Musk updates CBC's bio to '69% Government-funded Media'

Musk updates CBC’s bio to ‘69% Government-funded Media’

Twitter updated CBC’s account again to indicate the state broadcaster takes in 69% from the feds on an annual basis.

*Musk reupdates CBC Twitter bio to ‘69% Government-funded Media’*

Earlier in the day on Monday, the CBC tweeted disaproval of the Twitter’s decision.
“Our journalism is impartial and independent,” the CBC/Radio-Canada account tweeted.

Our journalism is impartial and independent. To suggest otherwise is untrue. That is why we are pausing our activities on @Twitter. | Notre journalisme est impartial et indépendant. Prétendre le contraire est faux. C’est pourquoi nous suspendons nos activités sur @Twitter.
— CBC/Radio-Canada (@CBCRadioCanada) April 17, 2023

This developed followed Sunday’s initial update when Twitter slapped the CBC with the less-informative ‘Government-funded media’ tag.

Last week, Twitter hit the BBC, PBS, and NPR with government-funded media tags, which prompted Canadians to ask CEO Elon Musk when the CBC’s account will get the same treatment.

NPR and PBS have since announced they were leaving Twitter, alleging the label was unfair and, however accurate, misleading to the public.

Subsequently, CBC went to bat for the outlets with articles that implied leaving Twitter was a good thing.

Canadian Broadcasting Corp said they’re “less than 70% government-funded”, so we corrected the label pic.twitter.com/lU1EWf76Zu
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 18, 2023

CBC’s account also pinned an old tweet from 2022 that points users to other outlets they can access the state-broadcaster, including the Chinese Communist Party-affiliated Tiktok. On Monday, CBC stated it was also taking a “pause” from Twitter.

However unwanted by CBC, the decision seemed only a matter of time given that NPR reportedly only received 1% of its funding from the government, which is a far cry from the 70% government-funded CBC.

On Monday, Prime Minister Trudeau condemned the decision by Twitter.

Meanwhile, earlier in the week, Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre asked Twitter to label CBC with the government-tag.

“The CBC’s 2021-2022 Annual Report disclosed that it received almost $1.24 billion, the vast majority of its funding, from the Canadian government,” Poilievre said.

“I believe that Twitter should apply the Government-funded Media label to the CBC’s various news-related accounts, including @CBC, @CBCNews and @CBCAlerts.”

Twitter’s policy states that media outlets in receipt of government funding will get labelled accordingly if the government “exercises control over editorial content through financial resources, direct or indirect political pressures, and/or control over production and distribution.”