San Antonio’s National Public Radio member station said Thursday that it’s halting the use of Twitter in light of the social media platform’s decision to label NPR’s flagship account as “government-funded media.”
Texas Public Radio President and CEO Joyce Slocum announced the station had suspended posting on its four Twitter accounts: @TPRNews, @TPRCommunity, @TPRNoticias and @TPRClassical.
“Twitter has not erroneously labeled TPR’s accounts,” Slocum wrote on TPR’s website. “But we are concerned about the potential erosion in public trust due to Twitter’s wanton actions,” Slocum said.
The NPR station posted a thread of information of where users can find TPR’s content off Twitter. The move does not include the accounts of the station’s reporters.
On Wednesday, NPR said it was quitting Twitter on all of its 52 accounts after Twitter had placed a “state-affiliated media” label on its account. It’s the first major news organization to leave the platform since Elon Musk took over Twitter. “State-affliated media” is a common term used to describe China- and Russian-based propaganda media outlets.
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Twitter later changed the label to “government-funded media,” but some viewed the description as still being misleading and a way to discredit the organization.
NPR CEO John Lansing said in an NPR interview that Twitter was “taking actions that undermine our credibility by falsely implying that we are not editorially independent.”
“I would never have our content go anywhere that would risk our credibility,” Lansing said in the interview.
“At this point, I have lost my faith in the decision-making at Twitter,” he said.
NPR is an independent, nonprofit media organization that receives the majority of its financial support through sponsorships and fees paid by its hundreds of member stations, such as Texas Public Radio. NPR receives less than 1 percent of its funding from federal sources, Slocum said.
As for TPR, which airs on KSTX 89.1 FM in San Antonio, it receives 90 percent of its funding from local sources, she said.
“Only a small percentage of TPR’s funding comes from the federal government,” Slocum wrote. “About 6% of our annual revenue comes in a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private, independent corporation created by Congress 50 years ago to shield public media from government influence.”
TPR said it is joining dozens of other NPR member stations in quitting Twitter. PBS, another nonprofit media organization that receives some federal funding, also left Twitter after being labeled as “state-affiliated media.”
Gabriella.Ybarra@express-news.net
TPR’s president said only about 6 percent of its funding is federal, via the Corporation…