Twitter decided to label state-affiliated media, but not the CBC. Why?

Twitter is making a move that many have considered long-overdue. The tech giant is officially labeling media that is directly beholden to governments.

For example, Twitter will be labeling China Xinhua News, RT, Sputnik, and People’s Daily as “state-affiliated media,” reflecting the fact that those outlets are offshoots of the Chinese & Russian government’s respectively:

“BREAKING: Starting today, Twitter is labeling accounts "belonging to state-affiliated media entities, their editors-in-chief, and/or their senior staff".

Just checked the accounts of China's Xinhua and People's Daily, and also Russia's RT and Sputnik; and the labels are there”

It’s a good move by Twitter, especially given how the ruthless Chinese Communist Party has ramped up the propaganda as of late.

Here in Canada, we have our own “state-affiliated media,” and people are wondering if CBC will get labelled as such:

The fact is that yes, CBC should be labelled as “state-affiliated media.” CBC is controlled by the Canadian federal government. The board is appointed by the government.

Their funding is controlled by the federal government. Their leader answers to the federal government, and can be removed if the government demands. And as we have clearly seen in past years, CBC is highly skewed towards the Liberals.

For one thing, the Liberals constantly promise to increase CBC funding, a contrast to the Conservatives who often say they will reduce the funding.

So, CBC has a clear financial interest in keeping the Liberals in power.

CBC is also given a huge advantage over most other networks, as they get both federal funding and private advertising revenue.

This has enabled CBC to gobble up journalists from other networks, which is to be expected given their unfair advantage.

Furthermore, CBC directly interfered in the last election, when they had debate moderator Rosemary Barton participate in a lawsuit against the Conservative Party.

CBC sued the Conservatives for using CBC footage in an ad, even though the Liberals have done the same without any lawsuit from CBC, and even though – since CBC is funded by taxpayers—all of their work should be considered as in the public domain and free for all Canadians to use.

That kind of blatant interference, which just so happened to benefit the Liberals, is exactly what you expect to see from biased, state-affiliated media.

Under the pretense of objectivity, state-affiliated media forces taxpayers to fund their operations, and then tries to manipulate what Citizens think, representing a specific party or political view while falsely claiming to represent the entire nation.

For those reasons, CBC should certainly be labelled as “state-affiliated media” on Twitter.

They’ve earned it.