Elon Musk’s Twitter has issued “government-funded media” badges to additional news outlets. In the latest round of badge distribution, Twitter has labeled Australian Broadcasting Company (ABC), Special Broadcasting Service (SBS), Radio New Zealand (RNZ), Sveriges Radios Ekoredaktion (SR Ekot) and TV3.cat as “government-funded media” outlets. Several international media outlets, including ABC, have fired back after receiving this label.
“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 tweeted.
“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,” SBS added.
ABC is not the only media outlet to raise issues with Twitter’s new badge distinction. Last week, NPR left the platform after being labeled as a “government-funded media” outlet on Twitter.
“It would be a disservice to the serious work you all do here to continue to share it on a platform that is associating the federal charter for public media with an abandoning of editorial independence or standards,” NPR CEO John Lansing told employees after the company left the platform.
