Twitter has labeled CBC, the English-language counterpart of Radio-Canada, a government-funded media outlet, along with news outlets from authoritarian countries such as Russia or China, as if, in the eyes of the new owner of Twitter, any publicly funded medium is necessarily biased, propagandistic and a carrier of misinformation.
This social network deliberately ignores the fact that a public information company like CBC/Radio-Canada (recognized worldwide) enhances the quality of information in the country with programs with cultural content, surveys and big foreign stories, while the private tends to go to the lowest common denominator with vapid reality shows and often sensationalized programming to boost ratings.
Moreover, how would a private news media have more of a monopoly on journalistic virtue? Often overseen by large conglomerates, the private media must respond to imperatives of profitability, frequently to the detriment of the objectivity of their journalists, who impose censorship on themselves for fear of contravening the political ideology of the owners of these media, even if it means spreading false information in order to please them (think of Fox News, in the United States, which is currently in trouble with the law for a disinformation case linked to the last presidential election).
Twitter is not its first rebellion against the news media. It has already suspended journalists’ accounts and applied the same qualifier “state-affiliated” to public or semi-public American and British media renowned for the quality of information, just like CBC. More worryingly, the social network has even reinstated accounts that were once suspended for clear cases of misinformation and far-right remarks.
The new boss of Twitter proclaims loud and clear that he wants to protect freedom of expression, but in fact acts in a way that is contradictory and even contrary to the democratic values underlying said freedom of expression.
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