PBS quits Twitter after being labeled ‘government-funded media’

The US's Public Broadcasting Service, better known as PBS, has quit its use of Twitter after the platform labeled the organization as "government-funded media".

PBS's announced its Twitter exit on Thursday, one day after National Public Radio also left the platform amid comments by the Twitter owner, Elon Musk, that NPR was "state-affiliated media" which should be defunded. Twitter has since relabeled NPR as "government-funded media", but that did not stop the radio broadcaster saying that the labels for it and the television broadcaster PBS were aimed at undermining their credibility as independent news outlets.

The labels are shared by Russia Today and China's Xinhua, whose editorial decisions are heavily influenced by their respective state regimes, as USA Today noted. Meanwhile, both NPR and PBS fall in the middle - or neutral - part of the Ad Fontes media bias chart.

A PBS spokesperson said the broadcaster does receive some government subsidies but gets far more from members of the public and from philanthropic organizations. While it does receive government subsidies, NPR says most of its funding comes from corporate as well as individual supporters and grants.

United Press International noted Twitter has not labeled the accounts for the Musk-owned SpaceX and Tesla companies as government-affiliated organizations despite receiving billions in government subsidies.

In a statement to USA Today, Jason Phelps of PBS said the broadcaster's staffers stopped using the organization's Twitter account after learning that the platform had relabeled them. Phelps said PBS had "no plans to resume at this time" but added that the organization was "continuing to monitor the ever-changing situation closely".

"Twitter's simplistic label leaves the inaccurate impression that PBS is wholly funded by the federal government," Phelps added to USA Today.

In a separate statement, PBS said that "editorial independence is central to our work, and will never change".

"We will continue to produce trustworthy content that features unbiased reporting and holds governments and institutions to account," the PBS spokesperson's statement added.

The BBC was also recently labeled government-funded media by Twitter, but the platform relabeled it "publicly funded" after the BBC complained. The BBC remains on Twitter. UK households fund the BBC through a TV license fee, and commercial operations also provide income to the broadcaster, which operates through a royal charter with the British government that requires the broadcaster to be independent.