The Canadian public audiovisual group ceases its activity on Twitter after its editorial independence is questioned. Other public groups, American or Swedish, do the same.
The list of media that cease their activities on Twitter is growing. The CBC/Radio Canada group suspended its publications on Monday April 17 after being labeled by the social network “government funded media“. Last week, the American public radio NPR became the first major media to leave Twitter in protest against the new policy of the network, acquired by billionaire Elon Musk in October for 44 billion dollars.
CBC/Radio Canada defends its editorial independence
For CBC/Radio Canada, this qualification by the social network of “government-funded media” is problematic because it is false. Two other American public media, NPR radio and the PBS television network, have also been labeled “government funded media on their Twitter account. This is false, because these media are not at all under the influence of the executive. They actually depend on US federal subsidies. This whole affair is in this nuance: “government funded” instead of “publicly funded“.
Twitter defines the “government funded media” specifying that the latter may have varying degrees of involvement in the editorial choices of the media in question. In other words, there are doubts about its independence. Worse, it would potentially be a propaganda tool. This accusation is unbearable for those who have been targeted in this way because the accuracy and veracity of the information they publish is in doubt.
Swedish public radio SR suspends its account because “Twitter has changed”
In the eyes of the Swedish group Sveriges Radio (SR), equivalent of Radio France, the social network recently bought by Elon Musk has changed lately. He became “less important”, and therefore less essential for the most listened to antennas in the country. The explanation is not very clear, but according to SR, the decision to withdraw from Twitter has nothing to do with the decisions made in the United States and Canada. Indeed, SR was not labeled “government funded media“, but simply”publicly funded” (“publicly-funded media”), a very different label on the bottom. This mention is believed to be correct, and does not imply that the radio is bound hand and foot with power. She did not protest after receiving this designation on Twitter.
According to Twitter, this mention concerns the media that are financed “by individual contributions, public funding or commercial funding”. Other Twitter accounts of media groups are thus presented as “publicly funded”. This is the case for Radio France, France Télévisions, France Médias Monde (RFI and France 24). This is also the case of the British BBC. Useful clarification, the accounts of the branches of Radio France and France Télévisions have not been labeled like their parent companies: franceinfo, France Inter, France Bleu, France Culture or France 2, France 3 and France 5 do not have the ‘moment no specific annotation.
‘State-affiliated’ media remain pinned by Twitter
The third category of media pinned by Twitter is media “state-affiliated media” and those are clearly in the sights of Twitter, which points to editorial bias. All content is state controlled. The examples of Russia Today and Sputnik (whose access has been restricted since the war in Ukraine) are indeed considered to be controlled by the Russian state, just as the Xinhua news agency is by the Chinese state. And none of the three disputed this mention, which has become one of the criteria for the identity of media groups on the blue bird social network.