The social network keeps rolling out more “government-funded media” labels on the accounts of international news outlets.
Last week, the BBC reached out to Twitter owner Elon Musk over labeling the organization’s account as “government-funded media”.
Eventually, after granting the BBC an interview, Mr Musk had it changed to “Public-funded media”.
However, Twitter keeps mislabelling other international media organisations.
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The social network keeps rolling out more “government-funded media” labels on the accounts of international news outlets.
These media outlets include the Australian Broadcasting Company (ABC Australia), Australia’s Special Broadcasting Service (SBS), New Zealand’s public broadcaster RNZ, Sweden’s SR Ekot and SVT, and Catalonia’s TV3.cat.
“For more than 90 years the ABC has always been and remains an independent media organisation, free from political and commercial interests,” ABC wrote on Twitter reacting to the label.
ABC News branded with new label 'Government-funded Media' on Twitter https://t.co/RNCXO6lPCA
— ABC News (@abcnews) April 17, 2023
Meanwhile, representatives from SBS are worried that the label might lead Twitter users to believe that the outlet is being controlled by the government.
However, the SBS makes it known that it is not being editorially controlled by the government.
“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,” a spokesperson said in a statement.
The “publicly-funded” label Twitter gave to the BBC seems less misleading than “government-funded.”
Therefore, these media outlets would rather have the “publicly funded” label.
