CBC Upset As Twitter Labels Them "Government-Funded Media"
We are seeing the end of the days where mainstream media is not held accountable and can get away with lying by omission. Their power is slipping and they hate it.
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Twitter recently began adding labels to various news organizations that are publically or government funded, and some are taking great issue with it.
Twitter defines a “government-funded” media outlet as an outlet “where the government provides some or all of the outlet’s funding and may have varying degrees of government involvement over editorial content.”
CBC in Canada is one of the latest organizations to receive the rating, initially being labelled “government-funded media,” but now labelled as “69% government-funded media.”
This of course is entirely true. CBC received $1.24 billion in 2021-2022 in federal government funding. This sum is for all of CBCs content, not just news, but it doesn’t change the fact that CBC News is largely funded by government money.
CBC was not happy about the label and publicly took to Twitter stating:
“Our journalism is impartial and independent. To suggest otherwise is untrue. That is why we are pausing our activities on @Twitter”
They followed up with an article stating:
“We cannot in good conscience continue to post fact-based news and information to Twitter, or engage on it, while a false impression of government involvement in our work is allowed to stand.”
They are stating that by being labelled “government-funded” people will assume they won’t be impartial. But who would decide if someone is impartial? How would we know other than to look at the type of content CBC produces? Doesn’t CBC realize people think they are partial because of their heavy bias on events like COVID and the Freedom Convoy?
CBC and the rest of the mainstream media world had little issue supporting the all-out ban of Russia Today on Big Tech at the start of the Russia-Ukraine war because RT is “Russian state-sponsored.” But now that they are being given that label and it’s suddenly a problem?
This is where I think the word ‘independent’ is used too loosely. No one is suggesting there is a corporation or government official controlling every story that comes out of the CBC, but to think there isn’t a culture of omission and propaganda that protects the government on important issues is disingenuous. Further, it’s a matter of public record that governments have used their connections with mainstream media organizations to change stories. How do we know CBC isn’t affected by this?
Every country uses propaganda and it’s very rare mainstream media outlets are going to call it out regularly. In fact, they are how the propaganda disseminates.
People are losing trust in mainstream media for this very reason. But for some reason, the institution of mainstream media remains too blind to recognize the game they are part of. Have they reflected on how many things they were wrong about during COVID? Or are they pretending that never happened?
BBC News and NPR were both recently labelled by Twitter as well. The move upset NPR so much that they decided to leave Twitter. The BBC objected to the labelling but has stuck around.
Why Attack Twitter?
The CBC, the BBC, nor NPR left YouTube after they were labelled publicly or government funded. Why?
Perhaps they don’t want to go against Google because it’s not fashionable to do so. Whereas attacking Twitter ever since Musk took it over has become ‘a thing.’
Perhaps to the mainstream Musk acts as someone whose unpredictable and who may have it out for holding them and the damage they cause accountable.
What do you think? Is the mainstream afraid of what’s happening? Are they truly free from the perils of audience capture? Or are they too just pandering to narratives their audience will like?
See the YouTube labels below:
How It Happened - A Political Move?
CBC’s label came about as Canada’s Conservative party leader Pierre Poilievre took to Twitter to ask owner Elon Musk to “accurately” label CBC. While I’m sure it’s obvious Poilievre has his own political agenda here, it isn’t false to label CBC as government-funded.
The important question here is, if someone other than a politician could get Musk’s attention to check whether CBC is government-funded, would he have changed it?
We don’t want politicians to have preferential access to change the actions of Big Tech. Facts have to be facts, no matter who sheds light on them or how they invite us to change our minds.
NDP leader Jagmeet Singh stated the Conservatives “have an unhealthy adversarial relationship with the media,” where Poilievre has refused to “answer questions and to wrongfully accuse journalists of bias when he doesn’t like tough questions or fact checks.”
While Singh is correct, sometimes politicians do wrongly accuse journalists of bias, and it is highly fashionable for conservatives to go to war with mainstream media, it is also a fact that mainstream journalism is famous for lying by omission.
This is where we must see politics for what it is: a game.
Justin Trudeau, Jagmeet Singh, nor Pierre Poilievre care about the truth, they want to win. They want to be the leader, and they will do what it takes to get that done.
This is why it’s best to not get lost in the words of politicians within our existing system. Instead, develop your ability to seek and discern truth as a citizen. Democracy is only valuable when those voting are truly informed, and when the system is not an oligarchy.
Sadly virtually all Western countries, including Canada, function as an oligarchy at the moment.
The “$600 Million Bailout”
Some people don’t quite grasp the difference between CBC and other major outlets like CTV and Global News in Canada. Only CBC gets money from the government, even though a common belief is the federal government has bought them all.
While covering the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa in 2022, I regularly heard some participants stating that a $600 million dollar bailout was given by the Canadian government to Canadian mainstream media.
This isn’t true.
CTV, Global, nor CBC News got any of that $600 million bailout money. It almost entirely went to small local and independent outlets, including The Epoch Times. Yes, that’s right, the Epoch Times, an alternative news source collected $455,097 of that money.
Although it’s easy to argue “you shouldn’t take government money because now you will be beholden to them,” it isn’t true that IF you take government money your reporting will change. The Epoch Times is not suddenly about to be kind to Trudeau, are they?
Further, independent outlets are at a huge disadvantage by not taking grant money. They can’t compete with other organizations that do, and frankly, it’s hard to operate from reader support alone as there is so much competition.
People and organizations are regulated by more than just money. We have to think deeper than money. We have to reflect on the level of culture, worldview, and the courage it takes to think outside the box and truly live that authentically.
This is where mainstream media deeply fails: it has almost no courage to go where the evidence leads. That has been the job of independent journalists, and most of us have lost all we have built as a result.
As I’ve stated before, mainstream media will protect its corporate interests and funders, is captured by their audience, and also protects their access.
It can be tough to fully grasp how mainstream media becomes controlled. They aren’t simply lying all the time. Most of the deception is in what they don’t say, and the questions they choose not to ask. Plus, there is an entire ‘fact-checking‘ infrastructure and culture there to protect them. (See my piece called “How We’re being Misled”)
The image depicts how the MSM often functions, you mostly get a piece of the story:
This is why coming out and yelling “mainstream media is all bullshit and lies” doesn’t bring a meaningful conversation to the table - because it isn’t true. It’s more complex than that.
Inspiring Times
As an owner of an independent media organization that has been falsely smeared by Google, Facebook, YouTube, fact-checking orgs, and outfits like NewsGuard, it’s nice to see mainstream media face some challenges for once. I’ve lost almost my entire business as a result of censorship nonsense, and events like this make me think the grip of authoritarianism is going to be seriously challenged.
To me, this is inspiring because what mainstream media has been doing protects powerful individuals and their rule over people. I believe we are in a time of great change. The old story and the purveyors of it are being exposed. I don't see this as a war, more of an evolution.
This is the first time a Big Tech platform has been willing to stop giving preferential treatment to major media organizations, and instead are calling them what they are.
For years, Big Tech has been extremely unfair to indie journalists, downgrading them, de-platforming them, and smearing outlets that use facts to challenge mainstream narratives. Perhaps this is a sign of things to change.
We of course can’t know for sure. And I’m not about to trust a billionaire who can change his mind at any second, but it doesn’t change the fact that what’s happening here is important.
Once again to my friends who believe all this Twitter drama since Musk took it over is just ‘theatre’, this is yet another example of why we need to embrace more complexity.
Narratives are breaking and people are losing trust in mainstream authoritarianism. The more we create a culture of audiences who can truly think for themselves, and not get lost in narrative capture, the less chance they will fall for any agenda coming from any powerful person.
Empowerment is everything.
Musk's handling of this situation has been fun to watch. I feel like he knows he can do whatever he wants at the moment, and while that is scary in some regards, in others it is fun. I still feel you're on the mark with your assessment of Musk...each story proves it further. It's hard to read sometimes, but something is for sure going on.
I just find Musk adjusting the figure to 68% funded quality trolling.