Twitter Labels Australian and New Zealand Public Broadcasters as Government-Funded Media

Editors‘ Note:
This article was compiled and written by OpenAI’s ChatGPT Plus and reviewed by the human editors of Eat News.

Twitter has categorized SBS (Special Broadcasting Service), ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) – the Australian public broadcasters, and RNZ (Radio New Zealand) – the New Zealand public broadcaster, as government-funded media rather than publicly funded media like the BBC.

Government-funded media accounts are defined by Twitter as outlets where the government provides some or all of the outlet’s funding and may have varying degrees of government involvement over editorial content. Twitter may use external sources to determine when this label is applied.

Publicly-funded media accounts, according to Twitter, refer to media organizations that receive funding from license fees, individual contributions, public financing, and commercial financing.

In response to being labeled as “government-funded media” by Twitter, the three public broadcasters had the following responses:

RNZ argued that its editorial independence is protected by its charter and editorial policy. Twitter’s policy defines government-funded media as cases where the government may have varying degrees of involvement over editorial content, which does not apply to RNZ. RNZ is considering options such as talking to Twitter to have the label removed or revised, or potentially leaving the platform like other public media around the world.

ABC stated that it is a publicly funded broadcaster, governed by the ABC Charter which is enshrined in legislation. For more than 90 years, the ABC has been and remains an independent media organization, free from political and commercial interests.

An SBS spokesperson suggested that labeling the company as “publicly funded” would be more accurate. They appreciate Twitter’s transparency intentions but believe that a “publicly funded media” label better reflects the hybrid public-commercial nature of their funding model and the fact that SBS retains full independence from government in news editorial and content decision-making.

Additionally, Al Jazeera, the largest television network in the Middle East, was also labeled as government-funded media by Twitter. Al Jazeera is owned by the Qatari royal family-backed “Al Jazeera Media Network” and has been broadcasting news globally in multiple languages, including Arabic, English, and Turkish, since 1996. Many of its employees have been trained at the BBC. Al Jazeera initially positioned itself as the “CNN and BBC of the Arab world,” aiming to report news from different perspectives in the complex Arab world.