NPR left Twitter after controversy over its “government-funded media” label.

National Public Radio (NPR) has decided not to use any of its 52 official Twitter accounts. The decision comes days after Twitter CEO Elon Musk labeled NPR first as “”state-affiliated media” and later as “government-funded media.”

In a ___ Post on NPR’s website.the media outlet offers its perspective on “government-funded media” branding:

The news organization says that’s false and misleading, because NPR is a private, nonprofit company with editorial independence. It receives less than 1 percent of its $300 million annual budget from the federally funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

NPR says that even if the label is removed from its Twitter page, it cannot immediately post new content to the account because it feels it can no longer trust Twitter’s decisions. The media outlet will give its staff members who run the accounts two weeks to “reconsider their social media strategies”. Individual NPR employees will be allowed to decide whether they can continue to update their personal accounts.

This news comes hours after Musk. Interviewed by the BBC.. The media group’s Twitter account was also labeled “government-funded media” a few days ago, even though the BBC gets its funding from UK residents who pay a license fee. Musk said in the interview that the BBC’s Twitter page has now been relabeled as “publicly funded”.

Musk was also asked in the BBC interview about Twitter’s current status since he bought the social network in late 2022, and then laid off the majority of its workers. Musk claims that the company is now “almost broke” and that Twitter now has about 1,500 employees, down from about 8,000 before Musk bought the company.

Musk admitted it had been a “really pretty stressful situation for the last several months” since acquiring Twitter, but felt it was still the right decision.

In related news, Musk Posted on his Twitter page Checkmarks for verified accounts will be removed by April 20. Twitter started adding new verified and paid Twitter Blue checkmarks on April 1, but left the old ones alive, which will apparently change next week.