Many Western public media They entered into battle With the entrepreneur who owns the Twitter platform. He was the first to take the step American NPR (National Public Radio), who decided to leave the social network after the naming snub: “state media” — which also works for media such as RT, from Russia, and Xinhua, from China — which, after some complaints, has become a “government-funded media outlet”. followed by Canadian CBC And now Swedish Sveriges Radio. the Spanish RTVE Request to withdraw the imposed designation. They claim that the certification and identification policy, “sows doubts” on “Independence” in the editorial line.
At the request of Elon Musk, Owner of Twitter since October last year, the network has begun to apply a label “state media” Which until then only applied to RT and Xinhua. Until then, the British BBC or PBS and the American NPR were exempt from a similar classification. The initial Twitter hashtag for these networks in English was “government funded”. Then Musk agreed to “funding from public funds.” Despite everything, the flight of media companies is happening every day.
“Sveriges Radio recently downplayed its Twitter presence, And now we have made the decision to completely cease activity on the platform, deleting a series of accounts,” said the one who listened most to a group of radio stations in the Scandinavian country on his blog.
“We need to focus and prioritize SR’s online presence, and Twitter has changed this year and is less important to us,” Christian Gellinger, the station’s head of social media, reported the news agency. France Press agency. Swedish Public Broadcasting has its main account called “Publicly Funded Broker”. however, He said he had not withdrawn from the network at this point, because he considered it a “correct identification” of his funding.
Meanwhile, Spain’s Public Radio and Television has asked Twitter to remove the new label it has imposed on its accounts, which identifies it as a “government funded medium”.. The Twitter accounts of RTVE, RTVE News, RTVE Communication and Participation and RTVE Play have this rating: The media stated that “in its case, it should be replaced by ‘publicly funded media'”, as requested in a statement from RTVE. Spain state. This rating is now owned by the BBC.
For its part, NPR clarified its position in a statement: “We made this decision after Twitter denied repeated requests to remove an inaccurate label that described NPR as a “state media outlet.” The label has since been changed to “government-funded media,” which does not accurately reflect our governance structure for public media and continues to send Twitter users an interpretation that refers to “government involvement in editorial content”, they pointed out. And they added to that, according to what the newspaper reported CountryWe believe that the aim of this designation is to question our editorial independence and undermine our credibility. If we continue to tweet, every message will carry this misleading label.”
“The question is not whether or not the government is funding,” Lansing added. “Even if we are funded by the government, which we are not, the question is independence, because all journalism has some kind of income.”As he claimed. The same path as NPR was followed by public radio stations KCRW, out of Santa Monica (California); WESA, from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and WEKU, from central and eastern Kentucky.
Shortly after leaving NPR, The Public Group CBC/Radio Canada He did the same, criticizing Twitter’s designation a “government-funded outlet”, a definition that undermines its “independence”. “Our journalism is unbiased and independent. To suggest otherwise is misleading. But that is why we are pausing our activities on Twitter”They reported on Monday. Its name came after Canadian conservative leader Pierre Poiliver wrote to Musk asking him to put it on public radio.
“People now know that this is Trudeau propaganda, not news,” Poiliffry wrote on Twitter after the announcement.
Although the radio is publicly funded, they point out that its editorial independence is protected by Canada’s media law: “Twitter can be a powerful tool for our journalists to connect with Canadians, but it undermines the accuracy and professionalism of their work by allowing our independence to be falsely portrayed in this way.”
And a few days before the implementation of this method – which will officially start from April 20 – Conflict had already flared up with The New York Times, JWhen the platform removed the blue certification flag, due to announcing that it would not pay the $1,000 that this “feature” would cost from now on to companies -8 users-.
“The real tragedy of @nytimes is that their publicity isn’t even that interesting. Also, his profile is the equivalent of Twitter diarrhea,” Musk wrote in a message.
The vast majority of accounts marked with a blue tick continue to maintain the distinction, even though in the certificate identification it is indicated that said account is “verified because it is subscribed to Twitter Blue or is an old verified account.”
for his partAnd Washington PostAnd The outlet, which also announced its refusal to pay for the verification mark, reported that Musk wrote a tweet, which he later deleted, that would give verified accounts “a few weeks grace, unless they say they won’t pay now, in which case we will remove it.”
