A number of international news outlets have dropped posting content on their Twitter accounts after Elon Musk stamped them with the “government-funded media” label.
The billionaire’s continuing roll-out of the controversial label has stirred up a storm in the world of broadcast media around the globe. News organisations marked as “government-funded” by Musk have strongly opposed the new policy, which they say undermines their credibility as independent news organizations and implies they have no editorial control over their content.
Where Musk has called the move an attempt to make Twitter “as truthful and accurate as possible”, news organisations argue the billionaire fails to comprehend the difference between editorially independent media bodies that receive public funding and outlets that are run exclusively by governments.
According to Twitter, labels provide “additional context for accounts heavily engaged in geopolitics and diplomacy”. Under the platform’s policy, government-funded media covers “outlets where the government provides some or all of the outlet’s funding and may have varying degrees of government involvement over editorial content”. Similarly, public-funded outlets are defined as ones that “receive funding from license fees, individual contributions, public financing, and commercial financing”.
National Public Radio (NPR) was among the first organizations to quit Twitter over the label. NPR announced last week it would cease posting content across its 52 official Twitter handles citing the formerly “state-affiliated media” label. It was later updated to “government-funded media”, with more news outlets receiving the similar label. NPR remarked that if it continued tweeting content, every post would be accompanied by “that misleading label”.
In an interview with the BBC, Musk said, “We’re adjusting the label to be ‘publicly funded’ which I think is perhaps not too objectionable.” The developments so far, however, have already prompted a number of major news organizations to withdraw from Twitter.
The BBC and a few other European news organizations, however, are still labelled “publicly-funded media”.
“At this point I have lost my faith in the decision-making at Twitter,” said NPR CEO John Lansing. “I would need some time to understand whether Twitter can be trusted again.”
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) has also joined the growing list of aggrieved media houses. CBC landed in a bizarre controversy when Twitter marked it as “70% Government-funded Media”, but subsequently altered the label to “69% Government-funded Media” with Musk placing the “correction” in response to CBC saying they were “less than 70% government-funded”. CBC announced ceasing all activities on Twitter following the episode.
“Our journalism is impartial and independent,” CBC tweeted. “To suggest otherwise is untrue. That is why we are pausing our activities on Twitter.”
Our journalism is impartial and independent. To suggest otherwise is untrue. That is why we are pausing our activities on @Twitter. | Notre journalisme est impartial et indépendant. Prétendre le contraire est faux. C’est pourquoi nous suspendons nos activités sur @Twitter.
— CBC/Radio-Canada (@CBCRadioCanada) April 17, 2023
Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), holding around 2.2 million followers, and Hawaii Public Radio have also stopped sharing their content on Twitter.
