Elon Musk's Twitter Faces Flak For Labelling BBC, NPR 'Government Funded Media'

NPR CEO John Lansing called the decision by Twitter "unacceptable," and NPR's account has remained silent since then.

Elon Musk has expressed a dislike for the news media for years.

Source : Getty

Twitter recently faced backlash for labelling the US radio network NPR as "state-affiliated media." Twitter has now revised its label and is calling it "government-funded." This label has also been applied to the BBC, which is funded mainly by British households paying a license fee, reports AFP. NPR, which is predominantly funded by member stations throughout the US and receives less than one per cent of its operational budget from federal sources, complained that the term "state-affiliated" was inaccurate and disparaging. Twitter's decision to change the label occurred quietly overnight on Saturday.

NPR CEO John Lansing called the decision by Twitter "unacceptable," and NPR's account has remained silent since then.

Twitter CEO Elon Musk's move against NPR came shortly after the microblogging platform stripped The New York Times of its verified status on the platform. Twitter's policy states that the decisions will deamplify tweets from both companies, limiting their reach on a platform that is an effective communication tool for media outlets, celebrities, and officials.

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Elon Musk has expressed a dislike for the news media for years and recently installed an automatic response of a poop emoji to emails sent to the site's main press address. However, on Thursday, NPR reported that Musk had signalled in a series of emails that the relabeling may not have been "accurate," and that Twitter would look further into the matter.

The change in how Twitter refers to NPR and the BBC has prompted outreach from both outlets to Twitter for clarification. The shift in Twitter's labelling of news outlets highlights the increasing scrutiny and debate over the relationship between media outlets and governments. 

Musk took over Twitter in a hostile $44-billion bid in October last year and has since been making several changes to the platform, including an overhaul of the Twitter Blue service.