Proactive Investors - The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is “pausing” the use of its Twitter account on Monday after the platform tagged the public broadcaster’s page with a “government-funded media” label.
The Elon Musk-run social media site attached the same label to National Public Radio (NPR) in the US last week, prompting the company to quit Twitter.
The CBC pushed back against the label, pointing out through a spokesperson that it receives its funding through an appropriation voted upon by parliament and that its content is protected by the Broadcasting Act.
Musk, choosing to respond only to a CBC point that less than 70% of its funding is governmental, changed the label to read “69% government-funded media.”
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
“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 spokesman Leon Mar said in a statement Monday.
“Consequently, we will be pausing our activity on our corporate Twitter account and all CBC and Radio-Canada news-related accounts.”
CBC has also sent a letter to Twitter calling on the company to reconsider the label.
Government-funded media is a step down from “state-affiliated media,” which Musk initially slapped NPR’s account with last week. That tag is primarily used to identify media outlets run or influenced by authoritarian governments.
This is all downriver of Musk’s decision to upturn the blue checkmark verification system. In April, Twitter removed the verified mark from The New York Times after the newspaper said it would not pay for Twitter Blue to verify its accounts.