NPR quits Twitter

after being falsely labeled as "stateaffiliated media"

Nonprofit media organization National Public Radio announced on Wednesday that it will no longer post fresh content to its 52 official Twitter feeds, becoming the first major news organization to go silent on the social media platform.

According to an article by NPR’s Media Correspondent David Folkenflik, NPR cited Twitter's decision to last week label the network “state-affiliated media," the same term used by the social media site for propaganda outlets in Russia, China and other autocratic countries, as the reason behind the decision.

Twitter later revised its label on NPR's account to "government-funded media," but NPR says that is still inaccurate and misleading, as NPR is a private, nonprofit company with editorial independence and receives less than one percent of its $300 million annual budget from the federally-funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting.