Twitter To Label Posts From State-Run Media Outlets

Like most of their recent changes, this is long overdue:

Twitter will start labeling the accounts of media outlets affiliated with the governments of countries on the U.N. National Security Council, it announced Thursday. The new labels won’t apply to all media outlets that receive government funding — only “outlets where the state exercises control over editorial content through financial resources, direct or indirect political pressures, and/or control over production and distribution.”

The labels will go on the accounts for China Daily, Russia Today, Sputnik and other media outlets, a Twitter spokesperson said. But not Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, two media outlets funded by the U.S. government, or NPR and the BBC. The blog post described NPR and the BBC as “state-financed media organizations with editorial independence.”

YouTube already does this.