Elon Musk ‘threatens’ to reassign US radio broadcaster NPR Twitter account to another company

SAN FRANCISCO - Twitter chief Elon Musk has “threatened” to reassign National Public Radio’s (NPR) Twitter account to another company, the US-based broadcaster said on Tuesday.

Mr Musk suggested that he would reassign the network’s main account, under the @NPR handle, to another organisation or person, NPR said.

NPR stopped posting content to its 52 official Twitter feeds in April

in protest against a Twitter designation that implied government involvement in its editorial content.

Mr Musk, in an e-mail to an NPR reporter, asked about its engagement with Twitter, the public broadcaster said.

“So is NPR going to start posting on Twitter again, or should we reassign @NPR to another company?“ NPR quoted Mr Musk as saying.

“Our policy is to recycle handles that are definitively dormant,” he said in another e-mail.

“Same policy applies to all accounts. No special treatment for NPR.”

NPR and Twitter did not immediately respond to a request from Reuters for comment.

According to Twitter’s policy, users should log in to their account at least once every 30 days to avoid permanent removal due to prolonged inactivity.

Public Broadcasting Service and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation followed NPR and

stopped posting on Twitter

following similar labelling.

Twitter later dropped the labels, but the outlets that were targeted have not resumed activity, their profiles showed on Tuesday. REUTERS