Major news organisations NPR and PBS have recently left Twitter after the platform labelled their accounts as “government-funded organisation”. Last week, Twitter placed its “state-affiliated media” label on NPR’s accounts, which has nearly 9 million followers. After a backlash, the micro-blogging platform changed it to “government-funded media” – the same label used to describe BBC.
The event has sparked a debate on social media platforms. NPR CEO John Lansing expressed his feelings telling reporters that he lost his faith in the decision-making of Twitter and needed time to make sure if the platform can be trusted again or not. His comments soon followed a decision by PBS to also quit Twitter following being labelled as “government-backed”.
Elon Musk, founder of Twitter, responded to NPR and PBS leaving the platform, saying: “Publicly funded PBS joins publicly funded NPR in leaving Twitter in a huff after being labelled ‘Publicly Funded’”.
According to Twitter, the “government-funded” labels apply to any news outlet which receives a portion or all of its funding from the government and might have varying amounts of input on the editorial content. In the past, Musk had also targeted mainstream media outlets such as The New York Times, which has 55 million followers, and removed its verified checkmark. All legacy verified accounts will lose their blue checkmark by April 20th.
NPR and PBS quitting Twitter is an effort to protect their credibility and ability to generate content without a doubt on their credibility. Despite the disadvantages, the decision to leave the platform remains the same. Twitter’s decision to label news outlets as “government-funded” has raised questions on the social media platform’s decision-making and whether it can be trusted or not.
The company mentioned in this article is Twitter, which is an American microblogging and social networking service on which users post and interact with messages known as “tweets”. Twitter was created in March of 2006, and has since gained worldwide popularity and visibility among users, reaching over 1 billion registered users in 2016. As of 2021, Twitter boasts over 200 million daily active users, making it one of the largest social media networks worldwide.
The person mentioned in this article is Elon Musk, who is a South African-born American entrepreneur. He is the founder, CEO and lead designer of SpaceX as well as CEO and product architect of Tesla Motors. Elon Musk is also the founder of a range of other projects, including The Boring Company and Neuralink. He is widely considered to be one of the most innovative and successful entrepreneurs of this era, and his impact can be felt across the tech, business and media industries. His career accomplishments and global reputation have made him one of the most influential people in the world.
