Canadian broadcaster latest to ‘pause’ Twitter over funding label | Media News
Public broadcaster CBC said it is effectively leaving the platform because of its “state-funded” media label.
Canadian public broadcaster CBC has announced it will effectively leave Twitter and become the latest news organization to challenge new labels given to the billionaire Elon Musk-owned site.
In a statement Monday, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) and its French-language version, Radio-Canada, said Twitter added the “government-funded media” label to its account.
As a result, the broadcaster said it was “paused” in its activities on the platform. She denounced the label as “untrue and misleading.”
“Twitter can be a powerful tool for our journalists to communicate with Canadians, but it undermines the accuracy and professionalism of their work to allow our independence to be misrepresented in this way,” the CBC said.
As a “Crown Corporation”, the CBC receives funds through parliamentary votes. However, a spokesman for the news agency noted that its editorial independence is protected under Canada’s Broadcasting Act.
Twitter has defined “government-funded media” as “outlets where the government provides some or all of the funding for the outlet and may have varying degrees of government involvement in editorial content.”
Our journalism is neutral and independent. To claim otherwise is wrong. Therefore we continue to pause our activities @twitter. | Notre Journalisme is impartial and independent. Prétendre le contraire est faux. C’est pourquoi nous suspensions nos activités sur @twitter.
— CBC/Radio Canada (@CBCRadioCanada) April 17, 2023
The CBC’s response follows a similar outcry from Radio New Zealand (RNZ), also a public broadcaster, which threatened to exit the site on Monday.
“Not only is our editorial independence protected by law, we guard it closely,” Megan Whelan, head of content, said in a statement on Twitter.
In the United States, National Public Radio (NPR) and Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) also announced last week that they were withdrawing from Twitter after being exposed to labels they say misrepresented their editorial independence and funding models.
Several state public broadcasters have followed suit in the past few days.
NPR is retiring from Twitter, and that includes this NPR politics feed. Please read the thread for other ways to find our work including:
NPR Politics Instagram: https://t.co/UJ2HzXYsR0
NPR Politics newsletter: https://t.co/mrWXwUrXrn https://t.co/5kmu5kGogV— NPR Politics (@nprpolitics) April 12, 2023
In Canada, Twitter’s decision to label the CBC as “government-funded” drew support from some conservative politicians.
Pierre Poilievre, the leader of Canada’s Conservative Party, welcomed the move on his Twitter account, calling the CBC “propaganda” for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, “no news”.
The Conservative leader had previously said he wrote to Musk personally to demand that the CBC be given the “state-funded” label. Poilievre has also called for the news organization to be defunded.
In response, Trudeau on Monday accused Poilievre of “attacking this Canadian institution, attacking the culture and local content that is so important to so many Canadians.”
Musk took control of Twitter in October in a $44 billion deal. He described himself as a “free speech absolutist” and had long resisted Twitter’s content moderation policy, which he has since relaxed.
But since Musk’s takeover, critics have accused the billionaire of disregarding press freedom on the platform.
Musk briefly suspended the accounts of certain journalists after they leaked publicly available information about his jet’s location. And last month, Musk announced that all press inquiries to Twitter would receive an automated response in the form of a poo emoji.
On Monday, Twitter listed three categories to describe affiliation with news organizations: “state-affiliated,” “state-funded,” and “public-funded.”
NPR was originally listed as “state-affiliated,” which Twitter defines as “outlets where the state exerts control over editorial content through financial means, direct or indirect political pressure, and/or control over production and distribution.”
Twitter later changed the NPR label to “government-funded” amid criticism that its original tag placed the outlet in the same category as propaganda for Russia and China.
Meanwhile, the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) was initially listed as “state funded” but has since been given the tag “public funded”, which Twitter defines as “media organizations that receive funding from royalties, individual contributions, public funding, etc. Commercial funding.” “.
In an interview with the BBC last week, Musk said of the labeling decision, “I thought it was a way to be as truthful and accurate as possible.”
Courtney Radsch, a fellow at UCLA’s Institute for Technology, Law and Policy, writing for the Brookings Institution research group, argued that the labeling is misleading because it overlooks other forms of government support that a range of media outlets around the world receive .
“The terms state-controlled and state-funded raise the question of whether it makes sense to use such blunt terms and not include information about how other news outlets are funded and operated,” she wrote.
“The selective application of labels to some news media and not others also raises concerns about perception and consistency.”