To better understand the context that led to the desertion of Twitter by the CBC and Radio-Canada, thanks to a “partnership” between the conservative leader Pierre Poilievre and the chief twit Elon Musk, allow a detour by the Alberta.
There’s a lifetime of that, The Press sent me out west and covered a pro-Harper protest, it was during his years as a minority PM. In the demonstration, we saw signs denouncing the CBC, the English counterpart of Radio-Canada, as being the… “Communist Broadcasting Corporation”.
For these citizens, the CBC is a communist broadcaster, nothing less.
I relate this anecdote to illustrate how, among the Conservatives, there is an anti-CBC current that goes back much further in time than the current leader Pierre Poilievre. This is not insignificant in the context where the Conservative leader has teamed up with Twitter to trip up the CBC in recent days.
At the heart of the debate: the label newly affixed by Twitter to certain media accounts present on its platform.
Historically, Twitter referred to certain media as “state-affiliated”, words reserved for media in countries where the media is not free. Examples: RT or Sputnik, subservient to Russian power. One way of telling users that the content conveyed by these media should be taken with a grain of salt.
Then, Elon Musk took over the helm of Twitter and there continued his unhealthy war on journalism in general. And recently, Twitter wanted to affix this definition to certain media which, although financed by public money, are not “state media”.
Words are important here. There is a difference between a public broadcaster and a state broadcaster. In several Western countries – one can think of France, the United Kingdom, Canada, Switzerland, Australia, to name a few – public money finances so-called public media, traditionally the TV and radio…
Being financed by public money does not mean being controlled by the depository of public money, the State. This is why Radio-Canada/CBC is a public broadcaster, operating at arm’s length from the government.
A distance arm?
Ottawa could force the public broadcaster to do more children’s programming or to cover more local news, but the government cannot decide which children’s programs should be produced by the CBC or which subjects Radio-Canada journalists should cover Baie Comeau.
Generally, to say of a media that it is “State”, is to designate a media which is, precisely, in the words of Twitter, “aligned” with a State, a media which does not have this independence and the autonomy that public broadcasters have in choosing their content.
End of detour, back to Mr. Poilievre. The Tory leader pressed Twitter boss Mr Musk for the CBC to be designated a ‘State broadcaster’ 1.
Context: NPR, a public radio station (modestly financed by the American State) had just been branded by Twitter as “State affiliated media”. The case caused a stir in the United States, Twitter corrected the situation by designating NPR as being “funded by the government”.
Strictly factual, but knowing Mr. Musk’s disdain for journalism and journalists, the bottom line is the same: Merely naming NPR with those words puts it in the same boat as deserving state-owned media on Twitter. , a label. NPR announced its departure from Twitter in stride2as CBC just did on Monday afternoon.
If you doubt that “government-funded media” is code for “unreliable” in conservative circles, know that when CBC was given the label “government-funded media”, Pierre Poilievre had this reaction, on Twitter “Now the people know this is pro-Trudeau propaganda, not news. »
Pierre Poilievre thus throws a nice slice of red meat at his most relentless activists, who truly believe that CBC is to Justin Trudeau what the Pravda was to Stalin. And to do this, Mr. Poilievre made foot calls to a man, Mr. Musk, who in 2022 drew a parallel between Justin Trudeau and Adolf Hitler, at the height of the occupation of downtown Ottawa.3 by “freedom” demonstrators… Loudly supported by MM. Musk and Poilievre.
Will this kind of attack, which pleases the most militant fringe of the Conservative Party, be able to widen its electoral base and allow it to improve the score of MM. Harper, O’Toole and Scheer in the last three elections?
It remains to be seen, the people are sovereign. I point out that Mr. Poilievre garnered 23,000 “likes” in his tweet applauding the new label imposed on the CBC on Twitter, that is a frankly impressive statistic…
But according to the latest news, elections are not won with “likes”.
In the meantime, I see one thing: the Conservative leader’s war on the CBC has allowed Justin Trudeau to talk about something other than the quicksand of Chinese interference in which he has been badly mired for weeks.4.