These media outlets include Australian Broadcasting Company (ABC Australia), Australia’s Special Broadcasting Service (SBS), New Zealand’s public broadcaster RNZ, Sweden’s SR Ekot and SVT and Catalonia’s TV3.cat. The change has resulted in outcry.
The micro-blogging platform earlier labelled BBC a ‘publicly-funded’ to the BBC account and applied the ‘government-funded’ label to US-based NPR.
Here’s what news outlets have to say
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,” the company said.
Meanwhile, SBS said the label may lead people to believe that the outlet is editorially controlled by the government.
“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,” a company spokesperson said in a statement.
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC)/Radio-Canada tweeted that “our journalism is impartial and independent”.
“To suggest otherwise is untrue. That is why we are pausing our activities on @Twitter,” it added.
Media outlets quitting Twitter
Twitter labels are forcing media organisations to quit Twitter. CBC said it is “pausing” use of Twitter after the platform put a “Government-funded Media” label on its main account.
Last week, NPR became the first major news organisation to quit Twitter after getting a government-funded organisation label. After NPR, the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) also left Twitter after being labelled as government-backed media.
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