The Australian Broadcast Corporation is the latest in a line of government-funded media organizations now subject to new Twitter revelations.
The platform’s owner, billionaire Elon Musk, has begun posting disclosures on public media organizations to provide “additional context” for “government accounts”.
The ABC’s official Twitter account now reads “Government Funded Media” and all of its posts will carry the banner.
The public broadcaster previously indicated it was considering dumping the platform.
Just before his new designation, ABC weighed whether it would abandon Twitter in the face of Musk’s $44 billion acquisition of the platform.
The ABC has confirmed to SkyNews.com.au that it has “no plans” to close its Twitter accounts.
An ABC spokesperson said, “We are in contact with Twitter regarding account verification and the label change.”
Twitter’s decision follows reaction from public media outlets in both the United States and the United Kingdom.
The BBC strongly objected to the label and wrote to the tech giant, arguing that the public broadcaster was funded by the British public rather than the government.
It states, “The BBC is independent and has always been independent. We are funded by the British public through the license fee.”
Musk responded to the BBC’s request and defended the platform’s decision to implement the funding warnings.
“We’re aiming for maximum transparency and accuracy. Linking ownership and source of funding probably makes sense,” he said.
“I think media organizations should be self-aware and not falsely claim complete absence of bias.
“All organizations have biases, some clearly much more than others. I should note that I follow BBC News on Twitter, as I find it the least biased.”
But Musk revealed during a Trainwreck interview with the British broadcaster that he would be changing its designation of the BBC to present it as “publicly funded”.
“I know the BBC is not thrilled about the label of state-affiliated media for example,” he said in an interview with the BBC’s North America technology reporter James Clayton in San Francisco.
The American public radio network, NPR, reacted furiously to its new designation, labeling Twitter’s outlet “US state-affiliated media” before Musk backtracked and reverted to “government-funded media”. Let’s go one step further.
NPR said it was “officially putting less emphasis” on Twitter across all 52 of its feeds, pledging not to post any new content in protest of the disclosure.
The US’ Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) soon followed suit and abandoned the platform, with a spokesperson for USA Today describing the label as “ingenious”, giving the impression that the organization was “fully controlled by the federal government”. was funded by”. ,
Twitter uses these disclosure labels to provide readers with clarity on any actual or perceived bias.
However, they were more commonly used to designate organizations that were heavily influenced by their respective governments, such as China’s Xinhua or the Global Times outlets and Russia Today.