Canada’s public broadcaster CBC and its French-language version Radio-Canada said on Monday that they were quitting Twitter over a new government-funded label, that it deems to be questioning its editorial independence. The Canadian public broadcaster’s Twitter exit comes days after the US radio NPR quit the platform over a similar label.
In a statement, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation/Radio-Canada said Twitter had added a “government-funded media” label to its account. This, the Canadian state broadcaster added, branded it similar to the major media outlets in countries such as Russia and China.
“In the case of CBC/Radio-Canada this labeling is untrue and deceptive,” the statement said.
While the broadcaster is publicly funded, it said its editorial independence is protected under Canadian broadcasting law.
“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,” it said.
“Consequently, we will be pausing our activity on our corporate Twitter account and all CBC and Radio-Canada news-related accounts.”
The broadcaster instead urged Canadians to follow it on other social media.
CBC/Radio-Canada’s Twitter exit follows that of National Public Radio (NPR) in the United States over the tag, which has also been applied to Britain’s BBC. But soon after, BBC’s ‘government-funded media’ label on Twitter was changed to ‘publicly-funded media’.
The NPR had a total of 52 official Twitter feeds and became the first major news organisation to completely quit Twitter.
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Meanwhile, the Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau accused Conservative rival Pierre Poilievre of enlisting U.S. billionaires to attack Canada’s public broadcaster. Trudeau’s comments came shortly after Poilievre prodded Twitter owner Elon Musk to label the CBC “government-funded.”
Poilievre said on Twitter last week that he had written to Musk to request that the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation be labeled “accurately”. Hours later, CBC’s Twitter accounts were labeled ‘government-funded’.
Since Elon Musk bought Twitter last November, the social media company has liberalised the moderation of content on the network.
Musk also trimmed Twitter’s workforce from 7,500 to fewer than 2,000 employees expanding the post-pandemic layoff spree in the Silicon Valley.
(With inputs from agencies)
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