Twitter has hit more media outlets with the “government-funded media” label.
NPR and BBC previously received the labels.
NPR announced that it will no longer use Twitter after it received the label, becoming the first major news organization to leave the platform.
Hopefully, Twitter’s new labels will encourage more fake news outlets to quit the social media platform.
The Australian Broadcasting Company (ABC Australia), Australia’s Special Broadcasting Service (SBS), New Zealand’s public broadcaster RNZ, and Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) are the latest outlets to receive the label.
In response, CBC announced that it is pausing Twitter activities.
In a report from CBC, they do admit to being “publicly-funded” to the amount of $1.24 billion.
In a statement Sunday night, Mar emphasized the government does not influence CBC’s editorial content.
“Twitter’s own policy defines government-funded media as cases where the government ‘may have varying degrees of government involvement over editorial content,’ which is clearly not the case with CBC/Radio-Canada,” Mar said.
“CBC/Radio-Canada is publicly funded through a parliamentary appropriation that is voted upon by all Members of Parliament. Its editorial independence is protected in law in the Broadcasting Act.”
Mar later said that Twitter did not consult with CBC before applying the label.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre had recently called on Twitter CEO Elon Musk to add a “government-funded” label to accounts that promote “news-related” content from CBC.
Reacting to the label being implemented on Sunday, Poilievre tweeted that the CBC has been “officially exposed” as “Trudeau propaganda, not news.”
In its 2021-22 annual report, the CBC reported government funding of $1.24 billion. It also reported $651 million in revenue, largely from advertising during the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games and the 2022 Beijing Olympic Games, which were held in the same fiscal year, and stronger demand for television advertising than the previous year. In the fiscal year 2020-21, CBC reported $1.39 billion in government funding and $504 million in revenue
Justin Trudeau reacted to CBC’s new label by calling it an “attack”.
Watch:
Australia’s ABC News also complained about its new label.
“FYI: The ABC is a publicly funded broadcaster, governed by the ABC Charter which is enshrined in legislation. For more than 90 years the ABC has always been and remains an independent media organisation, free from political and commercial interests,” the outlet stated on Twitter.
