NPR to Suspend Twitter Use After ‘Government-Funded’ Label

National Public Radio said on Wednesday that it would suspend all Twitter use, a little over a week after the social network designated the broadcaster “U.S. state-affiliated media.”

Twitter has since changed the label on the NPR Twitter account to “Government-funded Media,” a designation it also gave to PBS. That label also appeared on the account of the BBC, the national broadcaster of Britain, until Wednesday, when it was changed to “publicly funded media.”

NPR said Twitter’s move could damage its reputation.

“NPR’s organizational accounts will no longer be active on Twitter because the platform is taking actions that undermine our credibility by falsely implying that we are not editorially independent,” Isabel Lara, NPR’s chief communications officer, said in a statement.

In a letter to staff on Wednesday morning, John Lansing, NPR’s chief executive, said posting on the platform would be a disservice to the staff’s journalism. “Actions by Twitter or other social media companies to tarnish the independence of any public media institution are exceptionally harmful and set a dangerous precedent,” he wrote.

In a Twitter thread on Wednesday morning, the broadcaster shared links to its newsletters and its accounts on other social media sites. Some NPR affiliate stations including WNYC in New York were continuing to post on Twitter.

PBS took similar action. “PBS stopped tweeting from our account when we learned of the change, and we have no plans to resume at this time,” said Jason Phelps, a spokesman for PBS, which had not posted on Twitter since Saturday.