Global Courant 2023-04-17 15:53:31
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One of CBC’s Twitter accounts now has a label that the broadcaster describes as “government-funded media”.
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News of the addition to CBC was shared on Twitter late Sunday by conservative leader Pierre Poilièvre, who had asked the social media company to add the label to accounts promoting “news-related” content from CBC English, but asked the same for its French counterpart.
Leon Mar, CBC’s director of media relations, says Twitter’s decision violates its own policy, which says government-funded media “may have varying degrees of government involvement in editorial content.”
Mar says that “clearly isn’t the case with CBC/Radio-Canada.”
He says CBC/Radio-Canada is government-funded through a parliamentary grant voted on by all MPs, and editorial independence is legally protected in the Broadcasting Act.
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Poilièvre also posted a link in his tweet to a petition on the Conservatives’ website calling for the abolition of the CBC.
“Now people know it’s Trudeau propaganda, not news,” the tweet on the Conservative leader’s post read.
The Canadian press emailed Twitter asking for an explanation of the added tag, and the company responded with a poop emoji.
Mar, meanwhile, said there has been no discussion between Twitter and CBC/Radio-Canada.
The company has made a distinction between “government” and “public” funding due to the fact that the money it receives is awarded through a vote of parliament.
After such a label was put on the BBC, the broadcaster pushed back and Twitter eventually changed the tag to “government-funded media”.
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The board of the CBC determines how the funds received are spent. In 2021-2022, the CBC received more than $1.2 billion in government funding, down from about $1.4 billion in 2020-21.
Poilièvre said in a sit-down interview with right-wing outlet True North last July that the only justification for having a public service broadcaster is to provide content that the private market does not. He argued that this is not the case for CBC’s English services.
He said in the interview that he would reserve a small amount for francophone and other linguistic minorities because they will not receive news services from the market.
CBC has said that rewriting the broadcasting law would be necessary to focus government money on just one language group.
This report from The Canadian Press was first published on April 16, 2023.
