Twitter Removes ‘Government-Funded’ Labels From NPR and Other Media Accounts

In a statement issued on Thursday, the Global Task Force, a group that represents the national public broadcasters of eight countries, including Canada, Britain and France, objected to Twitter’s labeling of four of its members as “Government-funded Media.”

The group said that the “misleading label” had been applied “without warning or consultation” to the Twitter accounts of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, CBC/Radio-Canada, the Korean Broadcasting System and Radio New Zealand. The editorial independence of all four broadcasters is protected by law and enshrined in their editorial policies, the statement said.

“Labeling them in this way misleads audiences about their operational and editorial independence from government,” the group said.

That argument was similar to the one made by Isabel Lara, NPR’s chief communications officer, who said last week that “NPR’s organizational accounts will 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.”

By Friday, Twitter had removed the “government-funded” labels from the accounts of NPR, the BBC, PBS, the CBC and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/21/technology/twitter-media-labels.html