"French President Slams Elon Musk's Twitter Claim to Determine Media Independence"

2023-04-22 15:12:28

It is “frightening” that the billionaire Elon Musk, owner of the social network Twitter, claims to “determine whether a media is independent”, protested on Saturday the president of the French group of public channels France Télévisions, Delphine Ernotte.

“Twitter tried to label all public media in the world as state media and then as government-funded media or public-funded media. But then…who is Mr. Musk to determine whether a media outlet is independent or not is not?” Ms. Ernotte told the daily Les Echos.

“To see an American billionaire trying to play with our independence and define our public space is frightening,” continued the president of the public group.

In recent weeks, Twitter had applied controversial labels to mainstream media accounts, “state-affiliated media” and “government-funded media”, before removing them on Friday.

“Twitter has backed down because the collective mobilization of public media, from Canada to Australia, has paid off,” commented Ms. Ernotte.

“But that raises the question of the control of our information space. We cannot let American actors, tomorrow Chinese, play sorcerer’s apprentices with our democracies,” she continued.

“Dilemma”

In mid-April, the American public radio NPR had left Twitter, unhappy with the mention “media affiliated with the American state”, which put it on the same level as Russian organs like Russia Today (RT) or the official Chinese agency Xinhua (New China).

Could France Télévisions and its channels leave the social network? “It’s a dilemma,” replied Ms. Ernotte. “The possibilities opened up by artificial intelligence to generate, at an industrial pace, false images and videos are dizzying. In the mess that is coming, our national media, regulated, are compasses”, she said. to be worth.

Since Musk’s takeover of Twitter in October, many controversies have erupted about his way of managing this platform.