Quid pro quo: What did BBC give Elon Musk for removing 'govt funded media' tag so promptly?

London: The British Broadcasting corporation has reportedly managed to convince Elon Musk to remove the controversial “government-funded media” tag from its twitter profile.

The tag was given to the primary BBC twitter account last week, after which the broadcaster had objected to Twitter about it.

Days later on Tuesday, Musk gave an interview to a BBC reporter in San Francisco, where he reportedly agreed to end the controversy by updating the tag.

In the interview, Musk expressed his “utmost respect” for the BBC. He also stated, “We want the tag to be as truthful and accurate as possible – we’re adjusting the label to the ‘publicly funded’ – we’ll try to be accurate.”

He also said reportedly that the BBC was “among the least biased” news sources.

Meanwhile, the BBC said in a statement following the label as “government-funded media”: “The BBC is, and always has been, independent. Through the licence fee, the British public supports us,” the statement read.

State-affiliated media are publications where the government “exercises control over editorial content through financial resources, direct or indirect political pressures, and/or control over production and distribution,” according to the Twitter’s help centre.

That description was once attached to the Twitter account of US broadcaster NPR, but it has since been altered to government-funded media, just like the BBC account.

BBC reportedly claims that each year, households in Britain pay a £159 licencing fee that is set by the government but used to financially support the corporation.

Larger accounts connected to the corporation’s breaking news and sports programming are not labelled in the same way as the BBC account, which has 2.2 million followers.

The account that was tagged mostly tweets about non-news content created by the BBC, including podcasts, radio shows, and TV shows, reports said.

Read all the Latest News, Trending News, Cricket News, Bollywood News,
India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.