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

Broadcaster leaves platform a day after NPR’s exit over concerns labels undermine credibility as independent news outlets

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.