Elon Musk says 'many mistakes' made since Twitter takeover

Twitter boss Elon Musk said running the social media network has been "quite a rollercoaster" and acknowledged "many mistakes" along the way, six months after he bought the company for $44 billion.

In a live interview with the BBC after agreeing to a last-minute invitation for the "spontaneity" of it, Musk appeared to tacitly acknowledge that one of those errors was the decision to label the broadcaster's account "government-funded media".

He said he would change the designation on the BBC's Twitter handle after the broadcaster objected.

"We want it as truthful and accurate as possible -- we're adjusting the label to 'publicly funded'," Musk said.

Britain's national broadcaster is predominantly funded by an annual license fee set by the government but paid by individual households.

The labelling spat follows an earlier controversy over a similar move involving US radio network NPR, which Twitter briefly branded "state-affiliated", the same way it styles government-run Chinese and Russian platforms.

NPR stopped tweeting in protest.

Twitter now tags NPR, which has nearly 9 million followers, "government-funded media", and applied the same label to the BBC's account.

Musk has expressed deep disdain for news media for years and recently installed an automatic response of a poop emoji to emails sent to the site's main media address.

Speaking with the BBC late on Tuesday, he also addressed Twitter's controversial move to strip the New York Times of its blue verified check mark after the company refused to pay to keep it.

From April 20, any legacy verified accounts on Twitter -- which were verified as authentic under the company's old ownership -- will have to pay to subscribe to Twitter Blue.