Twitter’s “Government-Funded” Label Intrudes Global Media Houses

• Riot between different news mediums is not something out of the ordinary.
• The issue is mentioning them as “Government-funded Media” instead of “Publicly-funded Media”.

Canadian Broadcast Corporation joins the line of unhappy media houses with regard to Twitter. Riot between different news mediums is not something out of the ordinary. As the world sees the emergence of a modern medium, the traditional mediums go sideways. This recent riot is due to labels given by Twitter to the broadcasting unit.

Twitter is labeling the various entities under government or state affiliation to make it easy for users to identify the backup of the particular medium. This has offended quite some of the big names in the industry, such as National Public Radio, the New York Times, the Public Broadcasting Service, and the British Broadcasting Corporation.

All the channels have now stopped functioning on Twitter as a reflection of the boycott. The major issue is mentioning them as “Government-funded Media” instead of “Publicly-funded Media”. Government-funded media, by definition, is the public’s representation of the government, which is an oxymoron in the interest of independent journalism.

Coming to the CBC case, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau blames the opposition party for this. Justin sees it as an attack on independent media organizations with the help of “American billionaires” and “Tech-giants”.

Some users of microblogging sites perceive this as a calling-out situation. The reactions in the larger media house pull out more curiosity and questions here. Differentiation in the labeling does have an impact on the reception of news from these mediums. The credibility and genuineness of the information sources are put into question.

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