Twitter has slapped a “government-funded media” label on the ABC and SBS.
The social media platform led by Elon Musk has been labelling media organisations in a way that could imply they lack independence.
The US’s Public Broadcasting Service and National Public Radio (NPR) stopped using Twitter after being labelled “state-affiliated media”, a tag that was later changed to ‘“government-funded media”.
NPR said 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 had otherwise been applied to China’s Xinhua news agency and Russia’s RT outlet. Twitter said it was for accounts that are involved in geopolitics and diplomacy.
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 organisations that “receive funding from licence fees, individual contributions, public financing, and commercial financing”.
A spokesperson said the ABC 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.
FYI: The ABC is a publicly funded broadcaster, governed by the ABC Charter which is enshrined in legislation. For more than 90 years the ABC has always been and remains an independent media organisation, free from political and commercial interests.
— ABC News (@abcnews) April 17, 2023
An SBS spokesperson said labelling 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 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.
