
The most ironic part of Twitter's move to label
objectively world class news media outlets like America's NPR (National Public Radio) and the U.K.'s BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) as "government funded media," is that using the same
standards, the label would also apply to Twitter.
Governments routinely spend money with Twitter to advertise, promote tweets, license its data, and now subscribe to its badges, making them a
part of Twitter's funding.
I don't have access to stats on what the U.S. government currently spends on Twitter, but Canada spends more than $3 million annually on the social media platform,
according to a report by the CBC, which ironically is not among the national news organizations
currently labeled as government-funded media by Twitter even though the CBC derives more than two-thirds of its annual budget from Canadian
government funding.
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NPR, by contrast, derives less than 16% of its budget from U.S. government
funding, about the same percentage it derives from corporations. Its biggest source is people like me, and hopefully you. You know, the "public" in the P in NPR. According to its most recent
filing, NPR derives 43% of its annual budget from individuals.
So if Twitter wants to slap a label on NPR's Twitter account, "public-funded media" would actually be a more accurate and honest
one.
If not, then the government funded media label might as well be applied to Twitter itself.
I mean, Twitter's not just deriving its funding from Western governments like the U.S. or
Canada.
One of its biggest sources is China, which is kind of ironic, because
-- you know -- TikTok.