from Hacker News

Elon Musk’s Twitter labels CBC “69% government-funded media”

by edgefield on 4/18/23, 10:08 AM with 7 comments

  • by helsinkiandrew on 4/18/23, 10:31 AM

    More at: https://apnews.com/article/cbc-canada-twitter-pause-musk-gov...

    BBC has now (I'm not sure when) been changed from Government-funded to Publicly-funded (https://twitter.com/bbc). I'm not sure knowing that 'funded by' is as important as 'controlled by'. UK politicians from all sides are constantly complaining that the BBC is biased against them - which I guess shows some evidence of not being government controlled.

    The Rupert Murdoch media empire (Fox News, Sky, Newspapers around the world) exerts editorial control to help their other business interests and their own editorial agenda. Should their twitter account be labeled "Murdoch Controlled"?

  • by atonse on 4/18/23, 12:35 PM

    Not trying to defend Twitter in a sense but these seem like easy problems to fix and that Twitter seems to be fixing them.

    But overall, between this, BBC and NPR, it seems odd to me that these outlets are choosing to leave Twitter due to the badge.

    It feels more like they’ve wanted to for a while and this gave them an excuse, because at least I think NPR said they won’t return even after the change to “publicly funded”

  • by edgefield on 4/18/23, 10:17 AM

    CBC is pausing its posting on Twitter and in retaliation Musk labels CBC as “69% government-funded media.” Elon seems hell bent on driving major brands and advertisers away from Twitter and undermining Tesla and SpaceX, by association.

  • by babelthuap on 4/18/23, 12:48 PM

    I'm more interested in who is funding the remaining 31%. If it's anything like PBS, that non government coin is heavily liberal leaning foundations and think tanks, many of which receive government funding on some level.

    An ideal solution would be to let citizens choose on their taxes where they would like their non essential tax dollars to go. For example, if someone doesn't want their non essential tax dollars going to the Foundation For Wayward Girls which also gives money to a particular TV station to sell the sizzle on their business, they could choose to give it to the Foundation For Youth Gun Hunting or just keep their money for a rainy day.

  • by SCdF on 4/18/23, 11:15 AM

    Musk is so interminably embarrassing