The CBC has objected to Elon Musk’s “government-funded media” designation
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) announced on Monday that it was “pausing” its activity on Twitter after the social media platform labeled it as state-funded, arguing that this somehow impugned their editorial independence.
“Our journalism is impartial and independent. To suggest otherwise is untrue. That is why we are pausing our activities on Twitter,” the government-funded outlet tweeted.
“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 spokesperson Leon Mar said on Sunday evening. “Consequently, we will be pausing our activity on our corporate Twitter account and all CBC and Radio-Canada news-related accounts.”
The CBC is a Crown corporation, entirely owned by the Canadian state. In its 2021-22 annual analysis, it reported receiving 1.24 billion ($930 million) Canadian dollars in government funding. However, the outlet insists that its editorial policies are entirely independent of the government and guided only by “public interest.”
Mar argued that Twitter’s own policy defines government-funded media as those in which the authorities “may have varying degrees of government involvement over editorial content,” which is “clearly not the case with CBC/Radio Canada.”