CBC pauses Twitter activity after being labelled 'government-funded media'
cbc.ca
cbc.ca
> CBC/Radio-Canada is publicly funded through a parliamentary appropriation that is voted upon by all Members of Parliament. Its editorial independence is protected in law in the Broadcasting Act.
The "funded by government" tag, taken by face value, simply asserts that funding is provided by the government. Which is true, repeating myself: the article itself states this.
It is not the tag "state affiliated media", which - unsurprisingly at least to me - is defined as: [...] outlets where the state exercises control over editorial content through financial resources, direct or indirect political pressures, and/or control over production and distribution.
I do like this tag - to see directly if some media is funded by a government, whichever it is, because it could explain biases and lead me to research other, potentially conflicting but unrelated media outlets which are not funded by the same government. I can't grasp what's wrong about that.
It's called the "celebration parallax" - https://americanmind.org/salvo/thats-not-happening-and-its-g...
If you celebrate it, it's good and true. If you criticize it, it's a false conspiracy theory. Keep an eye out for it, it appears frequently.
> 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. [https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/government-me...]
Yes, it says "may have" and not "has" but the implication is there, which is what the CBC & others are pushing back on. Twitter also has a "publicly-funded media" label which, in spirit, is probably more applicable, but the way the definition has been written, (I suspect it was written exclusively for the BBC), it doesn't apply to the CBC:
> Publicly-funded media refers to media organizations that receive funding from license fees, individual contributions, public financing, and commercial financing.
Twitter should remove "may have varying degrees of government involvement over editorial content" from the government-funded media label and call it a day.
I can't disagree here. Of the labels described on the Twitter help page, "government-funded" fits the best. The CBC isn't funded by license fees of donations!
Insofar I simply don't share your view, but this is fair to me. I can agree with your last sentence, it would probably be better this way.
1. It's not unique to government, this is exactly how, say, Rupert Murdoch or Jeff Bezos exercise their media power as well.
2. The sense of loyalty comes before the paycheck. You don't get to make decisions in the first place unless the people who appointed you are very confident that you see things their way.
The latter are, unfortunately, mostly in jails today, be it in Russia, in China or even in the US.
You absolutely need NBC's permission before you can start doing journalism on NBC.
My whole point was that governments don't need to get heavy handed to get a compliant press, since they can engineer it up front. The important filtering of news happens not at the desk, but at the hiring.
No, the way to control media is to appoint a person you trust will cover the things you want to be covered, with the angle you want, and most importantly not cover the things you don't want to be covered. And this, they get to do. That's what Rupert Murdoch does too, and Jeff Bezos. None of them have to send out orders to kill a story - in the rare case their trusted appointees aren't sure, they can quickly and securely coordinate with similarly aligned media, or directly ask their patrons what they want. That's what they do for anything national security related in the US these days.
Yes, Twitter should do away with mere implication and clarify that not only is it government funded, the president of the CBC is also appointed by government: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35605906
And that pushback is a lie (I think the word these days is "misinformation"), because the Canadian government absolutely does influence what the CBC publishes.
Journalists (as a class) have begged for these rules and powers, and are now whining because they're now finding themselves at the pointy end. What's wrong with having to play by their own rules (which they claimed were good for everyone else)?
I thought their new-found ans self-appointed journalistic authority hubris at best and, more likely, an act of state-sanctioned retaliation. Perhaps it was even pay to play, or a quid pro quo to show they were cabinet material.
If anyone gave Google flack for this, it was buried by their truth orthodoxy squads under the guise of "algorithms".
In other words, "We're independent because we are supposed to be!". How much is that assertion worth? Who gets to police them if they don't live up to it?
It's not as if it's necessary to go threatening the editor to get a compliant press. Not when you appoint the leadership.
Nobody who doesn't already agree and take completely for granted that CBC is independent, will get within a mile of making decisions for it. That's how it is for other government broadcasters as well - as well as corporate ones, for that matter.
> The CBC's 2021-2022 annual report revealed it received almost $1.4 billion (70% of its funding) from the federal government.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Broadcasting_Corporat...
If the leadership is chosen independently and the funding is done independently there are no incentives as such.
> The Canadian Press e-mailed Twitter asking for an explanation of the added tag, and the company responded with a poop emoji.
1. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-twitter-adds-...
Sorry for this pun, but I think it is appropriate here.
It seems to me the CBC is on the wrong side here, fighting against keeping people informed.
Tesla's twitter account produces and publishes media for the public to consume.
Why not label Tesla's account as "corporate funded" media as opposed to "state funded" media for something like NPR?
Are corporate interests not likely to bias content as well in a way that would be worth being aware of? If so, why not be consistent about labeling for potential sources of bias consistently.
If not, what criteria should be met for being considered media that Tesla's twitter account does not meet?