Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I wanted to welcome and thank our witness in French. My French will improve, but, for the time being, as I'm still more comfortable in English, I’ll continue in that language.
I'm a former journalist, I'll let you know, so it's been really frustrating for me to see the amount of misleading information out there in the world. At the same time, we see a decline in the number of newsrooms.
In particular, lately, something stood out for me on the American social media platform Twitter. We've seen news organizations like NPR in the U.S., the BBC and, here in Canada, the CBC/Radio-Canada labelled as state-funded or government-funded media. Coincidentally, this is happening at the same time Russian news outlets and government accounts are being allowed back onto that platform.
I have this article that was published this morning in the Kingston Whig Standard entitled “Russia uses Twitter to attack democracy”. In it, there is quoted a former Conservative cabinet minister who was a Canadian diplomat and is an expert on Russia. He says that this labelling of public broadcasters is “outrageous...it implies that these outlets are under government editorial control” in the way that, say, Russian television is.
I'm wondering if you agree with this characterization. What do you think of this labelling of public broadcasters and media outlets?