Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre on Tuesday asked Twitter boss Elon Musk to identify CBC as a “government-funded media outlet” on his platform. This label attached as much to state media as to public broadcasters is increasingly controversial, to the point of pushing the American radio station NPR to leave the social network.
“We must protect Canadians from misinformation and manipulation by state media,” Poilievre said on his own Twitter account Tuesday, sharing his letter sent to Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco, Calif.
In it, he argues that CBC received $1.24 billion from the Trudeau government in 2021-22. “In the interest of transparency, I believe Twitter should apply the label ‘Government Funded Media’ to the various accounts related to CBC news,” he wrote.
Note that the Conservative leader only targets CBC accounts, and makes no mention of his French-speaking counterpart, Radio-Canada. Mr. Poilievre has repeatedly expressed his desire to cut funding only to CBC, if elected Prime Minister.
In the eyes of Patrick White, professor of journalism at UQAM’s School of Media, the Conservative leader’s request is “extremely clumsy” and demonstrates that he does not distinguish between a public broadcaster and a state media .
As a public broadcaster, CBC Radio-Canada is only partly financed by public funds, the rest of the income comes from advertising. But above all, it retains all its editorial independence, Ottawa not being able to interfere in its content. “CBC / Radio-Canada does not promote the Canadian government and is even very critical of it, regardless of the party in power,” says the professor.
This is what, according to him, makes all the difference with state media such as the Russia Today channel, or even China Xinhua News. “These are media financed and controlled by the state, in countries where we know that there is no freedom of expression,” he adds.
Contacted by The duty, CBC declined to comment on Mr. Poilievre’s letter. Public broadcaster spokesman Leon Mar, however, notes that in official Twitter policy, “government-funded media” is described as one where the government “may intervene to varying degrees in editorial content.” “This is clearly not the case for CBC/Radio-Canada. As all Canadians know, CBC/Radio-Canada is publicly funded. Its editorial independence is protected by the Broadcasting Act.
A departure
In the past few days, several media around the world have been given the famous label “government funded media” on their Twitter account. Among them are the Russian state media Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik, the Chinese state media China Xinhua News, but also public broadcasters such as the British channel BBC and the American public radio NPR.
The latter also announced Wednesday her departure from the social network. “The platform is taking actions that undermine our credibility by falsely implying that we are not editorially independent,” National Public Radio said.
NPR ensures that less than 1% of its operational budget comes from federal sources, its funds coming mainly from advertising, sponsorship, and financial contributions from its member radios.
A spokeswoman for NPR told Agence France-Presse that journalists and its member stations, “will be able to decide for themselves if they want to stay on the platform”.
In Prof. Patrick White’s opinion, NPR is wrong in quitting Twitter. “I hope there won’t be a ripple effect after NPR. It is important to have reliable sources on social networks, otherwise it will leave all the room for misinformation”.
A step back
In an interview with the BBC on Wednesday, Elon Musk assured that he was finally going to change the label assigned to the British channel’s twitter account. “We want to be as honest and accurate as possible. We adjust the label [de la BBC] to ‘publicly funded,’” he said.
The billionaire entrepreneur also admitted to “many mistakes”, six months after buying Twitter for 44 billion dollars. However, he considers that the company is now “in the right direction”.
With Agence France-Presse