Twitter has placed a “government-funded media” label on Australian Broadcasting Corp (ABC) and Special Broadcasting Service (SBS).
The social media platform led by CEO Elon Musk has been labeling media organizations in a way that could imply they lack independence.
The US’s Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and National Public Radio (NPR) stopped using Twitter after being labeled “state-affiliated media,” a tag that was later changed to “government-funded media.”
Photo: Reuters
NPR said that it would “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.”
The “state-affiliated media” tag has been applied to China’s Xinhua news agency and Russia’s RT outlet.
The tag is for accounts that are involved in geopolitics and diplomacy, Twitter said.
Earlier this week, the BBC had its “government-funded” label changed to “publicly funded.”
Twitter defines state-affiliated media as an “outlet where the state exercises control over editorial content.” Government-funded media refers to outlets “where the government provides some or all of the outlet’s funding and may have varying degrees of government involvement over editorial content.”
Then there is publicly funded media, which refers to organizations that “receive funding from license fees, individual contributions, public financing, and commercial financing.”
An ABC spokesperson said the broadcaster was not planning to follow NPR and PBS by quitting Twitter.
“The ABC doesn’t currently have any plans to shut down all its Twitter accounts. We’re liaising with Twitter regarding changes to account verification and labels,” they said.
An SBS spokesperson said labeling the company “publicly funded” would be more accurate.
“While we appreciate Twitter’s motivations with regard to transparency on its platform, we believe a ‘publicly funded media’ label better reflects the hybrid public-commercial nature of our funding model and the fact that SBS retains full independence from government in our news editorial and content decision-making,” they said.
Both media companies maintain full editorial independence from the government, as set out in their charters.
Since Musk acquired Twitter, the platform’s value appears to have halved, and he axed half the company’s workforce. He has also come under fire for his plans to remove the blue ticks awarded to “authentic” accounts. There has also been some legal trouble, and a range of changes to how the site operates.
Guardian Australia contacted Twitter for a comment and received what has been described as its “standard” response — a poop emoji.
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