Comment by joebiden2 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by joebiden2 | Hacker News Reader

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That CBC is funded by the government is true according to the article itself:

> 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.

Unfortunately, that "government-funded media" tag implies a lack of editorial independence:

> 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.

> Unfortunately, that "government-funded media" tag implies a lack of editorial independence

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

It's naive to think the government has no influence over editorial content. They may not have day to day influence, but so what, they wouldn't have had time to micromanage it even if they wanted to. Al Jazeera, TeleSUR or RT aren't micromanaged either.

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.

If something is funded by a government and employs folks, they will feel obligated to agree to some official government position. Even in germany this is observable.

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.

I agree, but two points:

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.

Also agree. There should be tags for "Amazon Affiliated" or "Murdoch Affiliated", but there should even more be a tag for "Independent Journalist".

The latter are, unfortunately, mostly in jails today, be it in Russia, in China or even in the US.

Wouldn't the tag "independent journalist" make you dependent on Twitter? Following the analogy of "government funding necessarily means government influence", Twitter can give and take these labels arbitrarily (as they've done with NBC). Any independent journalist would be careful about stories on Twitter, since they might take away the tags, no?

True, but you don't need Twitter's permission to start doing journalism on Twitter (nor do you have to care much about how they label you).

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.

I think also, notably, “advertiser-funded media”.

They can call themselves editorially independent all they want but they know where their paychecks are coming from. It feels entirely like a thou doth protest too much situation.

> It feels entirely like a thou doth protest too much situation.

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!

Google liberally sprinkled "state sponsored" tags around not that long ago in an attempt to sow skepticism of international news sources.

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".

>Yes, it says "may have" and not "has" but the implication is there, which is what the CBC & others are pushing back on.

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)?

> That CBC is funded by the government is true according to the article itself

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.

Yeah, it's one of the repeating patterns in media at the time.

> Its editorial independence is protected in law in the Broadcasting Act.

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.

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