babble is rabble.ca's discussion board but it's much more than that: it's an online community for folks who just won't shut up. It's a place to tell each other — and the world — what's up with our work and campaigns.
Support rabble | Advertise with us | Contact our staff | About rabble | Log-in or Register for a new account | Corrections | Privacy policy | Newsfeeds | Mailing lists
rabble: Features | Columnists | In Cahoots | Blogs | Books | Photos | What's Up | Polls
babble: Forum Topics | Active Topics
The rpn: About the RPN | Become a podcaster
rabbleTV: Program Guide | Features | Indie Inside | Best of the net
Copyright © 2001-2013 the authors
Syndicate
John Trudell? You don't get much more boot-licking conservative lackey than that. Sorry I missed it.
(half of that was serious. Guess which half)
Just wondered if 6079 is aware of Trudell's beginnings, where Trudell is at politically, and what he means by this bit of drivel.
Hmmm.. and I'm just wondering if I have to paint "joke" all over it in big red letters.
Yes George, I have known who John Trudell is for quite a few years. I was just trying to use something called irony to illustrate the contrast between some of the criticism of the CBC in this thread and what they actually broadcast on occasion.
Don't sweat it, Winston. Your meaning was pretty clear.
To quote you from the last thread, al-Qa'bong:
A 'make-over' is a drastic over-simplification of what the CBC needs at this point.
It needs a violent purging, to clear the Quisling Conservatives and entitled Liberals from positions of influence and power within. You ask me to fight to fund them, without any plan to deal with the fact that the institution is toxic to the body politic of our nation at this point.
I'm no more likely to waste my efforts on the funding of the CBC than I am to promote readership of the National Post. Indeed, you can find most of the NP pundits on panels at the CBC, so supporting one is supporting the other.
Talk to me about taking back the CBC before asking me to fight for its funding.
Does anyone follow Radio-Canada? It certainly used to be far more cutting edge and progressive than their English counter-part. Not sure if that reputation has also been tarnished.
Exactly LTJ. It's like being already doubled over with nausea after consuming fast food, and along comes someone who won't take no for an answer selling Double Downs.
Generally speaking, I'd say that's still true for RDI (which is Radio-Canada's equivalent of CBC News Network, which used to be Newsworld). Radio-Canada's international news tends to be better, just because it's a little less linked at the hip to the usual U.S. newswire suspects. And there seems to be less "corporate" political control when it comes to regional reporting than what I recall out west. But on the whole, the MSM is the MSM, même en français...
And then there's CBC radio northern programming, in several dialects.
And CBC Radio 1 is not CBC television commentary, LTJ. You have to be more concerned with the network as a whole. Really. And consider what would replace it. "Cutting off your nose to spite your face" never had more meaningful usage, in your case.
For the occasional interesting 'Ideas' program in the dead-of-night, I am grateful to Radio 1. And I think they still serve some small purpose culturally.
But I am virtually never reflected in the politics on the CBC (including Radio 1); from what I can tell, views such as mine are strictly forbidden from being exposed on air these days.
I can agree that it was not always thus, but it is now, and how do you intend to fix it?
LTJ you fix it only by allowing the structure to survive and replacing the government that directs it.
Institutions of government will always be badly managed by a bad government -- but that does not mean hacking and eliminating them.
The plan for the Census is the same-- not to eliminate census Canada but to fix it once there is a government that is willing.
If the next government is a minority not headed by the Cons there will be many opportunities to fix the CBC which is why the Cons likely would like to get rid of it now.
That is the only hope. And not only the fate of the CBC rests on the outcome. In the meantime, write letters, foment, climb on snow-covered soapboxes. Raise shit, generally.
And don't, for chrissake, give up.
If the next government is a minority headed by the Liberals, I have no doubt the rot will continue unchecked.
Ummmmmmmmmm, seeing as how we are not going to get a government that is going to "fix it" anytime soon, if ever, it will stay the same, or worsen. Thus comments stating a better government would fix it hold no water.
Well those of you who think that way are free to do so.
Some of us have work to do.
I don't think it's a question of government "fixing" the CBC, but of government not interfering with the Mother Corporation's programming, yet enabling it to do its job.
I agree that's the goal in the long run, but in the short term, the CBC is far beyond repairing itself. It is broken, mouldering and toxic. The organs of the CBC are either moribund or metastasizing.
You have been listening to Radio One's "White Coat, Black Art" again.
LOLOLOL George!
Gee.... Christian patriarchy, women fulfilling their traditional role in "protecting the family" and threats to the survival of white Europeans on The Current today.
Yup, I bet the reformist wing of the Tories love hearing this kind of propaganda. I can just imagine a little door in the back of their studio where they hand in the scripts from the PMO's office.
http://podcast.cbc.ca/mp3/current_20101220_42905.mp3
Seriously, it is a good piece... especially the little ambush.
(edit)
in fact, in all seriousness, I think an ongoing reminder of some of the good pieces on CBC might be in order, especially for those who can't be bothered listening in because they turn their noses up at it.
No kidding; a quick flick of the dial from CBC to "All Hits C95" is like a long journey from relative intelligence to slobbering idiocy.
pot meet kettle
Especially if that hit is on a pipe - speaking of recent hard-hitting exposes.
I was going to say above, that I think ANY cuts to journalism is a bad thing. I think people are making a mistake if they don''t read the National Post on occasion because you often learn more about how others are thinking from reading their perspective, rather than just our spin on it.
After all, it's not like some virus that is going to infect your brain. It's all information and it's all good to know, even when it's bad and even when it is lies.
And I would have a hard time approving of cuts to any news source, because places where journalists can work are rare enough, and regardless of the paper or station, journalists still have the opportunity to think with their own minds, develop their own skills and eventually do their own work. Of course my feeling about that is tempered considerably when thinking about overt propaganda mills like FOX, or the proposed FOXnorth, but generally speaking, I don't think draining the pool of information is a good thing.
It's called "know the enemy," 6079, a strategy with a very long history. But, of course, the "ordinary massses" aren't up to the sorting process, and come away proselytized, eh? (Oh, I know, there's that elitist pov again. True though.)
remind post 22 is a personal attack. Cut it out.
Oh my, so that's what happens if you touch that dial!
I understand and agree, which is why I say that the principle gets considerably more watered-down when we are talking about outlets like FOX or Western Report. So no, I don't consider it elitist, but I think it important to remember that silencing voices is a two-edged sword.
Good journalists existed even when there was no game in town other than the corporate media. Getting the information out through a screwed up and controlled system may seem counter-productive, but it is better than no system at all.
Doug Saunders had an amazing piece in the Gobe the other day on "the end of privacy," in which he noted the parallel of London's lord mayor, Brass Crosby, "the Assange of 1771," (from which came the saying "bold as brass" ,it's said) asked to have himself imprisoned in the Tower of London when he " refused to pass sentence on John Miller,the printer of the London Evening Post, who had enraed Parliament by publishing leaked reports of its debates, which were considered privileged and not for public consumption... Crosby not only set Miller free, but charged the messenger Parliament sent to arrest Miller with assault."
He was feted on release six weeks later, the last one prosecuted for printing parliamentary debates...a job dominated, by the 1830s, by the printer Thomas Curson Hansard.
If only the MSM had not immediately become simply house organs for their political parties. Stuck with that ever since...except in the case of media declated "public" ...which we must have, free of government control. It would seem that some "freedom of the purse" is needed in this new age of conservative austerity...and a citizenry that has been shaped into self-defined "taxpayers and consumers" by three decades of conservative propaganda effort.
OTOH...
Weaksauce and the mod's defending them... weak...