Twitter – and Elon Musk – are having fairly a few weeks. Just lately, among the larger tales within the Twitter-Elon saga have been that NPR , in addition to KCRW (a member station of NPR from Santa Monica Faculty), and the CBC (the Canadian Broadcasting Company) have been pausing their exercise on Twitter or leaving altogether. 

NPR was the primary to halt exercise of its 52 feeds on the social media web site after Twitter had designated it “state-affiliated media”. Whereas NPR does state (opens in new tab) that its federal funding is important, the “overwhelming majority of its funding comes from non-federal sources” 

So, technically, the label will not be totally unfaithful in an absolute sense, however NPR’s problem (opens in new tab) was that it shared the label with the likes of just about pure propaganda shops corresponding to these of Russia, China, and different autocratic-government media organizations.

NPR’s tech reporter Bobby Allyn requested Elon Musk about this and Musk apparently did admit he may need gotten it fallacious, and the label was modified to “government-funded media” which nonetheless sounds an terrible lot like “state-affiliated media”, if no more so like a propaganda operation. 

NPR thought in order effectively, and it took problem with this label additionally, stating that it’s “a personal, nonprofit firm with editorial independence.” It is a fairly honest declare as lower than 1% of its annual working funds (opens in new tab) comes from federal sources (on common), and a big share of that federal funding is used to help native radio stations in licensing NPR materials.

NPR elaborated that its silence on Twitter was to guard its credibility and never forged unfounded doubt on its work as a result of this new label. 

After some backwards and forwards with Musk, NPR was unhappy with different proposed modifications, and NPR CEO John Lansing said “I’ve misplaced my religion within the decision-making at Twitter.” 

Additional developments after that led to Elon tweeting out “Defund @NPR.” and his very balanced followers who clearly took the time to do their analysis went after the broadcaster. 

Defund @NPRApril 12, 2023

See extra

Extra sad broadcasters

In the meantime, an interview with Musk himself went out from the BBC the place he mentioned his Twitter takeover and one of many subjects introduced up was the above-mentioned “government-funded media” label which was additionally given to the BBC. 

Musk was confronted by BBC know-how reporter James Clayton (opens in new tab) on the problem, who reiterated the BBC’s objection to the label because it’s funded “by the British public via a license payment.” Musk once more provided to alter the label to “publicly-funded,” sustaining his devotion to accuracy.

Sadly for Musk, evidently this was not sufficient for the CBC (the Canadian Broadcasting Company), who adopted go well with with NPR and paused the exercise of its official company and information accounts as effectively. 

Funnily sufficient, it was additionally given the label of “government-funded media” and had a few points with that. Now, I’m not Canadian, however I’m beginning to see a sample…. The CBC said (opens in new tab) that this designation “undermines the accuracy and professionalism” of its journalists’ work and that its ‘journalistic independence is the cornerstone of who we’re as a public broadcaster.”  

Our journalism is neutral and impartial. To recommend in any other case is unfaithful. That’s the reason we’re pausing our actions on @Twitter. | Notre journalisme est neutral et indépendant. Prétendre le contraire est fake. C’est pourquoi nous suspendons nos activités sur @Twitter.April 17, 2023

See extra

Halting the exodus

So, absolutely, Musk being a 51-year-old gigamind and ultra-billionaire reacted adequately and addressed these issues appropriately. Effectively, let’s see. 

The CBC’s label was subsequently modified to “70% Authorities-funded Media” and when the broadcaster took problem with this as effectively, he modified it once more to “69% Authorities-funded Media.” Australia’s ABC Information additionally mentioned that it was at the moment liaising with Twitter concerning its new designation as “government-funded media” initially of this week.

As reported by Al Jazeera (opens in new tab), Twitter quietly backpedaled this complete change and apparently dropped the ‘state-affiliated’ and ‘government-funded’ labels altogether – together with for Russian and Chinese language governments’ media shops. 

That is amid the continuing ‘blue test verified’ controversy, the place as of April 20, so-called ‘legacy’ blue checkmarks, which got to people and entities earlier than Musk’s takeover of Twitter, have disappeared (or are within the strategy of doing so)… although some accounts, primarily celebrities with greater than 1 million followers, have discovered their blue checks have reappeared.

My Twitter account says I’ve subscribed to Twitter Blue. I haven’t.My Twitter account says I’ve given a telephone quantity. I haven’t.April 20, 2023

See extra

This begs the query that if no information sources are (arguably) truly precisely recognized as state-funded and anybody may be “verified” by subscribing to Twitter Blue, is Twitter going to proceed to be the invaluable information supply and aggregator that it was till this level (even in its post-Elon takeover period)? 

It is laborious to definitively say ‘no’ as a result of the long run holds loads of unknowns, however I predict that Twitter’s place within the public consciousness will shift away from this place. 

In the direction of what – effectively that continues to be to be seen and it’s type of anybody’s guess. I’ll finish by saying that whereas I don’t consider in billionaire-messiahs, Jack Dorsey, founding father of Twitter, has a brand new various referred to as Bluesky (which has debuted for Android), and I’m eager to see if that may affect something, if solely to save lots of the collective sanity of our society.