The CBC may be gutted

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I sure do, jerk! Look above, jerk. How is it that jerks like Messy Slob can't read threads?

I just wanted to confirm it, a__hole.

George, read the comments in this thread by Squawker and tell me why I, as a leftist, or even just as a Canadian taxpayer, want to pay the salary of this hateful, spiteful, and mean little prick who is in another thread attacking anti-Zionists as being anti-Jewish, and Jews critical of Israel and Zionism as being backed by the KKK? See for yourself, here.

And he would claim the CBC, which as I stated earlier does not include leftist voices, is balanced by excluding those voices.

As I said, George, and others who are reading, it is not my broadcaster. Let it die and strengthen the CRTC.

Anyway,

Canwest  Global is an inch or so away from bankruptcy.

Odd, when they had all the best business brains on staff at the National Post to advise them.

Corner Gas is on CTV, not CBC. 

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Takes more than combat gear to make a man Takes more than license for a gun Confront your enemies, avoid them when you can A gentleman will walk but never run -Sting, an englishman in new york

George,

I received your PM. Thank you, but I haven't lost my marbles just yet. Or perhaps I have but what good are marbles here anyway?

My argument with regard to the CBC is not anything new. It is has been aging for quite some time. 

I do listen to CBC radio and mostly it is cringe worthy. I turn it off all too often. The other day I turned off when I listened to people who came across as all too comfortable and self-satisfied explain that those losing their jobs in the collapsing economy need only "hustle more". 

But that's not the meat of my complaint. The meat of my complaint is that everyday the CBC can find business school clones to repeat the business mantra but can never find an economist from the Centre for Policy Alternatives or even an academic who understands the words "social justice" outside of the context of taxes (I have never heard an interviewee ever question the business orthodoxy that brought about our current economic storm, either).

Twice, on different segments with different interviewers, I have heard the CAW chief being interviewed and demands made by the interviewers of what concessions he will make for his members to keep their jobs for the few billion dollars being offered by our governments. I have never heard a bank executive interviewed and demanded what concessions his bank and executives will make for the almost $300 billion in loan and mortgage guarantees offered by our federal government and negotiated in secret during an election.

Yesterday, the CBC ran a report on Mugabe and on how he had issued a decree on taking more land from white farmers. There was no balance in this report. There was no historical context and the CBC correspondent felt no need for context and it was clear taking the land was wrong. Why has the CBC never offered such a clear and concise and equally hard story about the taking of Palestinian land by Israelis? 

During the war on Gaza, I heard Livni and any number of Israeli spokespeople, as well as their Canadian allies, parrot the cold Israeli line that the massive massacres where aimed at ending Hamas rocket fire and that Hamas broke the truce. Meanwhile the truth of the truce breaking, or the truth of the horrible reality inside Gaza, or  the Palestinian narrative, seldom if at all made its way into the reporting.

I listen to the CBC every single day and I have concluded that no elected member of the NDP, federally and provincially, except in rare and short lived moments, have access to a telephone as it seems they can never be reached for a comment.

I get just about all the news I value, today, from the Internet. I have given up on meaningful local and regional news. The CBC is on my radio as a  sort of audio wallpaper. If it stopped, I would listen to music more.

My experience is that the the chorus to save the CBC from funding cuts and total irrelevance always comes from the liberals and plays to the left who then mount appeals and letter writing campaigns and give money to organizations like Friends and then settles back for the next threat.

Meanwhile, the CBC continues to marginalize the very voices that are raised to defend it. What are we? A bunch of suckers? Why?

You know, I grew up watching the Nation with Barbara Frum and Peter Mansbridge and the CBC has never offered a left perspective in its news broadcasts. In the first gulf war, in any American war, it has not, through its news reporting, given a voice to the victims of the violence nor more than a marginal voice to those who opposed the war.

I watched the CBC after attending the FTAA protests in Quebec city and saw thousands upon thousands of Canadians from across the country and all walks of life -- the very people the CBC is mandated to serve -- reduced to a few clips of teargas. There was absolutely no coverage to who these people were and why they travelled, in some cases thousands of kms, to sleep on a floor at a university before marching for miles while being exposed to tear gas. And then they were reduced by our national public  broadcaster to a mere shot of a cloud of teargas and a mention without context as though our existence was no different than that of dandelions on a spring lawn.

No. I say enough. If the people who represent me and my issues are not important enough or valued enough to be in front of the cameras or the microphones for CBC, then I will not be behind the cameras fulfiling my role as left Canadian in perpetuating the CBC in its marginalization of me and the voices of which I am a part.

To me, that is a reasoned and rational argument to which you are entitled to disagree.

Yes, George, there are still some good segments on, from time to time. However, those are becoming fewer and farther between, in my opinion. And, while Michael Enright has some really interesting guests and some good interviews, he is not unbiased in his approach to politics either. 

How far should it be allowed to go along the ideological spectrum before we consider it money not well spent?

Yeah, and I can't get "West End Blues" outta my head now...not that that's a bad thing. Must purge the tune tonight during my community radio benevolation. In honour of the Saskatoon Blues Festival this weekend, I'll do an all-blues programme.

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And next we'll hear about  the beat that came out of Jamaica a half-century back, and stuck....and then for those who care to listen there's hip hop  something or other....

And Louis in the 1920s on the Okay label (for black folks ) was something else...his voice was a bit  better then...... 

My dotter and grandotter invited me for brunch, today, as thank you for valorous  exploits babysitting in midweek. I had a glorious drive there and back thanks to Michael Enright.  And then Stewart told us something about Peter Gzowski's cottage on Lake Simcoe, and about Stephen Leacock's manuscript of Sunshine Sketches (1912), and I wondered why nobody ever told about Leacock being a student of Theorstein Veblen in Chicago... and I'll bet Leacock's appetite for humour was given a push by the creator of the concept - Conspicuous Consumption......

Anyway, I sure as shucks can't do without several CBC  radio programs. I never listen to the drool.  And I'm afraid TV is bad for the mind - everywhere. Can't imagine all that time spent away from the dead tree media.

For the Post segment that is about to be sold...I would think hardly possible even though  certainly desirable. It is the only piece with national capabilities. And it is the one draining money at more than $1.5 m per year (according to CBC interview this morning with Peter Newman, who wrote a bio on Izzy Asper and knows how he everextended in buying  up Conrad's empire .)

What "represents me" out there, FM...?

Nothing, exactly. I never have "fit" anything, perfectly.  But I'm trying not to just lecture from a soapbox, to not create a positiion where look around and find that there's no one following. That's why I used to battle with Ontario Green leadership by e-mail, challenging their tech answers to everything. It's why I was one of a dozen people who founded the Green Party of ONtario in the spring of 1983. The NDP didn't fit then, still doesn't, but neither to the Greens for above reasons.

Not all will go to podcasts, FM, because there are not enough folks willing (or able) to go that route.  We must maintain contact with some of the old, familiar institutions and try to make it possible for them to emerge as progressive. It's why the demise of the printed word only promises more political ignorance for the disposessed and marginalized and the newly unread.

I admire your go-get-em spirit these days. 

So the answer is "no, you don't hear your own voice or voices like yours on CBC news and radio programs". I will let it go there ... I think we've reached the point where we agree to disagree.

I admire your spirit always. 

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Frankly, I'd rather hear the CBC plugging for Harper than have to endure more more US lifestyle news designed to copycat CNN, FOX and other US sources.

Why? Why is it better? Is this an argument where you'd rather get Type-II diabetes from refined sugar than corn sucrose because its a politically correct diabetes?

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Public broadcasters are freer from the pressure to centralize production, dump local news, or to deplete bigger and bigger chunks of their budget in a financially destructive race to get more American shows. While it is true that the CBC is not innocent of any of this, it's still way more resistant to it than private broadcasters, where these sorts of practices are considered good management.

Yet they seem to copy their private brethern in doing just that. To wit:

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The day after Windsor learned it was losing its only private TV station, the CBC raised the spectre of selling off some of its stations, like Channel 9.

CBC president and CEO Hubert Lacroix, in a speech to the Empire Club of Canada, warned the continued loss of advertising revenue may force the network to make drastic cuts to its service.

“We will, of course, look at every option to increase our revenues to minimize the impact on our programs and our people,” Lacroix said.

Windsor Star

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Market pressures are driving Canadian media to become increasingly useless and sceptic. Right wing propaganda is bad, but there are also big political consequences when the only media we have is low-cost, high-profit trash with zero information value.

But I suggest the CBC offers the same diet when it comes to news and the television offers essentially the same commerical programming.

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I think lots of the CBC's political biases can be fixed relatively easily with some structural changes to how they deliver news. Or at least to me that task doesn't seem nearly as daunting as trying to fight back the wave of paralyzing trash being pumped into our faces by media conglomerates, which can only become worse when we scrap the CBC.

Why? According to you with the CBC in existence we are facing a  "wave of paralyzing trash being pumped into our faces by media conglomerates". Isn't the wave of trash identical to the wave of trash in the US which is where it all originates from? Is Hollywood waiting for the CBC to perish to unleash an even greater wave?

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There's limits to what we can do with the CRTC.  From what I found it collects a budget of about 80 million dollars a year for local programming, which is typically controlled by the big cable companies. The CRTC's mandate is mainly to regulate the behaviour of giant media corporations. Those companies don't need to be regulated, they need to be eliminated, and we won't be able to do that without successful progressive competitors.

The CRTC is a regulator. It is your argunment, if I undersatnd you correctly, that if we can't directly regulate, we have a better chance of shaping what is on the air through an arms length crown corporation??? Or are you speaking now of state media?

As a side factoid: Many of you probably remember that Peter Gzowski went ballistic on Chomsky for mentioning Pearson's support of U.S war crimes in Indochina. Chomsky was later given one last phone interview to appease listener protests and was never invited to the show again.

Anyway my point to Frustrated Mess is that the CBC is an apologist for the rich and powerful that still offers slightly higher quality programming with a bit more useful information and that's enough to make it relevant -- I think other babblers have offered worthy examples above.

I would also argue that without a publicly owned competitor, globemedia and canwest's race to the bottom might have been a lot faster and that the TV landscape would be even more of a garbage dump. It's true that the CBC is racing to the bottom too, but as we see in the Windsor star quote, there's at least enough public pressure to slow them down and force them to search for excuses for their neocon management practices. We should fire the neocons that are running the CBC, not scrap the whole institution.

I am also saying that even if we could regulate very well with the CRTC, that alone would not be a sufficient strategy to build a democratic, accessible, relevant media. We need to build good non-business media institutions. The CBC fails at this, but it's the closest we've got in major network television/radio, and we have mechanisms to push it in the right direction.

There's other benefits to having publicly owned media competitors that don't involve the political views they favor. Public broadcasters are freer from the pressure to centralize production, dump local news, or to deplete bigger and bigger chunks of their budget in a financially destructive race to get more American shows. While it is true that the CBC is not innocent of any of this, it's still way more resistant to it than private broadcasters, where these sorts of practices are considered good management.

I suspect if we looked close we could find that the CBC has to some extent created a competitive pressure on other stations to curb the amount of garbage they pump out.  

Market pressures are driving Canadian media to become increasingly useless and septic. Right wing propaganda is bad, but there are also big political consequences when the only media we have is low-cost, high-profit trash with zero information value.

I think lots of the CBC's political biases can be fixed relatively easily with some structural changes to how they deliver news. Or at least to me that task doesn't seem nearly as daunting as trying to fight back the wave of paralyzing trash being pumped into our faces by media conglomerates, which can only become worse when we scrap the CBC.

There's limits to what we can do with the CRTC.  From what I found it collects a budget of about 80 million dollars a year for local programming, which is typically controlled by the big cable companies. The CRTC's mandate is mainly to regulate the behaviour of giant media corporations. Those companies don't need to be regulated, they need to be eliminated, and we won't be able to do that without successful progressive competitors. There is room to move forward with the CBC, and I think getting rid of it would be a step back.

By the time you folks have fixed up the CBC it'll be ready just in time to be completely ignored by the next generation of Canadians. My opinion has been dismissed because I failled to purchase the correct consumer electronics to participate in this thread but its amazing to see such a defense of any TV broadcaster, technically "public" or otherwise. The sheer inability of some babblers to even consider another model for promoting Canadian content, one which actually keeps pace with changing times, is shocking. But please go on worrying about the fate of your favorite TV station... the one no Canadian under 20 has even seen.

Also props to FM

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The CBC may not reflect my personal political slant, but so what?  For that I make my own radio programming.

Right, so why support the CBC?

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Anyway my point to Frustrated Mess is that the CBC is an apologist for the rich and powerful that still offers slightly higher quality programming with a bit more useful information and that's enough to make it relevant -- I think other babblers have offered worthy examples above.

You're leaving me scratching my head. Is it your argument that the left should support and defend an institution that serves the "rich and powerful" only because it serves up some relevant and useful information?

Is this why the left is so irrelevant politically? Because our expectations are so low? 

There was a time where we could enjoy high quality CBC programming like On the Map, Face Off, and Straight from the Hip.  Newman's spin zone and Mansbridge's panel of mediocrity, along with his dreadful one on ones are the standard fare now.  Funding set aside for the CBC would be better spent to support independent media across the country, as an alternative to the corporate voice and their interests.

It's Me D wrote:

How many people do you know with TV and no internet? 

It's exceedingly common, if you're poor. 

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Yeah I'm defending an institution that serves the rich and powerful because it provides more relevant and useful information than the privately owned servants of the rich and powerful. I don't think the CBC is acceptable in its current incarnation, but we can fix it

That reads like a defence of capitalism. I've been viewing/listening to CBC all my life (50 this year) so why isn't it fixed yet? It is almost like a religion: just believe. 

It's Me D wrote:

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It's exceedingly common, if you're poor.

Having not seen any hard stats on the matter I'm shocked that my life experience completely contradicts yours in this area... not sure where the difference comes in... perhaps regional trends? 

It's a good question. 

I have to admit I'm going on simple personal observation. But in all the years I was on welfare, I think I was the only person I knew with internet. (I had acquired an old mac and was computer-mad.) On the other hand, most people went to extraordinary lengths to get cable. (After all, it was the only form of entertainment open to us.)

Maybe it is a regional difference. Or it could be because my reference group is people on 'social assistance' (as those who decide such things are pleased to call it): it may be that 'the working poor' are more likely to have internet. Or it may be that things have changed in the last few years and my observations are out of date. But I still don't think there are a lot of people on social assistance who have computers and internet access. 

I'm don't dismiss your observations, either. Perhaps the situation is less clear-cut than I had thought.

The CBC cannot adapt successfully to the digital world when much of its income is dependent on annual ad sales rather than a government guarantee of long-term financing.  Meanwhile, the BBC is not only strong on the web but is also developing a worldwide franchise within all types of media for independent (ie non-US) news reporting.

Frustrated Mess wrote:

That reads like a defence of capitalism. I've been viewing/listening to CBC all my life (50 this year) so why isn't it fixed yet? It is almost like a religion: just believe.

I was worried it would sound like a defense of statism. What I meant to say is that when faced with a choice between state run services and for-profit corporations, I would pick the state run services, because at least the population has control over them insofar as the country is democratic.

Regarding access to the internet by the poor, the study that I see everyone cite is the George Sciadas one from 2002:

http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/56f0009x/56f0009x2002001-eng.pdf

It says what you might expect -- there's a big gap between rich and poor, but it seems to be slowly closing.

More interesting to me were studies that looked at how users from different backgrounds got different types of value from their computers.  From http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/81-597-x/4193614-eng.pdf :

“Overall, students whose parents have little or no formal education were less likely to report several types of computer use, particularly using the Internet, e-mail, doing data entry, writing computer programs, using graphics programs, using spreadsheets…”

If we use education as an indicator of class and income then this should give a clearer picture of how computer use can be different for the poor. The above-average number of university grads that fill computer and telecommunications jobs might be another indicator (http://www.statcan.gc.ca/studies-etudes/75-001/archive/2002/5022946-eng.pdf).

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I use that one a lot...when they came for me there was no one left to speak out.

Like I said, it isn't the channel so much as the optics that it's left, when it clearly is not.