CBC News is back on Twitter, well, just sort of back.
After nearly taking nearly a month off Twitter due to what it deemed an unfair “Government-funded media” label, the public broadcaster announced on Tuesday—it’s back. The CBC’s 2022 funding from Canadian taxpayers was $1.24 billion.
“Today, we will resume some activity on a handful of umbrella Twitter accounts, including @CBCNews, but we will significantly reduce our overall Twitter footprint and continue to assess the platform against our strategy,” said the CBC’s Brodie Fenlon, Editor in Chief.
"Today, the CBC will resume some activity on a handful of Twitter accounts, including @CBCNews, but we will significantly reduce our overall Twitter footprint and continue to assess the platform against our social media strategy." https://t.co/ZEJrRPCA7t
— CBC News (@CBCNews) May 9, 2023
It didn’t take long for Twitter’s “Chief Twit” Elon Musk to poke fun at the CBC, sharing a meme from the 2005 film ‘Brokeback Mountain’, and the line “I wish I knew how to quit you” from the Western romance about two cowboys in love, starring the late Heath Ledger as CBC News, embracing Musk.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 10, 2023
The meme has been viewed 14.8 million times and saw some even funnier meme responses.
The CBC and other public broadcasters that received ‘Government-funded media’ labels united and demanded that Twitter change their account labels to ‘Publicly-funded media’ instead. Later, Twitter removed all labels from government-funded and publicly-funded media outlets.
NPR journalist Bobby Allyn reported that Elon Musk verified to him that Twitter did indeed remove all media labels. Musk, when questioned about the reason, attributed it to Walter Isaacson’s recommendation. Isaacson, who is currently penning Musk’s biography, also authored Steve Jobs’ biography previously.
