Twitter CEO Elon Musk has come under fire for labeling the accounts of NPR, PBS and other Western media outlets as “government-funded” while giving the accounts of some of the world’s toughest dictatorships a free pass. has given.
Experts from Freedom House and PEN America, which promote free speech and human rights, told DailyMail.com that new Twitter warnings about state-controlled media were not being applied fairly.
They pointed to the accounts of media outlets controlled by the autocratic governments of Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar not bearing the social media platform’s new content warning.
“Under Musk’s leadership, Twitter’s policies have become erratic and seemingly arbitrary, undermining user trust,” said Liz Woolery, PEN America’s chief of digital policy.
“Inconsistent policy changes regarding media labels undermine trust not only in Twitter, but also in credible news institutions.”
Twitter boss Elon Musk has begun tagging the accounts of global media outlets as “government-funded” or “state-affiliated”
NPR gets Twitter’s “government-funded” tag, but Turkish government spokesman TRT World does not
Under Musk’s new policy, Twitter has begun adding labels such as “government-funded media” or “state-affiliated media” so users can put an organization’s tweets in context and warn them of political bias .
This is largely uncontroversial to the accounts of Russia’s RT and China’s Xinhua News Agency, which distribute content that furthers the foreign policy goals of those two countries.
But flagging the accounts of Western media outlets is controversial.
The Canadian Broadcasting Corp (CBC) said Tuesday it would halt operations on Twitter in protest of its new “government-funded media” label.
Twitter was also criticized for flagging America’s National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), as well as Britain’s flagship brand, the BBC.
Those outlets say they are editorially independent, while the tag implies government control over the content.
More interesting is how the Twitter accounts of various outlets in Middle Eastern dictatorships have not been tagged, even when users could benefit from a content advisory.
UAE vice president and media mogul Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed
Among them is TRT World, a government-funded Turkish online and television news service.
The outlet’s Twitter account has not been tagged, even though it is widely seen as a mouthpiece for the government of strongman President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Nor does Twitter flag the account of UAE-based newspaper The National, which is owned by the federation’s vice president, Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
The National presents itself as editorially independent, but journalists who work there say stories are rigorously screened to represent the interests of the UAE, and increasingly those of Russia and China.
The State Media Monitor, a global research group, calls the Abu Dhabi-based newspaper “state managed.”
The same goes for reports from state-affiliated media outlets in neighboring Saudi Arabia, which has become one of the world’s most repressive governments under de facto ruler Mohammed bin Salman.
Al Arabiya, Asharq Al-Awsat, Arab News and other Saudi media outlets have evaded Twitter’s “state-affiliated” tag despite being ranked as “state-captured” by the media watchdog.
Editors from the Qatar-based television news channel Al-Jazeera work in the newsroom in Doha. Some, but not all, of the outlet’s Twitter accounts are tagged as “government-funded”
Twitter has been questioned about why it removed the ‘state-affiliated media’ label from the profile of Abu Dhabi newspaper The National earlier this year
The Al Jazeera network in Qatar is another example. It is state-controlled and rarely criticizes the royal multi-billionaires who run the tiny peninsula, but nevertheless has a degree of editorial independence.
Al Jazeera English’s Twitter account has been tagged as “government-funded,” but the outlet’s “breaking news” handle is not.
Kian Vesteinsson, a senior researcher at Freedom House, expressed support for flagging government-linked accounts because it helped users “understand what information is trustworthy.”
But Vesteinsson also warned against the “improper” use of those labels and the confusion of government-funded outlets “with those whose editorial positions are determined by the state.”
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan
“It is critical that Twitter and other platforms ensure that their labels are accurate and applied consistently, and that people on the platform have access to information about how and why labels are applied,” Vesteinsson told DailyMail.com.
Twitter has not responded to our requests for comment. The platform says the new labels should provide more transparency about who funds accounts that provide news and commentary.
The tags are “state-affiliated media” and “government-funded media,” with the designation “government-funded” applied when “the government provides some or all of the outlet’s funding,” Twitter says.
Twitter goes on to say the label means “governments may have varying degrees of government involvement in editorial content.”
After initially labeling Britain’s BBC as “government-funded,” Twitter backed down and changed the description to “government-funded.”
“For example, I know that the BBC is not happy about being labeled as state-affiliated media,” Twitter CEO Elon Musk said in a recent interview.
However, for NPR, which has a mix of public and private funding, Twitter hasn’t changed the label that led to the station leaving the platform.