The CBC’s Twitter
label has been changed to show a portion of its funding is provided by the government, after the public broadcaster complained about its “government-funded media” label.
“Canadian Broadcasting Corp said they’re ‘less than 70% government-funded,’ so we corrected the label,”
wrote Twitter-owner Elon Musk on the platform on April 17.
CBC is
now labelled on Twitter as being “69% Government-funded Media.” The change came after Musk engaged with several Twitter users on a post about CBC protesting against the government-funded label.
One user referenced a
post by the CBC in 2017 that said federal funding “only covers a portion” of the broadcaster’s expenses.
“Advertising helps us cover costs across all platforms,” said the post, dated Sept. 12, 2017.
In response, Musk
questioned if it would be more “accurate” to label the broadcaster as 70-percent government funded in response to the public broadcaster’s complaints about the label.
CBC
announced on April 17 that it will temporarily halt its activity on Twitter in response to the new label.
“Our journalism is impartial and independent. To suggest otherwise is untrue,” it said.
Twitter says it applies the government-funded label to outlets that receive “some or all” of its funding from a government. The label also applies if an outlet has “varying degrees of government involvement over editorial content.”
The CBC said in its 2021-22 annual report that it received
$1.24 billion in federal-government funding last year.
However, CBC’s director of media relations Leon Mar told The Epoch Times on April 16 that the label is inaccurate because “Twitter’s own policy defines government-funded media as cases where the government ’may have varying degrees of government involvement over editorial content,'” which he said is “clearly not the case with CBC/Radio-Canada.”
Further Change
Shortly after changing CBC’s label on Twitter to indicate 70-percent government-funding, Musk
wrote that the CBC’s “concern has been addressed.”
A user then said the label should be changed to indicate that CBC receives less than 70 percent of its funding from the federal government.
“Good point, generosity is always the right move,”
Musk replied. “69% it is!”
CBC’s labelling as government-funded media comes shortly after Twitter applied similar labels to National Public Radio in the United States and the British Broadcasting Corporation in the UK.
In response to the CBC labelling, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau
took aim at the Conservative Party and said its members are “choosing to constantly attack independent media organizations.”
Trudeau also said
while speaking to reporters on April 17 that Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre “runs to American billionaires” to “attack” the CBC.
The prime minister was referring to calls from Poilievre for Twitter to label CBC as a government-funded outlet.
Once that happened on April 16,
Poilievre wrote that CBC has been “officially exposed as ‘government-funded media.’”
“Now people know that it is Trudeau propaganda, not news,”
he wrote on Twitter.
Matthew Horwood and Omid Ghoreishi contributed to this report.
