The Liberals' whole appeal and approach is to make something obviously unsustainable last just a bit longer. Media is part of that. The fact that our current media system will collapse completely as soon as government money runs out bothers them no more than the deficit, the disastrous impact of mass immigration on the Canadian people, or the disastrous impact of net zero ideology on our economic sustainability.
Investing in disaster resistant infrastructure has nothing to do with net zero. Net zero is about reducing carbon emissions, but becoming more resilient.
Now take it one step further and ask why it makes sense to continue investing in non-renewable (and economically insensible) energy infrastructure rather than even the barest attempts to shift to more renewable sources.
But Peter, as you alluded to in your article, Carney is an economist. Not only an economist but the greatest economist and crisis manager in the history of economics and crisis’s. - just ask him and his supporters. He would not possibly lead us down the wrong path for some lowly political reason, impossible I say, impossible!
Check out the Toronto Star or Globe and Mail comments section on any article mentioning Mr. Carney and half of them read like this, only they also tend to use the word "blessed" a disconcerting amount.
I can't tell between bots and the brainwashed anymore.
"Greatest crisis since World War II" is going to be the "two weeks to flatten the curve" level whopper of this moment in history though, just in the opposite direction.
I don't know if anyone else has noticed, but the "greatest crisis since World War II" appears to be resolved just a week and a half after all the votes got counted.
Carney went from Elbows Up to "thumbs up" in just a week, and the media ate it up with a fork and spoon.
"Most obviously fake crisis in our lifetimes" more like.
Unfortunately most Canadians are complete drooling idiots when it comes to politics, helped along by mainstream media who carried this "existential crisis" narrative as unquestioningly as they carried the continued need for excessive Covid measures into 2022. And who will bury it just as completely once it becomes too obvious that it is over.
"Golly gee, what was that 2025 election about again? Seems like we never got around to talking about any issues, so weird?"
"I am very humble, and have much to be humble about". I believe this was what he said on election night. He paraphrased Mr. Churchill's comment about Mr. Attlee's modesty, without attribution. But why start now?
Another way of looking at the media issue is this - maybe control/destruction of media credibility was the whole point. Subsidize and make everyone beholding then the public realizes that the media is not really unbiased and they turn away so more money gets poured in and now the government has a captive 'propaganda' arm - "look inside yourself Rosemary" and promise more cash and suddenly the CBC can't say enough about their guy Mark and the rest join in.
One point missed in the article is that reporters now pretty much produce opinion pieces under the guise of reporting on politics. Facts are omitted or twisted in order to shape the narrative and credibility is lost. Too much 'reporting' has become cheering for one side of the spectrum - yes, the left.
The other sad fact is that the public has not kept up the ability to critically think about what it sees and reads. Time was we learned to critically think in school but now there is a lot of emphasis on woke ideology and simply accepting the narrative.
As a seventy year old I can't believe that it is my age group that supported the current government and that they could not see the stolen CPC policies that were being handed out as the LPC policy. Add in the easily proved lies from our current PM and his ability to turn 180 degrees from his life mission to this point and you have to believe that there will be a lot of ocean front property sold in Alberta and Saskatchewan in the next few years. Apparently the leopard does change its spots and once we believe that fallacy the George Orwell will be proven prophetic.
You can break down the whole toolbox of propaganda tactics when you look at our supposedly 'neutral' media outlets like G&M, CTV, CBC, and Global.
It's not just opinion pieces, which to be fair sometimes include those by contrary voices. It's what stories they decide to run, the prominence of those stories in both placement and duration on their online sites, which ones they present the unfiltered government press release and when and how they push back, when and how they present the "experts say" takes, who they choose to interview for perspective (often credentialed activists presented uncritically as experts), and when they present 'both sides' to an issue and leave it at that where one side is clearly bullshit.
It's a swirling vortex of insanity that adds up to what we just saw in election 2025, where the public was led around by the nose to vote on essentially fantasy issues while real problems evaporated from memory like mist, and it became even detrimental for parties (let's be real, one party) to even bring these up.
👏👏👏 You beat me to it! Cherry picking of which stories to run has been a staple of Pravda North for as long as I can remember. And the now heavily subsidized “private” Canadian media are now feeding at the other end of the same trough. I gave up on their news long ago. 20 minutes of daily scrolling through the “top 5 stories” email summaries from 6 or 7 news sources ranging from CNN to BBC to Fox to Al Jazeera to Global to the New York Times and Washington Post - “as others see us” works for me. Your mix may vary…
Add also Reuters. News as per CBC have had negative impact on my appetite and temper so I kicked it out over 15 years ago. Flamin' lefto-biased beneath contempt.
Stealing policies from another party is not a guaranteed electoral advantage. There's countless instances in Canadian politics of parties stealing policies from one another and reaping no political reward for it. The LPC copying some CPC policies does not absolve the CPC of blame for their own electoral loss.
You can debate the fairness of the Canadian media landscape, but the Conservatives more than any other party ran away from virtually all forms of public accountability. It's harder to expose media bias against the Conservatives (to whatever extent it exists) when the Conservatives have shown a systematic unwillingness to face any tough questions anywhere other than the leaders' debates.
Not only it is infuriating that the CBC gets this much funding, when their youtube numbers are dismal.
CBC news has over 4M subscribers yet barely any of the videos they posted in the last couple of days get more than a couple thousand views. Yet, comparatively tiny channels (JJ Mcullough and Northern Perspectives, just to pick two random ones) routinely get more views than the CBC.
Tells you everything you need to know.
I'm fully in favour of defunding the CBC from any public money, kill all the subsidies and let them sink or swim, but also realize that this will never happen.
There is solace in knowing that they will be the cause of their own demise and I'll be here to see them crash and burn, channeling my inner Gerson to cheer on the ensuing chaos.
Mr. Menzies' perspective is refreshing but fails to mention how the MSM has lost credibility, in parallel with expert opinion and the academy in general. If it was of value, people would watch, just not on cable. The Line and the others are not a source of fact, but of opinion. Like it, hate it, there are no pretensions, though we are subjected to the occasional self righteous rant. Like going to political church.
The CBC has imposed itself on my Roku, if anyone knows how to remove it inform me so I can save time.
Blacklock's is document journalism, so you have to form your own opinions when you read it. CBC is not fact-based. It's hugely opinion-based, starting with what they consider the public should know and not know.
I would add that there are Substacks out there in mid-sized and smaller centres that do straight news - city council etc. I just went with names I thought people would find familiar
The flaw in the enthusiasm for Mark Carney, as expressed by those screaming "Lead us, Daddy!" at Liberal rallies, is that he's just one man and his core expertise is finance and monetary policy. There's a lot of areas where Carney simply doesn't have a lot of knowledge or experience, and he can't micromanage every aspect of government in any case (not that Trudeau didn't try, leading to government paralyzed by the chokepoint of the PMO's limited bandwidth.)
Where Carney has gaps or lack of bandwidth, he's going to need to fall back on his cabinet, caucus, and the Liberal Party to address them. That means a default to the same Liberal policies and approaches that have been failing for a decade, and largely the same incompetent people who tried to implement them. We're basically left to hope that the impotence and ineptitude of the Liberals over the past 10 years was all attributable to Justin Trudeau, and that Mark Carney's leadership will lead to a renaissance in Liberal thinking and governance. I'm skeptical.
Carney's generous treatment of the publicly funded CBC says much about his attitude towards private enterprise. His additional taxpayer funding for what is already government funded media will allow the CBC to more effectively compete with private media for scare advertising dollars.
This is the first clear example of Carney's willingness to sacrifice Canadian private enterprise in favour of taxpayer funded and government controlled enterprise.
Correction, those born before 1960. In my entire adult life I have watched three shows on CBC, Hockey night in canada, but that moved to TSN, Thursday night news to see Rex Murphy at the end of the show, but he's dead now and Murdoch Mysteries, which has gotten stupid and I've quit watching. Nobody my generation watches CBC either, except the occasional at issue panel but thats lousy now too because it is an echo chamber, not a panel.
I think you're forgetting children's programming: the CBC has been drawing on a huge reservoir of goodwill built up by kids who grew up watching "The Friendly Giant", "Mr. Dress-Up", and Canadian Sesame Street. However, that ended over a generation ago.
Spending public money on things Canadians don’t want or need is a proud liberal tradition. It’s great for vote buying and opinion influencing but the one thing it doesn’t do is inform the public. As usual though, apathy reins large in Canada. Canadians will get there eventually but in the meantime, hard times are ahead.
it is essential for a healthy society to have access to objective, transparent and fully informed reporting. That means the reporters must have total job security, sufficient resources and accountability measures. The CBC is the only means to achieve this and therefore the last bastion of defense against the hyperpartisan-eager to please journalism we get from the unsubsidized (excluding Paul Wells and the Line, but there ability to expand into the mainstream is unlikely.)
A heathy society would have canned CBC long time ago. Canada has not been a healthy society for at least a couple of decades, so the obscenity called CBC not only gets to live, but gets to eat ever more scarce tax money.
Except they are in a fundamental (and possibly existential) conflict of interest with any politician who doesn't want to increase their funding. And most of their personnel hail from Ottawa and downtown Toronto, and share the political inclinations of those populations, enhanced by the political inclinations of those willing to work for a federal government agency and make it through a government DEI centric hiring process. Among other problems.
The ship has sailed on generously funded and job secure journalists who have no hand to feed them so don't have to worry about biting it. An essential role of media is to hold government to account, and government funding means government propaganda.
Sorry, but the state of for-profit media in the US makes it crystal clear how essential the CBC is. Our government should not give one cent to any organisation that is 51% or more owned outside of Canada. As soon as you mentioned Western Standard as "good information", the credibility of this article was gone.
Question: Why is foreign ownership inherently bad? It’s OK in the UK and USA so, what’s the difference. And, as an aside, the point of the article isn’t whether the CBC should exist but whether it should be allowed to exist as a publicly-funded commercial news and entertainment platform instead of as a pure play public entity.
I'm not sure foreign ownership in the US; FOX, for example, is something to brag about. All you get is a foreign editorial slant. I don't see that as a national benefit. It's no better in print media.
I took some time to think about the CBC. I think it should be operated in the exact same way Elections Canada is. Give it a mandate of what to do: promote accurate news, promote Canadian content, promote facts over opinion, and then let it do its thing. I don't think a cent should be granted to other media sources who will have to figure out their own new economic model. No, it's not a level playing field. No, it's not far. But misinformation is, IMHO, the greatest threat to democracy it has ever faced; see any White House press briefing. We're dealing with nations involved heavily in feeding us lies. The 24-hour news cycle is a factual disaster where getting the story out first matters more than getting it out right.
I think there needs to be a place to go and get facts. While for-profit media has a role to play in verification, I think we need a source that isn't just in it for the money. That means an independent, well-funded arms arms-length CBC.
Understood. I just don’t see that foreign perspective reflected in media in the UK or US where if they don’t serve domestic audiences, they don’t earn revenue. I do see it, however, on cable where the nation is flooded with foreign news, sports and entertainment programming on American-based networks. Banning that might get to where you want to go. Otherwise I guess we’re back to the 1930s
I guess I'm more concerned with what they are serving to domestic audiences. Again, FOX is my go-to. But I still remember when the CBC had correspondents all over Europe; not just one person in London as a clearing house. Cable and the internet have removed any government control over what people can watch. They can't ban anything. Smart people will work around it faster than the government can respond. But wouldn't it be nice to have a news source where your first thought was "I need to fact-check this"? That's where I'd like to get to.
It gets grey pretty quickly. I'd be surprised if they do simply because of pressure from Washington. I'm not sure that's the hill Canada wants to die on. People are supposed to be smart enough to separate fact from fiction. But it takes work now, in a way it never used to. I'm sure AI will follow the internet as tools of great possibility being used for evil. Agent 86, Maxwell Smart would not approve :)
This Boomer grandparent never goes near a TV set. I rely on CBC for reliable news and analysis, however, on You Tube. We access what we choose on our mobile devices powered by excellent digital service in our rural area.
CBCs value in English Canada remains in commercial free AM\FM Radio, Northern service and potentially a 24 hour commercial free TV news service aligned with a not for profit (no ads) online news service.
An argument can also be made for a commercial free children's programming, documentary, news and niche sports TV channel (PBS North?)
Any remaining CBC assets and programs should be sold to the private sector.
Ad revenue just cuts into the survival of the commercial (currently less subsidized) networks.
You can't have the public funded broadcaster in competition with others for ad dollars and expect a reasonable evolution of product.
There are a number of reasons why the CBC should exist including emergency broadcast transmissions, service announcements, and universal access. With respect to political commentary and culture however they are the elephant in the room. The values they reflect seem to be their own values rather than the collective values of all Canadians.
Given the scathing commentary on Conservatives during the last election and the actual performance of the Conservatives, the cracks in the facade are starting to show however.
Not being a dick here but genuinely curious. What do you think the CBC could offer in terms of emergency alerts that the current emergency alerting system doesn’t?
This is mostly inferred but in the valley we are in we get one commercial station intermittently but continuous coverage with Radio 1. Northern areas often have zero coverage without CBC it seems. This is mostly nuclear bomb, earthquake, etc. stuff which is not visible. The cell network is often dependent on the internet as well and there could be attacks which screw it up. I would assume most commercial systems would not cover this.
I get that. But the emergency system currently interrupts all over the air, cable and satellite broadcasts to deliver alerts and other information and has now expanded to texts on mobile devices. It did so with Covid and has done so successfully with tornado, flood and tsunami alerts. I am struggling to understand why this expectation is necessary on top of this and CRTC licensing expectations and why extra money would be necessary.
I am not sure what CRTC licensing expectations include but I would assume they would not include acts of war or broader scale emergencies ie. the Chinese invade Vancouver.
The emergency alerting system covers all that. I just find it odd that the govt seems oblivious to its existence. Certainly the CBC should play a role but I can’t recall a time when it has failed to do so.
The CBC has been around a long time and often organizations pick up rolls that are nondescript but essential. From a corporate perspective, I have seen companies eliminate a whole department and then realize there was a roll they were doing which was essential. I tend to look at the CBC as deserving a budget of $1 B or $25 per capita but not more ( maybe less?). This is what the average person may pay for a subscription to a news service.
No other country in the world has men like Ian Hanomansing and Andrew Chang who do their best to objectively inform us. Hyper partisan private media (looking at you, Rebel and Western Standard) fuels the anger to turn us against them. It's not right.
The Liberals' whole appeal and approach is to make something obviously unsustainable last just a bit longer. Media is part of that. The fact that our current media system will collapse completely as soon as government money runs out bothers them no more than the deficit, the disastrous impact of mass immigration on the Canadian people, or the disastrous impact of net zero ideology on our economic sustainability.
Which is to say, not at all.
Can you please define the tenets of net-zero ideology and how they will devastate economic sustainability?
Anyone? Anyone?
"Leave it in the ground" doesn't go very well with a country whose economic advantage is natural resources.
Isn't the full quote "No country would find 173 billion barrels of oil and just leave it in the ground”?
Seems to run contrary to "net-zero ideology".
Still waiting on an actual explanation btw. Can't wait for the elaboration on the benefits of not investing in disaster-resilient infrastructure.
Investing in disaster resistant infrastructure has nothing to do with net zero. Net zero is about reducing carbon emissions, but becoming more resilient.
Valid point on categorization, granted.
Now take it one step further and ask why it makes sense to continue investing in non-renewable (and economically insensible) energy infrastructure rather than even the barest attempts to shift to more renewable sources.
Gaaawwwwdddd....
But Peter, as you alluded to in your article, Carney is an economist. Not only an economist but the greatest economist and crisis manager in the history of economics and crisis’s. - just ask him and his supporters. He would not possibly lead us down the wrong path for some lowly political reason, impossible I say, impossible!
Check out the Toronto Star or Globe and Mail comments section on any article mentioning Mr. Carney and half of them read like this, only they also tend to use the word "blessed" a disconcerting amount.
I can't tell between bots and the brainwashed anymore.
"Greatest crisis since World War II" is going to be the "two weeks to flatten the curve" level whopper of this moment in history though, just in the opposite direction.
I don't know if anyone else has noticed, but the "greatest crisis since World War II" appears to be resolved just a week and a half after all the votes got counted.
Carney went from Elbows Up to "thumbs up" in just a week, and the media ate it up with a fork and spoon.
It sure did work to get the vote out though...
"Most obviously fake crisis in our lifetimes" more like.
Unfortunately most Canadians are complete drooling idiots when it comes to politics, helped along by mainstream media who carried this "existential crisis" narrative as unquestioningly as they carried the continued need for excessive Covid measures into 2022. And who will bury it just as completely once it becomes too obvious that it is over.
"Golly gee, what was that 2025 election about again? Seems like we never got around to talking about any issues, so weird?"
I'm sure that insulting most Canadians will be an effective tactic to winning them over to vote Conservative next time!
Well insulting their intelligence seems to work as long as it's in a less direct way. Might be worth a shot!
Perfect.
"I am very humble, and have much to be humble about". I believe this was what he said on election night. He paraphrased Mr. Churchill's comment about Mr. Attlee's modesty, without attribution. But why start now?
Thank you for classy sarcasm, as contrasted with my usually rude sarcasm aimed in the general direction of "liberals" and related crowds.
Another way of looking at the media issue is this - maybe control/destruction of media credibility was the whole point. Subsidize and make everyone beholding then the public realizes that the media is not really unbiased and they turn away so more money gets poured in and now the government has a captive 'propaganda' arm - "look inside yourself Rosemary" and promise more cash and suddenly the CBC can't say enough about their guy Mark and the rest join in.
One point missed in the article is that reporters now pretty much produce opinion pieces under the guise of reporting on politics. Facts are omitted or twisted in order to shape the narrative and credibility is lost. Too much 'reporting' has become cheering for one side of the spectrum - yes, the left.
The other sad fact is that the public has not kept up the ability to critically think about what it sees and reads. Time was we learned to critically think in school but now there is a lot of emphasis on woke ideology and simply accepting the narrative.
As a seventy year old I can't believe that it is my age group that supported the current government and that they could not see the stolen CPC policies that were being handed out as the LPC policy. Add in the easily proved lies from our current PM and his ability to turn 180 degrees from his life mission to this point and you have to believe that there will be a lot of ocean front property sold in Alberta and Saskatchewan in the next few years. Apparently the leopard does change its spots and once we believe that fallacy the George Orwell will be proven prophetic.
You can break down the whole toolbox of propaganda tactics when you look at our supposedly 'neutral' media outlets like G&M, CTV, CBC, and Global.
It's not just opinion pieces, which to be fair sometimes include those by contrary voices. It's what stories they decide to run, the prominence of those stories in both placement and duration on their online sites, which ones they present the unfiltered government press release and when and how they push back, when and how they present the "experts say" takes, who they choose to interview for perspective (often credentialed activists presented uncritically as experts), and when they present 'both sides' to an issue and leave it at that where one side is clearly bullshit.
It's a swirling vortex of insanity that adds up to what we just saw in election 2025, where the public was led around by the nose to vote on essentially fantasy issues while real problems evaporated from memory like mist, and it became even detrimental for parties (let's be real, one party) to even bring these up.
👏👏👏 You beat me to it! Cherry picking of which stories to run has been a staple of Pravda North for as long as I can remember. And the now heavily subsidized “private” Canadian media are now feeding at the other end of the same trough. I gave up on their news long ago. 20 minutes of daily scrolling through the “top 5 stories” email summaries from 6 or 7 news sources ranging from CNN to BBC to Fox to Al Jazeera to Global to the New York Times and Washington Post - “as others see us” works for me. Your mix may vary…
Add also Reuters. News as per CBC have had negative impact on my appetite and temper so I kicked it out over 15 years ago. Flamin' lefto-biased beneath contempt.
Stealing policies from another party is not a guaranteed electoral advantage. There's countless instances in Canadian politics of parties stealing policies from one another and reaping no political reward for it. The LPC copying some CPC policies does not absolve the CPC of blame for their own electoral loss.
You can debate the fairness of the Canadian media landscape, but the Conservatives more than any other party ran away from virtually all forms of public accountability. It's harder to expose media bias against the Conservatives (to whatever extent it exists) when the Conservatives have shown a systematic unwillingness to face any tough questions anywhere other than the leaders' debates.
Not only it is infuriating that the CBC gets this much funding, when their youtube numbers are dismal.
CBC news has over 4M subscribers yet barely any of the videos they posted in the last couple of days get more than a couple thousand views. Yet, comparatively tiny channels (JJ Mcullough and Northern Perspectives, just to pick two random ones) routinely get more views than the CBC.
Tells you everything you need to know.
I'm fully in favour of defunding the CBC from any public money, kill all the subsidies and let them sink or swim, but also realize that this will never happen.
There is solace in knowing that they will be the cause of their own demise and I'll be here to see them crash and burn, channeling my inner Gerson to cheer on the ensuing chaos.
Mr. Menzies' perspective is refreshing but fails to mention how the MSM has lost credibility, in parallel with expert opinion and the academy in general. If it was of value, people would watch, just not on cable. The Line and the others are not a source of fact, but of opinion. Like it, hate it, there are no pretensions, though we are subjected to the occasional self righteous rant. Like going to political church.
The CBC has imposed itself on my Roku, if anyone knows how to remove it inform me so I can save time.
Blacklock's is document journalism, so you have to form your own opinions when you read it. CBC is not fact-based. It's hugely opinion-based, starting with what they consider the public should know and not know.
I would add that there are Substacks out there in mid-sized and smaller centres that do straight news - city council etc. I just went with names I thought people would find familiar
The flaw in the enthusiasm for Mark Carney, as expressed by those screaming "Lead us, Daddy!" at Liberal rallies, is that he's just one man and his core expertise is finance and monetary policy. There's a lot of areas where Carney simply doesn't have a lot of knowledge or experience, and he can't micromanage every aspect of government in any case (not that Trudeau didn't try, leading to government paralyzed by the chokepoint of the PMO's limited bandwidth.)
Where Carney has gaps or lack of bandwidth, he's going to need to fall back on his cabinet, caucus, and the Liberal Party to address them. That means a default to the same Liberal policies and approaches that have been failing for a decade, and largely the same incompetent people who tried to implement them. We're basically left to hope that the impotence and ineptitude of the Liberals over the past 10 years was all attributable to Justin Trudeau, and that Mark Carney's leadership will lead to a renaissance in Liberal thinking and governance. I'm skeptical.
We voted for it. I’m baffled.
Carney's generous treatment of the publicly funded CBC says much about his attitude towards private enterprise. His additional taxpayer funding for what is already government funded media will allow the CBC to more effectively compete with private media for scare advertising dollars.
This is the first clear example of Carney's willingness to sacrifice Canadian private enterprise in favour of taxpayer funded and government controlled enterprise.
Correction, those born before 1960. In my entire adult life I have watched three shows on CBC, Hockey night in canada, but that moved to TSN, Thursday night news to see Rex Murphy at the end of the show, but he's dead now and Murdoch Mysteries, which has gotten stupid and I've quit watching. Nobody my generation watches CBC either, except the occasional at issue panel but thats lousy now too because it is an echo chamber, not a panel.
I think you're forgetting children's programming: the CBC has been drawing on a huge reservoir of goodwill built up by kids who grew up watching "The Friendly Giant", "Mr. Dress-Up", and Canadian Sesame Street. However, that ended over a generation ago.
But you’re missing that fine example of Canadian culture, “Coronation Street “! 😂
And Family Feud Canada!!!
No doubt Gerry D and the families are considered to be ‘Canadian Content’ 🙄
Not only that, but a fine example of Canadian culture. Where would we be without it?
Spending public money on things Canadians don’t want or need is a proud liberal tradition. It’s great for vote buying and opinion influencing but the one thing it doesn’t do is inform the public. As usual though, apathy reins large in Canada. Canadians will get there eventually but in the meantime, hard times are ahead.
it is essential for a healthy society to have access to objective, transparent and fully informed reporting. That means the reporters must have total job security, sufficient resources and accountability measures. The CBC is the only means to achieve this and therefore the last bastion of defense against the hyperpartisan-eager to please journalism we get from the unsubsidized (excluding Paul Wells and the Line, but there ability to expand into the mainstream is unlikely.)
A heathy society would have canned CBC long time ago. Canada has not been a healthy society for at least a couple of decades, so the obscenity called CBC not only gets to live, but gets to eat ever more scarce tax money.
Except they are in a fundamental (and possibly existential) conflict of interest with any politician who doesn't want to increase their funding. And most of their personnel hail from Ottawa and downtown Toronto, and share the political inclinations of those populations, enhanced by the political inclinations of those willing to work for a federal government agency and make it through a government DEI centric hiring process. Among other problems.
The ship has sailed on generously funded and job secure journalists who have no hand to feed them so don't have to worry about biting it. An essential role of media is to hold government to account, and government funding means government propaganda.
Sorry, but the state of for-profit media in the US makes it crystal clear how essential the CBC is. Our government should not give one cent to any organisation that is 51% or more owned outside of Canada. As soon as you mentioned Western Standard as "good information", the credibility of this article was gone.
Question: Why is foreign ownership inherently bad? It’s OK in the UK and USA so, what’s the difference. And, as an aside, the point of the article isn’t whether the CBC should exist but whether it should be allowed to exist as a publicly-funded commercial news and entertainment platform instead of as a pure play public entity.
I'm not sure foreign ownership in the US; FOX, for example, is something to brag about. All you get is a foreign editorial slant. I don't see that as a national benefit. It's no better in print media.
I took some time to think about the CBC. I think it should be operated in the exact same way Elections Canada is. Give it a mandate of what to do: promote accurate news, promote Canadian content, promote facts over opinion, and then let it do its thing. I don't think a cent should be granted to other media sources who will have to figure out their own new economic model. No, it's not a level playing field. No, it's not far. But misinformation is, IMHO, the greatest threat to democracy it has ever faced; see any White House press briefing. We're dealing with nations involved heavily in feeding us lies. The 24-hour news cycle is a factual disaster where getting the story out first matters more than getting it out right.
I think there needs to be a place to go and get facts. While for-profit media has a role to play in verification, I think we need a source that isn't just in it for the money. That means an independent, well-funded arms arms-length CBC.
Understood. I just don’t see that foreign perspective reflected in media in the UK or US where if they don’t serve domestic audiences, they don’t earn revenue. I do see it, however, on cable where the nation is flooded with foreign news, sports and entertainment programming on American-based networks. Banning that might get to where you want to go. Otherwise I guess we’re back to the 1930s
I guess I'm more concerned with what they are serving to domestic audiences. Again, FOX is my go-to. But I still remember when the CBC had correspondents all over Europe; not just one person in London as a clearing house. Cable and the internet have removed any government control over what people can watch. They can't ban anything. Smart people will work around it faster than the government can respond. But wouldn't it be nice to have a news source where your first thought was "I need to fact-check this"? That's where I'd like to get to.
The CRTC can ban cable channels. It is pondering an application to ban Fox
It gets grey pretty quickly. I'd be surprised if they do simply because of pressure from Washington. I'm not sure that's the hill Canada wants to die on. People are supposed to be smart enough to separate fact from fiction. But it takes work now, in a way it never used to. I'm sure AI will follow the internet as tools of great possibility being used for evil. Agent 86, Maxwell Smart would not approve :)
This Boomer grandparent never goes near a TV set. I rely on CBC for reliable news and analysis, however, on You Tube. We access what we choose on our mobile devices powered by excellent digital service in our rural area.
CBCs value in English Canada remains in commercial free AM\FM Radio, Northern service and potentially a 24 hour commercial free TV news service aligned with a not for profit (no ads) online news service.
An argument can also be made for a commercial free children's programming, documentary, news and niche sports TV channel (PBS North?)
Any remaining CBC assets and programs should be sold to the private sector.
Ad revenue just cuts into the survival of the commercial (currently less subsidized) networks.
You can't have the public funded broadcaster in competition with others for ad dollars and expect a reasonable evolution of product.
There are a number of reasons why the CBC should exist including emergency broadcast transmissions, service announcements, and universal access. With respect to political commentary and culture however they are the elephant in the room. The values they reflect seem to be their own values rather than the collective values of all Canadians.
Given the scathing commentary on Conservatives during the last election and the actual performance of the Conservatives, the cracks in the facade are starting to show however.
Not being a dick here but genuinely curious. What do you think the CBC could offer in terms of emergency alerts that the current emergency alerting system doesn’t?
This is mostly inferred but in the valley we are in we get one commercial station intermittently but continuous coverage with Radio 1. Northern areas often have zero coverage without CBC it seems. This is mostly nuclear bomb, earthquake, etc. stuff which is not visible. The cell network is often dependent on the internet as well and there could be attacks which screw it up. I would assume most commercial systems would not cover this.
I get that. But the emergency system currently interrupts all over the air, cable and satellite broadcasts to deliver alerts and other information and has now expanded to texts on mobile devices. It did so with Covid and has done so successfully with tornado, flood and tsunami alerts. I am struggling to understand why this expectation is necessary on top of this and CRTC licensing expectations and why extra money would be necessary.
I am not sure what CRTC licensing expectations include but I would assume they would not include acts of war or broader scale emergencies ie. the Chinese invade Vancouver.
The emergency alerting system covers all that. I just find it odd that the govt seems oblivious to its existence. Certainly the CBC should play a role but I can’t recall a time when it has failed to do so.
The CBC has been around a long time and often organizations pick up rolls that are nondescript but essential. From a corporate perspective, I have seen companies eliminate a whole department and then realize there was a roll they were doing which was essential. I tend to look at the CBC as deserving a budget of $1 B or $25 per capita but not more ( maybe less?). This is what the average person may pay for a subscription to a news service.
ps. thanks for the discussion!
No other country in the world has men like Ian Hanomansing and Andrew Chang who do their best to objectively inform us. Hyper partisan private media (looking at you, Rebel and Western Standard) fuels the anger to turn us against them. It's not right.
Any funding increase to CBC should be immediately scrapped and the funding delivered to DND. CBC ... release your ratings SVP.