Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre is calling on Twitter CEO Elon Musk to slap a “government-funded media” label on the CBC’s twitter account.
“We must protect Canadians against disinformation and manipulation by state media,” Poilievre wrote in a tweet. “That is why I’m asking @Twitter @elonmusk to accurately label CBC as ‘government-funded media.'”
In the official letter to Musk, Poilievre cites Twitter’s own policies on affixing certain designations on accounts, particularly media organizations. “Government-funded media is defined as outlets where the government provides some or all of the outlet’s funding and may have varying degrees of government involvement over editorial content.”
In his letter, Poilievre states that the CBC should be labelled as a publicly-funded broadcaster since it meets the criteria of Twitter’s definition, adding that the Canadian organization received nearly $1.24 billion from the federal government in 2019/2020. “As a result, and in the interest of transparency, I believe that Twitter should apply the Government-funded Media label to CBC’s various news-related accounts, including @CBC, @CBCNews, and @CBCAlerts.”
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Musk recently acknowledged a similar but informal request from a Twitter user to include such a label on the CBC’s twitter page, responding that “more granularity” needs to be added to “editorial influence” because “it varies greatly.”
Some news organizations already bearing Twitter’s “government-funded media” label have made outcries, with NPR going as far as to deactivate its accounts in protest. “NPR’s organizational accounts will no longer be active on Twitter because the platform is taking actions that undermine our credibility by falsely implying that we are not editorially independent,” the US-based news organization said in a statement.
Although NPR self-identifies as an “independent, nonprofit media organization” that doesn’t receive direct federal funding, it still receives money via grants from various federal departments and agencies.
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