Elon Musk’s Twitter drops government-funded media labels

UNDATED (AP)- Twitter has removed labels describing global media organizations are government-funded or state-affiliated. The move came after the Elon Musk-owned platform stripped blue verification checkmarks from Twitter accounts that don’t pay a monthly fee. National Public Radio in the U.S. is among those no longer labeled government-affiliated media. NPR announced last week that it would stop using Twitter after its main account was labeled “state-affiliated media.” That term has also been used to identify media outlets controlled or heavily influenced by authoritarian governments, such as Russia and China. Twitter later changed the label to “government-funded media,” but NPR said it was still misleading.