Twitter has slapped a "government-funded media" label on the @BBC account prompting the corporation to contact the platform asking for the issue to be resolved as soon as possible.
In response, Elon Musk explained:
We are aiming for maximum transparency and accuracy. Linking to ownership and source of funds probably makes sense. I do think media organizations should be self-aware and not falsely claim the complete absence of bias.
All organisations have bias, some obviously much more than others. I should note that I follow BBC News on Twitter, because I think it is among the least biased.
Firstly, let's establish the facts:
- While the level of the licence fee is set by the government, the BBC receives no money from the treasury - except for the more than £90m per annum purely to support the World Service (predominantly serving non-UK audiences).
- Capita TV Licencing is contracted to administer the licence fee and passes all money to the government before the BBC receives it as a grant.
- The licence fee makes up around 70% of the BBC's total income with the remainder being from other sources including its commercial subsidiaries (BBC Studios, BBC Global News and BBC Studioworks), grants, royalties and rental income.
- The Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport may retain a proportion of the licence fee revenue for other purposes as referred to in the BBC Charter and Agreement.
- While the BBC Chair is a political appointment (which, in my view, should not be the case), they do not exercise editorial control and its journalism is completely independent from government - including that of the World Service.
So is the BBC "government-funded media"? As stated above, the World Service is to an extent (yet the @BBCWorldService account doesn’t have this label) but what about the rest of it?
Licence fee money isn't collected by HMRC but does get passed to the government before landing in the BBC’s bank account.
Ultimately, all government money is that of the British people and British organisations but decisions about where investment goes lie with ministers. However, the licence fee is in a league of its own as it can only benefit the BBC so the government can't just choose to redistribute that revenue. If it doesn't go into the central government fund with general taxation, how is it government funding?
Anyway, that isn’t even the issue here! Musk doesn't care. He knows exactly what he's doing.
We’re discussing a three-word tag on a Twitter account which has literally been put there to be taken out of context. @NPR, the primary Twitter account of the US public radio syndicator, was initially labelled “state-affiliated media” - wrongly implying the government exercises editorial control - before this changed to the same tag @BBC now has following a huge backlash.
Musk talks about “maximum transparency and accuracy” and he is only transparent in so far as everyone can see right through him.
This is purely someone furthering an agenda and seeking to discredit objective media that reports facts they don’t like. It’s not uncommon in today’s world, of course, but a platform with the scale and influence of Twitter (at least currently) trying to cause trouble - much like many of its users have been doing for years - would be detrimental in the fight against misinformation.
