After its decision to slap National Public Radio with a “state-affiliated media” label drew sharp criticism this week, Twitter is whistling a (slightly) different tune, tweaking the label to read “government funded” in a quiet change made late Saturday.
The tag was also affixed to the accounts of several other news outlets that receive some state support, including PBS, the BBC, and Voice of America. It appears to have been inconsistently applied—as of Sunday evening, the accounts of other government-backed outlets like Canada’s CBC and Qatar’s Al Jazeera did not bear the label. Other accounts affiliated with the BBC, such as those belonging to its breaking news and international news desks, were also untagged.
The designation drew a quick response from the BBC, which said in a statement that it was “speaking to Twitter to resolve this issue as soon as possible.”
“The BBC is, and always has been, independent,” the national broadcaster continued. “We are funded by the British public through the license fee.”
The United Kingdom’s government sets and regulates the £159 license fee, which is paid annually by households and businesses that have access to live television and iPlayer services.
Prior to Musk’s takeover of Twitter, the “state-affiliated” label was associated most closely with propaganda outlets like China’s Xinhua News and Russia’s RT and Sputnik agencies. John Lansing, NPR’s President and CEO, formally protested the tag when it was placed on the outlet’s Twitter account, which has 8.8 million followers, on Tuesday.
“NPR stands for freedom of speech and holding the powerful accountable,” Lansing said. “It is unacceptable for Twitter to label us this way. A vigorous, vibrant free press is essential to the health of our democracy.”
Officials with NPR asked Twitter to remove the false label. On Friday, an NPR spokesperson told The Daily Beast that they would not be tweeting from the account until the issue was resolved, but clarified that it wasn’t a “boycott.”
In an email exchange with an NPR reporter in the days after the label was first placed on the account, Musk seemed unclear about what a “state-affiliated media outlet” actually is. He admitted to the reporter that the tag “might not be accurate” to NPR and that he was still evaluating the case. When told that NPR operates independently of the U.S. government and receives less than 1 percent of its average annual budget from federal sources, Musk replied, “Well, then we should fix [the label].”
The new “government funded” label, when clicked, links to a page on Twitter’s help site that defines “state-affiliated media” as “outlets where the state exercises control over editorial content through financial resources, direct or indirect political pressures, and/or control over production and distribution.” The page does not define what it considers to be “government funded media.”
When reached by email for comment, Twitter automatically responded with a poop emoji.
