Musk Threatens to Give Away NPR's Twitter Handle Unless It Tweets Again – Rolling Stone

Skip to main content The public broadcaster quit Twitter after their account was labeled “state-affiliated” Elon Musk Philip Pacheco / AFP via Getty Images Elon Musk suggested he would re-assign NPR’s Twitter account because the company had stopped tweeting, NPR claimed on Tuesday. In a series of emails to an NPR reporter, the billionaire reportedly threatened to transfer the @npr handle to “another company.” “So is NPR going to start posting on Twitter again, or should we reassign @NPR to another company?” the organization claimed the billionaire wrote in an email. “Our policy is to recycle handles that are definitively dormant,” Musk wrote in a follow-up email, per the report. “Same policy applies to all accounts. No special treatment for NPR.” In April, the public broadcaster quit 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 U.S. government — the first major news outlet to stop publishing new content on Twitter. Trending That tag was later revised to “government-funded media,” though NPR has said both are false and misleading. Musk also took the label off government-backed outlets including Russia’s RT and
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