Jen Gerson: Everybody is being dumb

If you want to fight, you have to know which battles are worth winning. Fight smart, not hard.

By: Jen Gerson

Everybody is being dumb. 

Yes, I realize that most of my columns could start this way, however in the case of the incident in question, I believe the sentence above can truly be applied universally. 

This time, I'm talking about this spat between the CBC, Pierre Poilievre, and Twitter, in which this triptych of poor judgement, trollery and self-importance is lays itself out before us like a tableau of social media wankery. 

In case you are clever enough to avoid online theatrics, let me explain: Twitter has been labelling the accounts of successive Western public media outlets like NPR and the BBC as "government funded media" — a moniker that feels a little like the "state-affiliated" tag affixed to organizations like RT. (Twitter initially labelled NPR as "state-affiliated," leading to the organization fleeing the site. The platform reversed course and now notes NPR is "government funded.")

The CBC was hit in this wave, and it is hardly alone in this shift: In recent days, similar labels have also been applied to the Australian Broadcasting Company (ABC Australia), New Zealand’s public broadcaster RNZ and Sweden’s SR Ekot and SVT. 

Taking full advantage of this situation at home was Poilievre, who rather gleefully — and idiotically — used the label to declare that now "people know that it is Trudeau propaganda, not news.”