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The intent of the label was to highlight government propaganda editorial outlets so that consumers understand the source of the information. Funding seems like

The intent of the label was to highlight government propaganda editorial outlets so that consumers understand the source of the information. Funding seems like a problematic metric for this. While it highlights an interesting factoid, funding does not necessarily correlate to editorial control. That information also isn't reliably available for all state broadcasters. And, for fairness, you'd have to label entities like SpaceX as well -- everybody is a media outlet on Twitter! -- which I don't think helps anyone.

logicalmonster 3y ago
> Funding seems like a problematic metric for this. I'm not seeing that. Funding is as close to an objective measurement of control as you could ever come up with. A media entity can of course be biased towards a government, whether or not they get anywhere from 0 to 100% of their funding from the government, but the likelihood of government bias almost certainly increases with more funding. If you see 99% of media outlets with < 1% of government funding, but then there's a few outlets with a large percentage of government funding, that's important information for weighing their journalism. > And, for fairness, you'd have to label entities like SpaceX as well -- everybody is a media outlet on Twitter! -- which I don't think helps anyone. Honestly, I think this is a jaw-droppingly phenomenal idea. Everybody is a political actor on Twitter, and I'm sure SpaceX and other corporations make tweets that are directly or indirectly weighing in on political and other issues that are relevant to them. Knowing that they have a dog in a particular fight is really important for weighing their tweets fairly.