The US publicly funded TV channel PBS has stopped its activity on Twitter following a dispute with owner Elon Musk. PBS is the second US broadcaster to do this after Twitter recognised the network as a state-funded media organisation, which PBS and fellow broadcaster NPR believe to be misleading, as state funding only makes up a small part of their financing. NPR has also announced that over 50 of its user accounts on Twitter will no longer receive new content until further notice.
The tag used to describe NPR was initially placed alongside Chinese news agency Xinhua and Kremlin TV station Russia Today as a state-controlled media organisation by Musk. However, this was later changed to “government-funded media organisation”, which NPR believes undermines its credibility. Similarly, the British public broadcaster BBC was also initially described as being funded by the government before Musk gave in to criticism and changed the tag to “publicly funded”. However, the BBC noticed further inconsistencies in the allocation of the label.
Musk has been accused of being “racist” towards whites recently, which has prompted his right-wing political views to be amplified for his over 134 million followers on Twitter.
