The CBC, Canada’s public broadcaster, said on Monday that it would suspend operations on Twitter after it was labeled “government-funded Media.” The CBC stated that it is not “government-funded” but rather “publicly funded” through a parliamentary appropriation voted on by all Members of Parliament.

“Our journalism is objective and unbiased.” To claim otherwise is false. “As a result, we are suspending our activities on @Twitter,” the CBC announced Monday.

Earlier in the day, Justin Trudeau accused Pierre Poilievre of soliciting the assistance of US billionaire Elon Musk to undermine Canada’s public broadcaster, after Poilievre urged Musk to term the CBC “government-funded.”

Last Monday, Poilievre tweeted that he had written to Musk to request that the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation be labelled “accurately.”

Poilievre, who took over the Conservative Party last year and is seeking to defund the CBC, applauded the decision on Twitter, writing that “now people know that it is Trudeau propaganda, not news.”

“Attacking this Canadian institution, attacking the culture and local content that is so important to so many Canadians, really indicates the values and approach that Mr. Poilievre is putting forward,” Trudeau told reporters.

“To attack this institution that is important to many, many Canadians, he turns to American billionaires, the tech behemoths that they continue to defend.”

Trudeau has a Hissy Fit Over CBC Classification

Meanwhile, Canada’s National Post reported that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is so concerned with teaching Canadians how to tell the difference between fact and fiction on the internet that his government has spent millions encouraging digital media literacy.

However, when Twitter labelled the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as “Government-funded Media” — a statement that is undeniably true — the prime minister was enraged and immediately attempted to blame the Conservatives for attempting to “attack” and delegitimize “independent media organisations.”

Of all, there is nothing “independent” about a media outlet that receives more than $1.2 billion in government funding each year. Suggesting differently is, at best, deceptive.

Looking for CBC beyond the realms of Twitter? 🔎

Find us at:
🍁 Instagram: https://t.co/cdbK7zSebo
🍁 TikTok: https://t.co/Iq0Cbu0LaE
🍁 Facebook: https://t.co/g78id7kz6E
🍁 Snapchat: https://t.co/GUsVkjMs5Y

— CBC (@CBC) November 23, 2022

The dispute arose as a result of Twitter’s push to flag state-affiliated accounts, including government-funded media sources, in an apparent attempt to provide people with the information they need to determine whether they are being fed government propaganda.

In recent years, Western governments and media have taken the issue of state actors propagating disinformation through social media very seriously. However, when pressed to be truthful about their own funding models, public broadcasters pitched a collective hissy fit.

In the United States, both NPR and PBS declared last week that they would no longer use the social networking site owing to the new categorization.

In the United Kingdom, the BBC made a huge deal about being labelled as “government-funded,” and successfully urged Twitter to change its title to “publicly funded,” because it is paid by a TV tax rather than direct subsidies.

Many people wondered why our own public broadcaster had escaped being called out for what it is, thus Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre rightfully called on Twitter CEO Elon Musk to hold Canadian media to the same standard.

Attacking Canada’s foundational Canadian institution

On Sunday, Trudeau accused the Conservatives of “trying to attack a foundational Canadian institution.” The CBC also declared that it is “pausing” its usage of the social network, which it accuses of undermining its editorial independence.

According to the Canadian Press, the CBC “has drawn a distinction between ‘government’ and ‘public’ funding because the money it receives is granted through a vote in Parliament.”

Twitter distinguishes between “government-funded media,” where “the government provides some or all of the outlet’s funding,” and “publicly-funded media,” which “receive funding from licence fees, individual contributions, public financing, and commercial financing.”

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

The CBC clearly falls into the first group, considering that roughly a third of its budget is taken straight from taxpayers’ purses. The fact that the money was approved by Parliament is a moot point, because all government spending must eventually be affirmed by a vote in the legislature.

Although Poilievre claimed that the public broadcaster had been exposed as “Trudeau propaganda, not news” — which is no more true than accusing the CBC a decade ago of being “Harper propaganda” — few, if any, are suggesting that the CBC is comparable to state media in authoritarian countries such as China and Iran.

These organisations are classified as “state-affiliated media” by Twitter, which describes them as “outlets where the state exercises editorial control over editorial content.”

CBC Quotes journalistic standards

Mother Corp is particularly irritated by Twitter’s assertion that government-funded media “may have varying degrees of government involvement over editorial content.” According to the CBC, this cannot be the case because its “editorial independence is protected in law in the Broadcasting Act,” it is subject to journalistic standards, and it has a “independent” complaints mechanism.

This line of reasoning is rather deceptive, because the Broadcasting Act ensures “independence enjoyed by the corporation in the pursuit of its objects.” Those goals are established in legislation, and while they are very wide, it is undeniably true that the government defines its mandate and can amend it at any time.

The main issue with a state broadcaster like the CBC is that its reliance on government funds ensures that its objectivity is always called into question.

A few weeks before the 2000 election, the CBC aired an oddly timed attack piece portraying Canadian Alliance Leader Stockwell Day as a terrifying religious zealot who thought humans coexisted with dinosaurs, without ever seeking comment from the man at the centre of the charges.

There was never any evidence that the Prime Minister’s Office or the Liberal war room had any control over the CBC, but everyone knew who was feeding it.

CBC Sues Conservative Party

Just days before the 2019 election, the Crown corporation filed a baseless lawsuit seeking an injunction against the Conservative Party for allegedly infringing on the CBC’s copyright in campaign materials.

The suit, which initially named two CBC journalists as applicants, was never going to have much of an impact on the outcome of the vote, but it is also not the type of thing an impartial news outlet would do during an election on which it is expected to report objectively.

Again, no one is claiming that the ruling Liberals were involved in the decision. But we also have a prime minister who has no qualms about requesting that his attorney general intervene in the prosecution of a politically favoured firm or forcing the RCMP commissioner to suppress information concerning a mass massacre in order to advance Liberal gun-control initiatives.

Few would be astonished if the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) ever pulled some strings at the CBC at a politically advantageous time.

Even if the Canadian public is assured that such a thing will never happen, and that the half of the country who believes the CBC has a partisan Liberal bias is completely delusory, there is no way to free the broadcaster from the inherent incentives that come with being reliant on the public treasury for its very existence.

The CBC will have a vested interest in preserving support for big government policies and the parties that support them as long as its financing comes from the government. As a result, we have a system in which the government takes our money and spends it to convince us of the virtues of socialism.

If we want to empower an informed and involved public to judge the truth of the multiplicity of information sources available in today’s online environment, we must be willing to call a spade a spade.

The CBC definitely receives the majority of its financing from the government. If it believes this is a terrible thing, it should support Poilievre’s vow to defund it rather than hiding behind its own spin.

Trudeau’s minority government is backed by the left-wing New Democrats, and the next election is not scheduled until 2025.