Twitter has slapped a “government-funded media” label on the official accounts of ABC and SBS, tarring them with the same brush as government-run propaganda outlets such as Russia News and New China News Agency.
In recent weeks, Elon Musk has introduced three new tags for media outlets — “government-funded media”, “state-affiliated media”, and “publicly-funded media” — ostensibly with a view to transparency.
The BBC and NPR both received tags last year — with the UK broadcaster labelled “government-funded media”, a tag it claimed misunderstood the BBC’s structure of supporting itself through compulsory licensing fees.
The US National Public Radio network decided to remove itself from Twitter, after the “unacceptable” decision to label the not-for-profit as “state-affiliated media”, which it later changed to “government-funded media.”
“After great consideration, we will not put our journalism on platforms that have demonstrated an interest in undermining our credibility and the public’s understanding of editorial independence,” NPR CEO John Lansing said.
— NPR (@NPR) April 12, 2023
Neither ABC or SBS will go so far as to remove itself from Twitter.
“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,” an SBS spokesman said.
ABC said it was in talks with Twitter to remove the label.
“The ABC doesn’t currently have any plans to shut down all its Twitter accounts,” a spokesperson said.
“The ABC is liaising with Twitter regarding changes to account verification and labels.”
