NPR’s San Antonio member station is joining its other affiliates in going dark on Twitter amid a campaign pushed by Twitter CEO Elon Musk to “defund NPR” after the social media site labeled the radio news station as “state-affiliated media.” Texas Public Radio, more commonly known in the Alamo City as TPR, confirmed Thursday, April 13, that it is suspending use of Twitter by its main station-branded accounts.
The accounts going silent on Twitter include @TPRnews, @TPRclassical, and @TPRcommunity, according to a statement from a TPR spokesperson. The move is a show of solidarity with other NPR stations like KCRW-Santa Monica, WEKU-Lexington, and KUVO-Denver that have also suspended use of Twitter.
TPR posted a “Here is where you can find us” tweet Wednesday evening, April 12, that was similar to NPR’s tweet when it announced that it would stop posting links and updates on its main Twitter accounts.
NPR claims that it was falsely labeled as “state-affiliated media” by Twitter, “the same term it uses for propaganda outlets in Russia, China and other autocratic countries,” NPR wrote.
TPR said in a statement that it initially could have been argued that the “erroneous” label came from a lack of understanding of how public NPR stations are funded.
“However, it is now clear that Elon Musk is deliberately acting to cause harm to NPR and, by extension, local public radio stations. In his own account, he has doubled down with a ‘defund NPR’ campaign,” TPR said in a statement.