Musk Drops Twitter’s ‘State-Affiliated’ and ‘Government-Funded’ Media Labels After Backlash
variety.comTodd Spangler NY Digital Editor Twitter is no longer labeling any accounts as “state-affiliated media” or “government-funded media,” a change that comes after organizations including NPR and PBS objected to the descriptions from the Elon Musk-owned social network and have suspended their activity on Twitter in protest.
According to NPR reporter Bobby Allyn, when he emailed Musk to inquire about the decision to drop media labels, the CEO replied, “This was Walter Isaacson’s suggestion.” Isaacson, who has penned biographies of Steve Jobs and Benjamin Franklin, is working on a book about Musk.
As of this writing, NPR (8.8 million followers) and PBS (2.2 million) have not resumed posting to their Twitter accounts since suspending activity earlier this month.
On Friday, Twitter appeared to have removed all “state-affiliated” and “government-funded” labels from the site, including for accounts operated by NPR, PBS, the BBC, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. (CBC), the Australian Broadcasting Corp. (ABC), Russia Today (RT), China Xinhua News, CGTN (China Global Television Network) and Iran’s Press TV.
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