Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre made no secret of his joy as he shared a screenshot on Twitter showing that the official CBC account is now identified as ‘government funded’ media.
“Now people know this is Trudeau propaganda, not news,” Mr. Poilievre wrote on the social network on Sunday.
The account of the French service of the public broadcaster, Radio-Canada, does not seem affected by this identification for the moment.
Mr Poilievre had asked Twitter last week to label CBC accounts with “government funded”. He made the request in a letter to the leaders of the social media platform in San Francisco, and shared it in a tweet.
He stated in this message that “we must protect Canadians against misinformation and manipulation by state media”.
On Sunday evening, Mr. Poilievre shared on his Twitter account a petition that was endorsed by the Conservative Party of Canada. She calls on the Liberal government to defund the CBC, claiming it would save taxpayers a billion dollars.
The petition says the CBC is “undermining the private sector and independent media and competing for advertising space while receiving over $1 billion in direct taxpayer subsidies.”
The document alleges that the CBC provides “mostly opinion” and offers media coverage that would already be available in a “free and competitive” market.
Twitter defines “government-funded” media as news outlets that may be subject to government interference in editorial content, to one degree or another. The public broadcaster reiterated on the social network platform that this is “clearly not the case for CBC / Radio-Canada”.
The public broadcaster pointed out last week that all Canadians know full well that CBC / Radio-Canada is funded by taxpayers. The CBC assures that its editorial independence is guaranteed by the Broadcasting Act.
The outlet argued in a tweet on Sunday evening that “CBC/Radio-Canada is publicly funded through a parliamentary appropriation voted by all MPs.”
“Furthermore, our journalism is independent and subject to our Journalistic Standards and Practices, as well as an independent complaints process through the Radio-Canada and CBC ombudsmen,” he said.
Pierre Poilievre contradicts the Canadian media. He wrote on Twitter on April 13: “The CBC’s editorial independence is a lie.”
In 2021-2022, CBC / Radio-Canada received $1.2 billion from the federal government, compared to $1.4 billion the previous fiscal year. The public broadcaster also derives revenue from advertising and subscriptions.
Twitter has already affixed the controversial label to the accounts of the BBC, the British public broadcaster, and those of National Public Radio, the American public radio station. The latter has also denounced this measure as an attack on its integrity in terms of editorial independence and has decided to no longer be active on the social network.
Twitter had identified these outlets as “state-affiliated,” a term typically attributed to state media outlets that relay the propaganda of an authoritarian regime — such as Russia and China.
The social media giant has changed the label once again, opting for the term “crowd-funded media”.