Elon Musk mocked the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) on Tuesday and changed its label from "Government-funded Media" to "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
He did so after the Canadian broadcaster announced Monday that it was pausing all Twitter activity. The reason, the company said in a press release, was that the social network had implemented a label claiming to be part of the "Government-funded Media."
CBC says label "undermines the accuracy and professionalism of the work" they do
According to the public broadcaster, the label is erroneous and its only intention is to undermine its credibility. For this reason, spokesman Leon Mar announced that CBC would pause all activity on the social network owned by Elon Musk:
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. Consequently, we will be pausing our activity on our corporate Twitter account and all CBC and Radio-Canada news-related accounts.
Following this, CBC sent a letter to Twitter asking the company to rectify and change the label. According to the press release, they hoped that the social network would rectify the situation and change the inscription to "publicly-funded Media."
However, this did not happen. Musk instead chose to reply by posting that CBC was not funded by the government but was 69% funded by the Trudeau Government, making it clear that CBC's threat did not intimidate him at all.
Other public broadcasters request that the "Government-funded" label be removed
CBC is not the only public body that requested the removal of the inscription warning that they are subsidized by the government. NPR and PBS also made the same request a few weeks ago, both of which were denied. This caused both of them to decide to leave the social network.
BBC was luckier. The British network also requested the removal of the "Government-funded Media" label. It succeeded. When accessing any of their profiles, the badge was changed to "publicly-funded Media."
Another public broadcaster that also asked for its label to be changed was RTVE (Radio Televisión Pública Española). Twitter has not yet commented on the decision regarding the Spanish channel and, for the time being, continues to display its "Government-funded Media" badge, while the television station decides, as stated in its press release, whether or not to stop using Twitter.
