Media

X flags NPR story on Trump, Arlington as unsafe

The social platform X flagged a story from NPR that outlined the fallout of a reported clash between Trump campaign staffers and Arlington National Cemetery officials earlier this week as potentially “unsafe.”

The story, first reported by the outlet citing anonymous sources, was focused on a reported confrontation between the campaign and cemetery officials after a photographer with former President Trump’s team tried to access a restricted area.

Trump was at the cemetery Monday to mark the anniversary of the Kabul airport attack that killed 13 U.S. service members amid the withdrawal from Afghanistan. His campaign disputed NPR’s account of the incident, denying there was any physical altercation “as described.”

The Army defended the cemetery official after the incident, saying the employee was only trying to enforce the rules that prohibit political activity on the cemetery grounds when they were reportedly shoved aside.

Users who attempted to view the story through a link on X on Thursday were redirected by the platform to a warning page that reads “this may be unsafe.”


“The link you are trying to access has been identified by X or our partners as being potentially spammy or unsafe,” it continues.

The page gives users an option to ignore the warning and continue to the article.

NPR has been a frequent target of Republicans and other conservative critics for years. The public broadcaster recently faced a slew of internal turmoil and external backlash after a top editor at the outlet publicly criticized its editorial practices, accusing it of left-leaning bias.

The outlet stopped posting on X last year after billionaire mogul Elon Musk purchased the platform, previously known as Twitter, months earlier.

A representative for NPR told The Hill Thursday afternoon the outlet had changed the story’s URL when it noticed the blockage. The company said Bobby Allyn, one of its Tech reporters, had received a response from X saying the link’s blockage was a “false positive,” and the issue had been corrected.

The Hill has separately reached out to the social platform for further clarification.

Updated at 2:03 p.m. ET