NPR says Elon Musk is threatening to reassign its Twitter account

NPR said Twitter CEO Elon Musk threatened to hand access to its account to another company after the media outlet left the platform last month. 

The outlet reported Tuesday that Musk said in a series of emails he would give the account with the handle @NPR to another organization or person. 

“So is NPR going to start posting on Twitter again, or should we reassign @NPR to another company?” Musk said in an unprompted email. 

Twitter’s policy on inactive accounts states that users must log in to their account at least once every 30 days. The policy says that accounts could be permanently removed because of “prolonged inactivity.” 

NPR announced in mid-April that it would quit Twitter after the outlet gave a “state-affiliated media” label to the outlet and others, one that has traditionally been used for state-run media outlets such as Russia’s RT and China’s Xinhua. 

Following backlash in which NPR, the White House and others emphasized that NPR has editorial independence, Twitter removed the label and replaced it with one stating that the outlets like NPR were “government funded.” 

But the outlet decided after the change not to publish its work on Twitter, letting its accounts on the platform go unused.

“We are not putting our journalism on platforms that have demonstrated an interest in undermining our credibility and the public’s understanding of our editorial independence,” the outlet told The Hill at the time. “We are turning away from Twitter but not from our audiences and communities.” 

NPR’s account is still visible on Twitter but has not posted since April 12. It does not include any label indicating government funding.

Other outlets such as PBS also left the platform following the labeling.

NPR’s website states that less than 1 percent of its annual operating budget comes from grants from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and federal agencies and departments. 

“Our policy is to recycle handles that are definitively dormant,” Musk later said in another email to the outlet. “Same policy applies to all accounts. No special treatment for NPR.” 

The outlet reported that NPR CEO John Lansing has said he lost faith with Twitter’s decision-making and needs time to determine if the platform can be trusted. 

“NPR isn’t tagged as government-funded anymore, so what’s the beef?” Musk told NPR. 

The Hill has reached out to Twitter for comment.