Musk changes CBC’s label to ‘69% government-funded’

The apparent attempt at trolling the broadcaster came after it quit Twitter in protest at being labeled under the platform's policy

Twitter CEO Elon Musk has labeled the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as “69% government-funded,” after a report surfaced showing 70% of the network’s financing comes from the state. Musk has angered multiple Western state media outlets by insisting all media agencies are subject to the platform's labelling rules. 

“Canadian Broadcasting Corp said they’re 'less than 70% government-funded,’ so we corrected the label,” Musk tweeted on Monday, posting a screenshot of the CBC’s main Twitter account, complete with its new designation.

Last week, the broadcaster was simply labeled “government-funded media,” a tag that Twitter says applies to outlets that “may have varying degrees of government involvement over editorial content.” The CBC announced on Monday that it would suspend its activity on Twitter in protest, arguing that the tag “undermines the accuracy and professionalism” of its journalists’ work.

Canadian Broadcasting Corp said they’re “less than 70% government-funded”, so we corrected the label pic.twitter.com/lU1EWf76Zu

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 18, 2023

According to figures from last year, the CBC receives 70% of its funding from the Canadian government. While the organization insists that it is editorially independent, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau boasted in 2019 that the media lets his government “off the hook … because we pay them.”

Responding to a Twitter thread highlighting the CBC’s government funding, Musk announced on Monday that he had changed the outlet’s tag to “70% government-funded,” quipping that he was “just trying to be accurate.” The Twitter tycoon then said that “generosity is always the right move,” and switched the label to “69%.”

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It is unclear whether Musk made the change as a joke, or whether the CBC quibbled over the figure of 70%. The billionaire is known for his juvenile sense of humor, and often mentions the numbers 69 and 420 in his Twitter posts, referring to oral sex and smoking cannabis respectively.

Before Musk took charge of Twitter, the platform only applied “state-affiliated media” tags to non-Western outlets like RT or China’s CGTN. Although Twitter has applied the “government-funded” tag to outlets like the BBC in the UK, ABC in Australia, and NPR in the US, Russian, Chinese, and other non-Western news sources remain labeled as “state-affiliated media.”