Twitter CEO labelled Canadian public broadcaster Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) as 69% Government-funded Media after the media organisation said it will pause its activities on Twitter after being labelled as “government-funded media”.
“Canadian Broadcasting Corp said they’re ‘less than 70% government-funded, so we corrected the label,” Musk tweeted on Monday.
His ‘labelling’ of CBC comes after the organisation’s spokesperson Leon Mar’s comments who said they were being “falsely described”. “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’s Mar said.
“Consequently, we will be pausing our activity on our corporate Twitter account and all CBC and Radio-Canada news-related accounts,” Mar further added.
CBC on its Twitter account said: “Our journalism is impartial and independent. To suggest otherwise is untrue. That is why we are pausing our activities on @Twitter”.
Elon Musk and mainstream media outlets are involved in growing argument over who sponsors them after the Tesla and SpaceX CEO labelled UK’s BBC and the US’ NPR as “government-funded media” outlets.
The @BBC account – which has 2.2 million followers – is currently branded as government funded. The label has not been given to the BBC’s other accounts, including BBC News (World) and BBC Breaking News, reported CNN.
Twitter has not given a definition for what it considers “government-funded media” to constitute.
BBC’s labelling has been changed to “Publicly-funded media” along with BBC Breaking News, BBC World.
“We are speaking to Twitter to resolve this issue as soon as possible. The BBC is and always has been, independent. We are funded by the British public through the licence fee,” BBC said, after being labelled by the social media site as “government funded”.
The labelling of the news organisations has angered news media outlets because it leads to people believing that their editorial policy is being influenced by the US government, a speculation these outlets deny while claiming they have full editorial control unlike Chinese state-run Global Times or Russian state-run outlets like TASS, Sputnik or RIA Novosti.
NPR earlier lashed out at Twitter and said it would stop using the social media site due to the “false” labelling.
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