The CBC Whines After Being Designated As “Government-Funded Media” On Twitter

Recently a conservative culture war victory was won after a brief social media campaign mounted by Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre to get Twitter owner Elon Musk to label the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) labeled as government media. 

As of yesterday, Musk has added the label “Government-Funded Media” to the main CBC News account.

In response to this members of the liberal legacy media freaked out and began accusing Poilievre and Musk of engaging in “foriegn interference,” and that the CBC is entirely neutral and Conservatives are “attacking” impartial journalism. 

Charles Adler had probably one of the dumbest takes, claiming that the CBC is “arm’s length” from the government.

This is provable false. Even the Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, a lobby group that pushes for stricter CRTC regulations of Canadian media, and promotes the funding of the CBC, agrees that the process of appointing individuals to the CBC’s board is political. 

Of course, the whinest of all the legacy media has been the CBC itself which published an article a few hours after being accurately labeled as “government-funded” trying to claim that the designation goes against Twitter’s own standards. 

CBC corporate spokesperson Leon Mar claimed that:

Twitter’s own policy defines government-funded media as cases where the government ‘may have varying degrees of government involvement over editorial content,’ which is clearly not the case with CBC/Radio-Canada. 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.

Again, as the Friends of Canadian Broadcasting admitted, the CBC’s board is appointed by members of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party cabinet, and even the Media Bias Fact Check website (which leans a bit more liberal itself) labels the CBC as having a centre-left bias.

Just today, the CBC then took its tantrum further and posted on Twitter that it will “pause” its use of Twitter, although noticeably never stated that it would not start using Twitter again until the label is taken off of its account. Expect the CBC to eventually have to start posting on Twitter again after its viewership falls.

It is absurd for the CBC, after receiving billions of dollars from Canadian taxpayers and doing a frankly poor job of covering Canadian politics, to turn around and get all huffy about Poilievre simply pointing out where their funding comes from.

In the CBC’s own article on the label being placed on their account they had to admit they take government money, but somehow they are magically impartial, even while often underreporting on Liberal government scandals, or pushing left-wing political/cultural narratives in their editorial. 

Canadians are not stupid. Everyone sees that even when the CBC does publish negative news about Justin Trudeau or runs opinion articles criticizing him, they are pretending to be neutral while ensuring to never truly land hard blows on him or his government.

It is great to see Pierre Poilievre and Elon Musk not back down and not bend to media shaming tactics aimed at eliminating criticisms of their practices.