(Helsinki) Swedish public radio said on Tuesday that it would stop being active on Twitter.
But Sveriges Radio didn’t blame the new labels that Elon Musk’s social media platform recently imposed on public broadcasters, leading some major North American outlets to slam the door.
Sveriges Radio instead said on its blog that Twitter had lost its relevance to Swedish audiences.
US National Public Radio (NPR) and public broadcaster CBC/Radio-Canada had denounced Twitter’s new policy of labeling them “government-funded media”, saying the label undermined their credibility as an independent medium.
Christian Gillinger, head of social media activities at Swedish public broadcaster Sveriges Radio, cited a recent study showing that only 7% of Swedes tweet daily.
He explained that this platform “just changed over the years” and “became less important” for Sveriges Radio.
“The public simply chose other places. So Sveriges Radio now chooses to deactivate or delete the last remaining accounts”, explained Mr Gillinger.
The broadcaster’s news service, SR Ekot, which has also been labeled “state-funded media”, will remain on Twitter, but has been marked as inactive.
Sveriges Radio, which has been active on Twitter since 2009, also highlighted in its decision the “ recent turbulence ” around Twitter’s activities. She finds it particularly worrying that the social media platform has downsized “dramatically” recently.
“We believe this could affect the company’s ability to deal with, for example, fake accounts, bots and misinformation, but also hate messages and threats in the long term,” explained Mr. Gillinger.
The new public broadcaster labels have sparked a new battle between journalists and Elon Musk. The billionaire has long expressed his contempt for professional journalists and has said he wants to elevate the opinions and expertise of the “average citizen”.
