“It’s not important what you say, but what people hear. »

Pierre Poilievre clearly appropriated this saying from American adviser Frank Luntz, a Republican strategist who incidentally once advised the Conservative Party in Stephen Harper’s time.

He took full advantage of the twists and turns he caused over 10 days by asking Twitter to label the CBC as “state-funded media,” to which Elon Musk was quick to say yes, before changing the wording and then simply removing it.

Most of the conversations sparked by the Conservative leader in recent days have centered on the merits of each of the words “media,” “funded,” and “government.” This has allowed those who harbor grudges against Société Radio-Canada to confirm that it is quite appropriate to describe the CBC in this way, without burdening yourself with the necessary nuances.

It’s a media company, after all, and it’s actually government funded… right?

Well, no, not really. Or at least not, as we’ve heard over the past few days.

First, to be specific, the CBC and Radio-Canada receive two-thirds of their public funding from Parliament when the House adopts the federal budget.

Yes, we can briefly say that “it is the government that allocates the sums”. But the nuance between government and parliament is crucial in a semantic debate provoked by Pierre Poilievre and Elon Musk.

The claim that the CBC is “government-funded” without further explanation suggests that the prime minister and his party are free to cut their funding at their discretion.

We therefore understand that the government controls the state company’s supplies, which may allow it to have a direct or indirect say in what it emits.

However, this is not the case. CBC/Radio-Canada is both by and by law on broadcastits journalistic standards and practices and the existence of an ombudsman.

But hey, we saw in the few days that this political and media psychodrama lasted that all these details didn’t matter, even to certain professional journalists familiar with the strict framework in which their colleagues at the state corporation work.

There is a good deal of bad faith here. Especially since it is necessary to consult Twitter’s definition of this label before approving it. And what does she say? That “government-funded media are entities wholly or partially funded by the government and whose editorial content may be subject to varying degrees of government intervention”.

We may or may not like what the CBC is doing, but to argue without evidence that the government can intervene “to varying degrees” in the editorial content of the CBC, or even Radio-Canada, is simply a lie. This justifies Radio-Canada’s decision to suspend its Twitter account.

Crown Corporation journalists work for the public interest, not the government, regardless of which party is in power.

It is Cute Using a phrase like “Radio Pravda” to discredit Radio Canada. It takes a picture. But it is nothing less than an insult to all journalists of the state company.

The same applies to “Trudeau propaganda”, “organ of manipulation”, “disinformation tool”. We have read so much in the last few days.

Poilievre has succeeded in mobilizing those who hate the public broadcaster anyway. It has given those interested in casting doubt on the CBC food for thought. And more, he opened the floodgates for all the accusations that CBC and Radio-Canada can generate to be expressed about everything and about nothing, mixing the report and the opinion of the invited staff, the still unequivocal missions of information and entertainment, etc.

Everything is there: his diverse mandate, his lack of diversity of opinion, his as “ Canadian President Catherine Tait’s mistakes, coverage of Roxham Road, Chinese meddling and even “drag queens in school”. As if this had anything to do with the label put on by Twitter.

All of these comments are of course valid. But with the context cleverly planted by Pierre Poilievre, everything we concede to him and everything the state-owned company is accused of these days reinforces the notion that we cannot trust the media and that the latter is a vulgar propaganda organ of the service of Justin Trudeau.

Undoubtedly a victory for the Conservative leader. Even less for the truth and credibility of the media.