Twitter on Friday (April 21st) removed controversial mentions of " state-affiliated media " and " government-funded media " from the profiles of several Western media accounts, from Russia, China and other countries. This is particularly the case for France Télévisions, Radio France, France Médias Monde and the national public radio American National Public Radio (NPR), the Canadian public audiovisual group CBC/Radio-Canada, the official Chinese agency Xinhua and the Russian channel RT.
State-affiliated media are defined as media whose editorial content is controlled by the state through financial resources, direct or indirect political pressure and/or control over production and distribution, one can read on the help center of Twitter. “State-funded media organizations with editorial independence, such as the BBC in the UK or NPR in the US, are not defined as state-affiliated media for the purposes of this policy,” continued this text.
The introduction of this label had led to strong reactions within the media concerned and led several of them to suspend their activity on Twitter. After NPR (Satellifacts, April 12), CBC/Radio-Canada and Swedish public radio Sveriges Radio (SR) had also decided to leave Elon Musk's social network in protest against these mentions that undermined their credibility (Satellifacts, April 18).
Delphine Ernotte Cunci denounces the attitude of Elon Musk
It is “ frightening ” that Elon Musk claims to “determine whether a media is independent”, protested Delphine Ernotte Cunci, president of France Télévisions, during an interview with Les Echos on Saturday April 22. “Twitter tried to label all public media in the world as state media and then as government or publicly funded media. But finally… who is Mr. Musk to determine if a media is independent or if it is not? “, she said.
For the leader, “Twitter has retreated because the collective mobilization of public media, from Canada to Australia, has paid off”. The fact remains that, according to her, “this raises the question of the control of our informational space. We cannot let American actors, tomorrow Chinese, play like sorcerer's apprentices with our democracies, ”she continued.
Asked about whether France Télévisions and its channels could leave the social network, Delphine Ernotte Cunci agreed that it is "a dilemma ". “The possibilities opened up by artificial intelligence to generate, at an industrial pace, fake images and videos are dizzying. In the mess that is coming, our national media, regulated, are compasses, ”she argued.