Elon Musk has said Twitter will change recently-added label on the BBC’s corporate account from “government funded media” to read “publicly-funded”.
In an interview with BBC News the entrepreneur claimed the social media platform was “trying to be accurate”.
The BBC has maintained it is publicly funded through the licence fee, which accounts for 71% of its £5.3 billion annual income, the remainder coming from commercial activities, royalties and grants. The UK government contributes £90 million towards the operation of BBC World Service.
“I know the BBC for example’s not thrilled about being labelled state-affiliated media,” said Musk. “”If we use the same words that the BBC uses to describe itself, that presumably would be OK… That seems to pass a reasonable test.”
As of 11.00 GMT, the labelling remained unchanged.
None of the Twitter accounts operated by BBC World Service or BBC News had the “government funded media” label applied to them.
