CBC Holding Off On Returning to Twitter Despite Platform Removing ‘Government-Funded’ Label

The CBC News logo is projected onto a screen during a CBC event at the Mattamy Athletic Centre in Toronto on May 29, 2019. Tijana Martin/The Canadian Press

The CBC says it will hold off on returning to Twitter for the time being despite the social media platform removing a “government-funded” label from the network’s account that caused CBC to stop posting on Twitter earlier this week.

“We are reviewing this latest development and will leave our Twitter accounts on pause before taking any next steps,” CBC’s director of media relations, Leon Mar, said in an email to The Epoch Times on April 21.

Mar also pointed to a statement issued the previous day by the Global Task Force for public media calling on Twitter to remove its “Government-funded Media” labels from several outlets.

The Task Force, which is chaired by CBC President Catherine Tait, said the labels that had been applied to the Twitter accounts of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, CBC/Radio-Canada, the Korean Broadcasting System, and Radio New Zealand were “misleading” and had been “applied without warning or consultation.”

“Labelling them in this way misleads audiences about their operational and editorial independence from government,” the Task Force wrote in its statement.

Twitter did not provide The Epoch Times with a comment on why it removed the labels. The platform also removed its “state-affiliated media” tags on outlets such as the Russian government’s RT and China’s state-run CGTN.

Twitter owner Elon Musk has not yet commented on the matter. However, the label removal came shortly after Twitter also removed its blue-check verification for all accounts not subscribed to Twitter Blue.

Previously, individual-user accounts that Twitter had verified prior to Musk’s takeover of the platform in October 2022 had retained their blue-check status even if they did not pay the US$8 monthly subscription fee for Twitter Blue.

However, as of April 20, Musk said individuals must be subscribed to Twitter Blue to be verified on the platform.

Halting Activity

CBC announced on April 17 that it would be temporarily halting its activity on Twitter in response to being labelled as government-funded media. The public broadcaster said Twitter’s label was inaccurate because the Canadian government has no control over CBC’s editorial content.

The Global Task Force said in its statement that the labelling shows a “fundamental” misunderstanding of the “concept of public service media.”

“They are publicly funded organisations that are statutorily independent of government influence,” it wrote. “This model has served audiences well in democratic countries for much of the last century.”

The Task Force added that if Twitter is to apply any labels to government-funded outlets, the “most accurate and appropriate label would be ‘Publicly funded media.’”

The CBC said in its 2021-22 annual report that it received over $1.2 billion in federal funding last year.

After CBC protested to Twitter that the funding accounted for less than 70 percent of its overall annual revenue, Musk changed its account label on April 17 to say “69% Government-funded Media.”

The label lasted for about 3 days before Twitter removed it.

The Canadian Press contributed to this report.