of their funding as they claim, then why not stop taking funding from the government and taxpayers?

 

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