Elon Musk appears to be flip-flopping on whether Twitter considers the nonprofit news org NPR to be state-run media — although it’s unclear if he’s gonna take that label off their account.
The Twit-in-Chief was directly asked about this by an NPR reporter this past week … and when he was shown the hard numbers on where NPR gets its funding — with only 1% of it coming from the U.S. government, and a majority of it coming from donors — he relented a bit.
According to the journo — citing an email exchange he says he was having with Musk personally — EM apparently didn’t understand the difference between public media and state-sanctioned media … and replied, “Well, then we should fix it” as it pertains to NPR’s status.
Musk then supposedly asked for the breakdown of their finances, which the reporter says was provided to him … to which Musk then apparently responded, “The operating principle at new Twitter is simply fair and equal treatment, so if we label non-US accounts as govt, then we should do the same for US, but it sounds like that might not be accurate here.”
Earlier in the day, Musk said NPR’s new state-affiliated media label — which Twitter has yet to remove — seemed “accurate.” But now, based on this new reporting, it sounds like he’s not sure. Musk reportedly told this reporter Twitter would mull over a final decision.
Of course, NPR is not state-controlled media — unlike the ones in North Korea, China and Russia … it operates independently and has provided accurate reporting for years. In light of Twitter’s designation, NPR has stopped tweeting altogether since Tuesday.