After facing a backlash, Elon Musk-run Twitter has finally removed “government-funded media” labels on all accounts belonging to traditional publications and digital news outlets
Twitter has also deleted its web page explaining the “government-funded media” labels, report The Verge
The micro-blogging platform earlier placed the ‘publicly-funded’ label to the BBC account and applied the ‘government-funded’ label to US-based NPR
Twitter later placed more ‘government-funded media’ labels on the accounts of global news outlets like ABC Australia, Australia’s SBS, New Zealand’s public broadcaster RNZ, Sweden’s SR Ekot and SVT, and Catalonia’s TV3.cat
ABC News said in a tweet that it 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,” it argued
SBS said the label might lead Twitter users to believe that the outlet is editorially controlled by the government
CBC/Radio-Canada tweeted that “our journalism is impartial and independent”