The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) is the latest news organization to put its use of Twitter on hold after the social media company labeled it “government-funded media.”
The action follows similar walkaways from NPR and PBS, who objected to the tag, which they say implies the government controls their editorial content.
“Twitter can be a powerful tool for our journalists to communicate with Canadians, but it undermines the accuracy and professionalism of the work they do to allow our independence to be falsely described in this way,” CBC corporate spokesperson Leon Mar said in a statement. “Consequently, we will be pausing our activity on our corporate Twitter account and all CBC and Radio-Canada news-related accounts.”
CBC is also halting activities on Twitter for its sports, entertainment, and radio accounts.
Elon Musk, who has been open in his hostility to media outlets for the past several months, responded quickly to CBC’s decision. He ordered his staff to change the label of the news outlet, which initially read, “70% Government-funded Media,” to 69%.
Other outlets that have been labeled as “government-funded” include Australia’s ABC News and New Zealand public broadcaster RNZ.
The BBC was at one point labeled as such, but that has since been changed to “publicly funded media.”
Musk has been quick to fire back when outlets have challenged the social media company’s decision to imply they are influenced by the state. After NPR announced it was quitting Twitter, Musk made a series of posts including “Defund NPR” and falsely accused the organization of updating its website to remove the part that said federal funding is “essential to public radio,” adding the commentary “What hypocrites!”
