Twitter has labelled Australian public broadcasters ABC and SBS as 'Government-funded Media', just days after the social media giant had a spat with the BBC over accurate descriptions.
The designation first appeared on Monday and links to a Twitter page which says, "Government-funded media is defined as outlets where the government provides some or all of the outlet’s funding and may have varying degrees of government involvement over editorial content."
Twitter says it may use external sources such as Wikipedia to determine when the label is applied.
It is one of three labels Twitter is applying to news outlets that receive public funding. The other labels are state-affiliated media and publicly-funded media.
'Publicly-funded media' better label: SBS
A spokesperson for SBS said the broadcaster was concerned the label may give its multilingual and multicultural audience the impression that it is state or government-affiliated.
"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," the spokesperson said in a statement.
The label, which has been applied retrospectively and surfaces with every tweet, has been given to the ABC News and ABC Australia Twitter accounts as well as SBS Australia - a Twitter account dedicated to the wider SBS channel.
The SBS News Twitter account has not been given any label.
A tweet from ABC News responding to the label of 'government-funded media'.
“For Twitter to represent [SBS and the ABC] or other broadcasters that obtain their funding from government as government broadcasters is simply dishonest and misleading and clearly designed to send a kind of coded message to the world that the public broadcaster is no more than government mouthpieces," he told The Feed.
“In both cases, there are legislative protections for the public broadcasters which prevent them from being used for the sorts of propaganda purposes that a term like government funding implies."
A tweet on the ABC's Twitter page under a link to its article about the news read, "FYI: The ABC 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."
BBC, NPR and more hit out at Twitter's labels
Though Australia’s public broadcasters received the label on Monday, other outlets were hit with the label - and have been voicing concerns - since early April.
Last week Twitter changed the BBC from 'Government-funded media' to 'Publicly-funded' media' after a row over accuracy.
“The BBC is, and always has been, independent. We are funded by the British public through the licence fee,” the broadcaster said.
US broadcaster National Public Radio (NPR) announced last week it would stop using Twitter after being labelled "State-affiliated media".
State-affiliated media is defined by Twitter as an outlet "where the state exercises control over editorial content through financial resources, direct or indirect political pressures and/or control over production and distribution". The NPR Twitter account has since been re-labelled as 'government-funded media'.
A screenshot of RT's Twitter account being labeled as 'state-affiliated media'.
The outlet denounced Twitter's decision to first label the network "State-affiliated media," the same term it uses to describe "propaganda" outlets in Russia and China.
In a final series of tweets — its first after a week of silence — NPR noted other places its work can be found.
