Last month, in what was only the latest iteration of his chaotic role as Twitter’s (TWTR) CEO, Elon Musk assigned a label to NPR calling it “US State-Affiliated Media.” This is the same tag Twitter uses for propaganda outlets in autocratic countries, such as Russia and China.
A few days later, after Musk had changed the label to “government-funded media,” NPR decided to stop posting on Twitter, making it the first major news organization to go dark on the platform. Other publicly-funded media organizations, including PBS, have since followed NPR off Twitter.
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Though all labels have been removed from NPR’s 52 official accounts – its main account has nearly 9 million followers – the organization has not returned to Twitter. And Musk wants them back, or else.
In a series of unprompted emails Tuesday to an NPR journalist, Musk said that he would transfer the organization’s main account – @NPR – to another organization or user.
“So is NPR going to start posting on Twitter again, or should we reassign @NPR to another company,” the email, according to NPR, reads.
Twitter’s terms of service say that an account may be permanently removed if the user does not log in at least every 30 days.
"Our policy is to recycle handles that are definitively dormant," Musk said in another message. "Same policy applies to all accounts. No special treatment for NPR."
