Canada's CBC turn to exit Twitter over 'government-funded media' label

(Image: AFP)

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) and its French branch, Radio-Canada, have said they are leaving Twitter after being labelled as "government-funded media", joining a growing list of firms exiting the microblogging platform over contentious description.

Recently US-based Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and National Public Broadcaster (NPR) quit Twitter over the new label.

Like NPR and PBS, CBC insists the label is "untrue and deceptive", and while it is a publicly-funded organisation, its editorial independence was guaranteed by Canadian broadcasting law.

News agency AFP said Canada's Conservative opposition leader Pierre Poilievre had urged Elon Musk to add the label to CBC "in the interest of transparency", noting that it received "almost two-thirds of its funding" for 2021-2022 from the federal government.

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Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau blamed Poilievre for "attacking this Canadian institution, and attacking the culture and local content (that it produces) that is so important to so many Canadians”.

Both NPR and PBS, too, have protested the use of the label. The UK-based BBC, too, was labelled "government-funded media" but after an interview with Twitter owner Elon Musk, during which the issue was raised, the platform changed the descriptor to "publicly-funded media".

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