Canada’s CBC says Twitter is “not serious” after the “69% state-funded media” label.

(Reuters) – Public broadcaster Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) on Tuesday opposed Twitter’s move to describe it as a “69% state-funded media outlet”, saying it has complete editorial independence.

Elon Musk’s own social media platform on Sunday gave CBC a label saying it was state-funded media, after placing similar notices for US broadcasters NPR and PBS.

“Canadian Broadcasting Corp said they were ‘less than 70% federally funded,’ so we corrected the label,” Musk said in a tweet Monday.

In an emailed statement, a CBC spokesman said Twitter’s response was not “serious.”

“The real problem is that Twitter’s definition of state-funded media means being open to government editorial interference. As the editor-in-chief of CBC News said, the government has no — zero — involvement in our editorial content or journalism,” the statement quoted editor-in-chief Brodie Fenlon as saying.

CBC received C$1.24 million ($926,064.23) in government funding in fiscal 2022, according to its annual report, compared to revenue from advertising, subscriptions and other sources of C$651,000.

Twitter defines its “government-funded media” label as “where the government provides some or all of the funding for the outlet and may have varying degrees of government involvement in editorial content.”

Twitter did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comment on CBC’s response.

CBC has suspended its Twitter activity over the tagging, a spat that has also drawn Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Conservative rival Pierre Poilievre.

($1 = 1.3390 Canadian Dollars)

(Reporting by Akanksha Khushi and Lavanya Ahire in Bengaluru; Editing by Sandra Maler)

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