CANADA: The Twitter account of the public broadcaster Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) was labelled as “69% government-funded media” on Monday by the social media platform.
The CBC website’s Twitter label formerly read ‘70% Government-funded Media.’ However, Twitter CEO and owner Elon Musk tweeted, “Canadian Broadcasting Corporation said they are less than 70% government-funded, so we corrected the label.”
Canadian Broadcasting Corp. has stated it will pause its Twitter activities after the labelling, a scuffle that has also drawn in Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, and his Conservative opponent, Pierre Poilievre.
The CBC’s Twitter handle, “@CBC,” was labelled as “69% government-funded media,” as Broadcaster’s Twitter account showed.
Twitter’s help centre page does not yet define what this new label indicates. An inquiry for comment from CBC was not immediately answered.
The label “government-funded media” began to appear on certain CBC Twitter feeds on Sunday. In response, CBC said that while it is not government-funded, it is “publicly funded through a parliamentary appropriation that is voted upon by all Members of Parliament.”
“Our journalism is impartial and independent. To suggest otherwise is untrue. That is why we are pausing our activities on @Twitter,” CBC wrote on Twitter on Monday.
The broadcaster also stated that advertisements aid in defraying its expenses across all platforms.
Earlier on Monday, after Poilievre pushed Musk to label the Canadian Broadcaster “government-funded,” Trudeau accused Poilievre of enlisting American billionaires to undermine Canada’s public broadcaster.
Poilievre stated last week on Twitter that he had written to Musk to ask that the CBC be labelled “accurately.”
Poilievre, who took over the party last year and is pushing for the CBC to be defunded, applauded the decision and wrote on Twitter that “now people know that it is Trudeau propaganda, not news.”
Speaking to journalists, Trudeau stated: “Attacking this Canadian institution, attacking the culture and local content that are so important to so many Canadians, really indicates the values and the approach that Mr Poilievre is putting forward.”
“To attack this institution that is important for many, many Canadians, he runs to American billionaires, the tech giants that they continue to defend,” he continued.
The left-leaning new Democrats support Trudeau’s minority government, and the next election isn’t scheduled to take place until 2025.
A U.S. broadcaster, National Public Radio, announced last week that it would stop posting to its 52 official Twitter channels in protest of the social media platform’s label, which implies that the content is subject to government influence.
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