Elon Musk suggested he would reassign NPR’s Twitter account after the company stopped tweeting, NPR claimed Tuesday.
In a series of emails to an NPR reporter, the billionaire reportedly threatened to move the @npr handle to “another company.”
“So should NPR start posting on Twitter again, or should we reassign @NPR to another company?” The organization claimed that the billionaire wrote in an email.
“Our policy is to recycle handles that are definitely inactive,” Musk wrote in a follow-up email, according to the report. “Same policy applies to all accounts. No special treatment for NPR.”
In April, the public broadcaster left the social media platform after Twitter added a “state-affiliated media” label to NPR’s main account. The decision made NPR — a private, non-profit company that maintains editorial independence from the US government — the first major news outlet to stop publishing new content on Twitter.
That tag was later amended to “government funded media”, although NPR has stated that both are false and misleading. Musk also labeled state-backed outlets including Russia’s RT and China’s Xinhua News Agency.
Elon Musk previously suspended the accounts of prominent journalists who were critical of his management and policy decisions following his acquisition of Twitter last year.
Although the self-proclaimed free speech enthusiast later reinstated the accounts, his recent decision to remove Twitter’s free identity-verification system unleashed a stream of impersonation, misinformation and general chaos.