Twitter tagged British corporate accounts “BBC” and US National Public Radio NPR as “government-funded publications”. Previously, Russian and Chinese propaganda media received such a mark.
“BBC” spoke against such a note in the account and stated that she turned to the social network to solve this problem as soon as possible. In a statement, the company stressed that it has “always been independent” and is funded “by the British public through license fees”. The tagged account has 2.2 million followers. Basically, it publishes retweets of other BBC projects, primarily entertainment ones. At the same time, other accounts of the corporation, for example, BBC News (World) or BBC Breaking News, which have several tens of millions of subscribers, are not marked as “publicly funded publication”.
The BBC noted that it received £3.8bn in license fees in 2022, about 71% of the company’s total revenue of £5.3bn. The rest of the funds come from commercial and other activities, including grants and royalties. The BBC also said it receives more than £90m a year from the government to support the BBC World Service, “which primarily serves audiences outside the UK”.
Twitter owner Elon Musk replies to one of the tweets wrotethat he follows the BBC himself, as they “have excellent material.” In response to a BBC inquiry, Musk said Twitter is committed to “maximum transparency and accuracy.” “I don’t really think the BBC is as biased as some of the other government-funded media, but it’s silly for the BBC to claim zero impact.” wrote it’s in another tweet.
America’s National Public Radio (NPR) was labeled “publicly funded” on April 5th. The account has 8.8 million followers. The NPR Politics account does not have this label. NPR spokeswoman Isabelle Lara noted that the company initially assumed that the mark appeared in error.
How claims NPR, in response to their email asking for comment on the tagging, the Twitter press account sent an automated reply with a poop emoji. Musk later, responding to a tweet about getting the NPR label, wrote, “That seems accurate.”
“NPR stands for freedom of speech and holding government accountable. It is unacceptable to put such a label on us,” said NPR chief executive John Lansing.
After being labeled “publicly funded”, NPR ceased posting on its account. The company said in a statement that the bulk of its revenue comes from two sources – donations and money received from hundreds of radio stations included in NPR. They noted that a “very limited” portion of NPR’s budget comes from “direct federal sources”: “On average, less than 1% of NPR’s annual operating budget comes in the form of grants from Public broadcasting corporations and federal agencies and departments.
In 2020, Twitter began labeling the accounts of media and journalists who, according to the social network, are associated with the leadership of a particular country. Among Russian accounts, such labels were received, in particular, by the RT channel, its editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan, the TASS and RIA Novosti agencies.
The Russian-language version of the Help Center of the social network states that media are considered pro-government, “whose editorial materials the state influences through funding, direct or indirect political pressure and (or) control over production and distribution.”
“State-funded media with independent newsrooms (such as the BBC in the UK or NPR in the US) are not considered pro-government under this policy.” noted there. In the English version of the “Help Center” postscripts about the “BBC” and NPR now there is no.
Shortly after the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Twitter announced that it would not promote or recommend government accounts “owned by states that restrict access to free information and engage in armed interstate conflicts.” In April 2023, journalists noticed that the social network had lifted restrictions on the accounts of Russian government agencies, they began to appear again in the recommendations and top lines of search queries. Twitter began to recommend the accounts of the Kremlin, the Russian Foreign Ministry, the Russian Embassy in the UK, the Ministry of Defense and other departments.
