MEA incorrectly claims Canada blocked social media handles of news website ‘Australia Today’
In reality, Meta – the parent company of social media website Facebook – blocks all news outlets for Canadian users.
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India’s foreign ministry on Thursday incorrectly claimed that Canada had blocked the social media handles of Australian news website The Australia Today.
External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal, during a press briefing on November 7, appeared to have been referring to the Facebook account of the website. However, in reality, Meta – the parent company of social media website Facebook – blocks all news outlets for users in Canada, not just The Australia Today.
The news portal describes itself as a website that is “focussed on multicultural communities and the Indian subcontinent”.
During the press briefing, a journalist asked Jaiswal if it was true that the social media pages of The Australia Today had been banned in Canada. To this, the spokesperson told the journalist that he had “heard it correctly”.
Jaiswal claimed this happened just a few hours after the social media handle posted content about a press conference of External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar with his Australian counterpart Penny Wong.
“What I will say [is] that these are actions which yet again highlight the hypocrisy of Canada towards freedom of speech,” the external affairs ministry spokesperson had said.
Several media outlets amplified the claim, without noting that Meta has blocked all news outlets for Canadian users.
On November 8, Jitarth Jai Bharadwaj, the managing editor of The Australia Today, thanked news outlets that “stood...
