T.L. Morrisey

Showing posts with label CBC is bloated and obese. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CBC is bloated and obese. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 30, 2023

The CBC, Pyongyang, North Korea


May as well be a CBC news reader 


In 1936, the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission (CRBC) became the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), which was a crown corporation. The CBC had a better organizational structure, more secure funding through the use of a licence fee on receiving sets (initially set at $2.50), and less vulnerability to political pressure.[84] When Bennett's Conservatives were governing and the Liberals were in Opposition, the Liberals accused the network of being biased towards the Conservatives. During the 1935 election campaign, the CRBC broadcast a series of 15 minutes soap operas called Mr. Sage which were critical of King and the Liberal Party. Decried as political propaganda, the incident was one factor in King's decision to replace the CRBC.[85]

                                                --from the Wiki page for Prime Minister MacKenzie-King 


So, right from the start the CBC has been accused of being biased, but it has never been as bloated and obese as it is now, $1.5B a year government subsidy--radio, television, cable, podcasts, and internet--and a history of being accused of bias. But it has also never been as biased as it is now with its woke, progressive agenda. 

    At times, it seems the CBC is the alter-ego of Justin Trudeau and it is then that I feel the CBC is broadcasting from some hermit kingdom, Ottawa, Ontario, always oblivious to their audience and persistent in promoting their woke causes. Maybe it is Pyongyang, North Korea, Justin likes dictators like Fidel Castro or the president of China and, like Justin, the CBC have no consideration for the audience, no consideration of service to their public, no consideration to tell us anything about Canada that actually exists, in fact no respect for  Canadians, no history, no religion and no religious broadcasts, not even any  programmes on Indigenous spirituality and culture, no programmes on the history of Quebec or Quebec culture, very little about any part of Canada outside of Toronto, no cultural regional broadcasts of concerts (as you will hear on BBC Radio Three, concerts recorded in regional Quebec), nothing on the culture of Canada unless it's Toronto-centric and biased and woke and progressive, no idea of the daily life of average Canadians, no programmes about the values of Canadians, nothing about the history and people they now demean as "European settlers" just as they demean pregnant women as "pregnant people"; but if a statue of Sir John A. Macdonald or Queen Victoria is being pulled down or splattered with paint, they'll be there rooting for the protesters, promoting the cause, condemning historical figures who helped build the country so that entities like the CBC can exist, doing all they can to attack the country under their three categories of interest: diversity, gender fluidity, and climate change. Do I exaggerate? Of course I exaggerate to make my point, but I am not exaggerating too much. 

    Considering how much money they get the CBC ratings are not good. If you want "news" and not opinion, watch CTV News, Global, or one of the other networks; maybe watch PBS Newshour or listen to the BBC World Service. A lot of money is being spent on the CBC's National News on cable, every night these people are seen jet setting to remote parts of the world to report on climate change or gender fluidity; I've seen them deep sea diving to report on the coral reefs, visiting London to interview Princess Anne, at the South Pole to report on climate change, and elsewhere; it isn't cheap, it's expensive.

    And I remember Wendy Mesley, a former Montrealer and one of the CBC's finest journalists, who was forced out of the CBC; as it was reported, she mentioned the French title of a 1968 book by Pierre Vallières that alludes to the "N" word, she was trying to educate these Toronto people at the CBC, but this made them feel uncomfortable and not safe.  I remember, as well, one of the CBC's woke dramas -- all of their dramas are woke -- in which high school girls were having fits and convulsions because of some illness, as far as I could make out, it was called "conversion" (maybe this drama sailed over my head); it took a while but it seems, without actually saying it, that the "conversion" these girls were reacting to was related to their sexuality, their gender fluidity, and then they trotted out soil pollution as the cause. Go figure. Meanwhile, on the other networks, not a word about woke or progressive causes, just Hudson and Rex and Private Eyes, entertainment that entertains, not propaganda disguised as drama. The CBC has even turned Murdoch Mysteries into a woke drama; is Heartland next to go? 

    When a broadcaster, like the CBC, whether it is Pravda in Moscow or Granma in Havana, or the harridan yelling the news on North Korean television, begins with a conclusion and a premise, it is not news, it is opinion, it is biased. I know there are good reporters at the CBC, Wendy Mesley was one of them as is Andrew Nichols, David Common, and Natasha Fatah. The CBC is Toronto, GTA-centric, they seem to think that Toronto represents Canada and their progressive and woke opinions are Canadian values, but they aren't. And if you watch the evening news on cable CBC, with its woman announcer, good luck seeing even one man reporting, it is a no man zone, it has become a mostly woman news broadcast. It all speaks to an exhausted corporation that is on the downward slide.

Tuesday, July 11, 2023

Hold the Line by Tamara Lich, a review

                                                         


Hold the Line, My story from the heart of the Freedom Convoy

Tamara Lich

Rebel News Network, Ltd., 2023

ISBN: 9781990583025

 

If you don't write down your story, no one will write it down for you, or if they do they might leave you out or change what really happened. Tamara Lich's Hold the Line is both her story and the story of the Freedom Covoy, it's about her participation in organizing the Freedom Convoy, travelling across Canada in winter, the arrival in Ottawa and several weeks of demonstrations against Covid-19 mandates, then being arrested and incarcerated. This is Tamara Lich's version of what happened; it isn't the mainstream media's version of this historical event, or the government's version, or Justin Trudeau's versio, they all vilified the Freedom Convoy from the beginning.   

    What was the Freedom Convoy protesting? It began by opposing vaccine mandates and vaccine passports but, I suspect, it soon grew to opposing Justin Trudeau and how he was transforming the country into something unrecognizable to average Canadians. Among other things, Covid-19 mandates restricted our freedom of movement, promoted mandatory vaccinations, required a vaccination passport if you wanted to travel by air or rail, and required a period of quarantine when returning to Canada from outside of the country. In Quebec Covid-19 mandates included a nightly curfew, the streets were deserted between 8 p.m. and 5 a.m. the following day; what did Quebec's curfew achieve? Nothing at all. 

    The day after the Freedom Convoy arrived in Ottawa the mainstream media began demonizing the Convoy. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation began its daily misinformation about the Convoy; this included the alleged "desecration" of the Terry Fox statue that Tamara Lich mentions in her book. On the second day of the protest the CBC interviewed various people on what they thought the Convoy was all about. One elderly man was on the verge of supporting the Convoy until the announcer said that members of the Convoy had "desecrated" the Terry Fox statue and that they had Nazi flags, none of it true; of course, he then opposed the Freedom Convoy. This is only one example of how the mainstream media let us all down with their biased reporting. Tamara Lich writes:

We exposed the Liberal friendly mainstream media for its agenda and its lies. People across Canada, and around the world, could see how the CBC, the Toronto Star, CTV, The Globe and Mail and many others were working to vilify peaceful protesters in servicc to a corrupt prime minister who writes their bailout cheques. For every honest journalist -- and there were some -- there were a dozen or more who were out to call us Nazis or violent criminals, or claiming we were foreign agents or trying to overthrow the government. (218)                           

    Every evening during the Freedom Convoy I watched live streaming of the demonstration on YouTube; I wanted to know as much about it as possible. Every evening I watched as someone walked the downtown streets of Ottawa interviewing people, and what I saw didn't correspond with what the legacy media was reporting; but it did give an idea of what the truckers and the Convoy were all about. The first night there were perhaps a few hundred viewers of these live streams, by the end there was a nightly audience of fifty thousand, that shows the scale and importance of the Freedom Convoy; it was an event of worldwide interest. I was very impressed by what I saw; I didn't see any violence, I didn't hear much or any horn honking by truckers, I saw what I came to think of as a Freedom Festival. And where was Justin? He was hiding in his country home north of Ottawa.

    I wonder what would have happened had Justin walked among the protesters? This is not a rhetorical question or an attempt at humour. I doubt Justin would have been physically accosted, he would have been yelled at, but after the Emergency Act was enforced protesters were physically accosted and knocked to the ground by police officers on horseback. The police were following orders. Maybe, in the early days of the Convoy, Justin could have shown some courage and people would have been truly impressed -- go out and meet citizens with a grievance against the government -- but he doesn't have it in his makeup, and no one is impressed by Justin's relentless publicity seeking, his dancing onstage in India, his black face, his costumes, his bungee jumping, his relentless selfies, his singing a Queen song the evening before the Queen's funeral, his apologies, his taking the knee, his inviting illegal immigrants to enter Canada at Roxham Road, and lots more. It's disingenuous, it's all fake with this man, and it's obvious to the average person how false it is. 

   I always thought one of the hidden reasons for enacting the Emergency Act were the Fuck Trudeau flags; I even saw them in Montreal. Justin is narcissistic and the Emergency Act was his revenge for these many flags. It's not as though there was rioting in the streets as we saw recently in Paris after a young man was killed by the police; the demonstration in Ottawa was inconvenient for many local residents of Ottawa, but there was no violence. And then things got worse, despite their peaceful assembly, the police attacked the demonstrators; they broke car windshields with impunity, they arrested people, including Tamara Lich and others. The government froze people's bank accounts, and this is one of the most egregious acts committed by this bogus use of the Emergency Act; how are mortgages and rents to be paid, groceries purchased, life to be lived with no money? We also saw the banks colluding with and supporting the government. The Emergency Act was as bogus and unnecessary as the Covid mandates were, all a scam testing the public's tolerance for government intervention and control of average people's lives. All of it a scam.

    Hold the Line is an important book and I recommend it, buy a copy and read it! Tamara Lich is not self-promoting, she is giving us, the reader, her true story, and I believe her. On one of the night's of the live stream the man behind the camera entered a tent where a meeting of Freedom Convoy members was just ending. And at the end of the meeting the people assembled stood and said a prayer. I can tell you it was unexpected and deeply moving; these demonstrators that the media and politicians demonized are our fellow Canadians. I doubt there were any meetings of Justin, Freeland, Lametti, Joly, and Mendocino, all government ministers, who have lied to us, betrayed us (especially the English-speaking population of Quebec) that ended with a communal prayer and a statement affirming what they were doing and looking for guidance other than the shallow leadership of Justin Trudeau. 

 

Notes and After Thoughts: 

1. The other event that is similar to the Freedom Convoy is the 1935 protest against Depression conditions and the Trek across the country from Vancouver where unemployed men boarded freight trains; they were stopped in Regina and negotiations with Ottawa began but when the RCMP tried to arrest the leaders they were met with protesters and the Regina Riot began. The site of the Regina Riot is now a historic site. One day the Freedom Convoy will be similarly looked upon and Tamara Lich and the other Freedom Convoy organizers and participants will be recognized as national historical figures; there will be a plaque or statue located on the site of the demonstrations.

2. Tamara Lich is an intelligent and articulate woman; listen to Jordan Peterson's podcast interview with her; she is brilliant! She could run for a seat in the House of Commons for the Conservative Party of Canada, but it may be a big mistake.

3.    Who opposed the Convoy? It included the Liberal and NDP supporters, it was the mainstream media, and it was the managerial class of Canadians who are quick to protect their elite position in society. As an example of this, Tamara Lich's Hold the Line is not for sale at Indigo Books, whether online or in their stores: this is more evidence for why we need to write down or record our own story and publish it online or in print, if you can't read about the Freedom Convoy then it's as though it never happened. Indigo, their book stores and online, a failing business, were quick to cancel Hold the Line by not selling it; but it is not up to a company selling books to decide what we can or cannot read, and the Canadian book industry should be ashamed by their silence on this issue of censoring a Canadian book. However, Tamara Lich's book is for sale on Amazon, a highly successful American company these same liberals love to condemn, in fact it is a bestselling, number one, book; to be a best seller on Amazon requires selling 3.5 thousand to five thousand copies of a book in a twenty-four hour period, and Holding the Line did this despite fake negative reviews on the Amazon website, they were fake because these negative reviews were written before the book was even published. Hold the Line has mostly five star reviews, this is based on over one thousand reviews and book sales. It is still the number one best seller in Canadian biographies on Amazon. I would estimate, conservatively, that Amazon has sold over 25,000 copies of the book.  It is a best seller in Canadian publishing despite the haters, those in the liberal media who pretend the book doesn't exist.

4. In a blog post (31 January 2023) on defunding the CBC, I wrote: 

CBC's biased reporting can slip over into being reporting of even greater dubious value; that is, news has become interpretation, bias, and even falsehood. An example: the second day of the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa, in January 2022, CBC announcers would mention that two monuments in Ottawa had been "desecrated" by the demonstrators and they've kept repeating this story; among other things, it effectively cowed people they were interviewing into opposing the Freedom Convoy. It was ammo they could use against the Freedom Convoy. But the CBC has a double standard, it has never referred to beheading, toppling, or throwing paint on statues of our first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, or Queen Victoria, or Egerton Ryerson as "desecrating" these statues because the CBC sympathizes and agrees with the demonstrators who defaced, destroyed, and desecrated statues of these historical figures. The use of the word "desecrate" is also interesting, it is loaded with innuendo and exaggerates the demonstrators' action which was to drape a Canadian flag on the shoulders of the statue of Terry Fox. The CBC assumes an agreement in values between itself and its audience but I suggest that most Canadians are good and fair-minded people who don't identify as much with the values CBC promotes as the CBC thinks. The CBC wasn't always this way; the CBC used to help unify the country and be known for excellence in broadcasting. Now it's come to the point that the sooner they are defunded the better for the country.

5.  Back in 1968, some people at the St. Jean Baptiste Parade in Montreal threw bottles at Justin's father, Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau; what did Pierre do? The other politicians ran but Pierre stayed on the podium; he had some courage while his son, years later, had no courage; during the Convoy Justin was like Waldo, he couldn't be found, he was in-hiding in his country home.

6.    Those who supported the Freedom Convoy have been demonized by Justin Trudeau and the mainstream media as ignorant, extremist, racist and biased, but to read Tamara Lich's book is to find a voice speaking the truth about the Freedom Convoy. We now live in a country where to say you are favour of freedom is to be labelled an extremist; in fact, Justin Trudeau is the extremist.

7. Cancelling someone used to be called character assassination; you can see the CBC and other media doing this regarding Premier Higgs of New Brunswick. 

8. My family was always Liberal; in the 1920s two relatives were Members of Parliament from New Brunswick; as a family we always voted Liberal, never Conservative. It was only when Justin Trudeau became prime minister that I began thinking outside of the Liberal box. The years of his administration have been a disaster for Canada and I am not sure we will recover as a nation from what he has done.

                                                     10 July 2023

Wednesday, February 22, 2023

The impoverishment of language

 


1.

Everywhere life is being reduced, flattened out, and the variety and multiplicity of life is lessened. Small communities are absorbed into cities and cities into a megalopolis; the nation state is being absorbed into larger economic and military alliances, it's only a matter of time before the nation state disappears. And what is the motivation for reducing life, flattening it out, lessening the variety of everyday life? Someone's getting rich, someone else is getting more powerful; and the rest of us are losing out. 


2.

Not too many years ago, North American workers saw their jobs moved to other countries where wages are one tenth or less of what was paid to workers here. American workers were told they would have to "recycle" themselves, but this didn't happen, it was an optimistic and false plan from the beginning. It was a flattening out of society, making more people poor, and a reduction of the number of jobs and the variety of jobs, it was a diminishment of the diversity of jobs here. There was also nothing for these people to recycle themselves to, there were no better jobs for them to move up to even if they did reeducate themselves; it was a fairly cynical move on the part of business and government leaders, they were laughing behind their hands. It was enforced poverty on a segment of society that had worked hard and in the past would have moved to middle class status. Some of these former workers ended up unemployed or homeless or on drugs. Some moved on to work for fast food restaurants and some now drive for Uber or Door Dash delivering food for these same restaurants.


3.

Political and economic changes begin with language, with words, and it can be seen all around us. Words are censored, given new meanings, or deleted from the way we speak when they challenge a political agenda that would control the population. People are now afraid to say what they think and feel and justifiably so; now everyone's concerned they aren't politically correct. Certain words aren't allowed to be said. Certain thoughts and ideas aren't allowed to be expressed; you will suffer condemnation, loss of position in society, perhaps your employment, you will be excommunicated, you will be cancelled. Better to shut up and hope for a better future or else you might disappear from your profession, your friends, your old life. The people who forbid freedom of speech used to be the people who championed free speech, now they are the most vociferous opponents of free speech. 


4.

Consider that our vocabulary has fewer words, fewer long words, than the vocabulary of people just fifty years ago; with this loss of vocabulary we lose the nuance of expressing sophisticated ideas, we lose how to describe things, whether material or emotional, we become language deprived. The vocabulary of the Victorians was more sophisticated than our present day speech; children today have difficulty reading children's books from the Victorian or Edwardian Age, everywhere people have been dummed down. We've become fat and stupid. An obvious example is the revising of Roald Dahl's books, censoring them according to Woke preconceptions which, basically, dumb people down to the same already low level. The King James Version of the Bible is thought to be too difficult for people to read, in fact the vocabulary of the 1611 translation of the Bible is fairly easy to read and is beautifully written; but read the King James Version? Read Chaucer? Read Milton? Read Shakespeare? Read Walt Whitman and William Blake? They're all by dead white men and their books are heading to the municipal dump.


5. 

While our vocabulary today has fewer words what we're allowed to say and what we aren't allowed to say has also been reduced, made subject to what is politically correct. It is made difficult because the politically correct are in the ascendant and they have become mainstream, their ideas have been normalized. I noticed a news broadcaster on CBC, only yesterday, when he mentioned President Trump, he referred to him as "Trump" and he sneered and assumed the audience agreed that Trump deserved this visual and audible condemnation; this television announcer could hardly be criticized, after all, his middle class audience most likely agree with him or why would they be watching the biased CBC news? Whether or not Trump deserves to be sneered at is not my point, it is the underlying assumption of a government employee on a national television network that is subsidized with taxpayers' money expressing a biased opinion on what purports to be a factual reporting of the news. Politically correct assumptions supercede common sense and truth. We may think that government is benevolent because Justin Trudeau keeps telling us that Canadians want to be "safe", but government's motive is power and social control. Forget about being "safe", we all know that "safe" in life doesn't exist.

Note: Revised and edited on 23 February 2023.

Tuesday, January 31, 2023

On defunding the CBC

 

On the CBC:

The jaded public wants to be amused; journalists have to eat well. Reducing issues to personalities is useful to the ruling class. The "news" now functions to legitimize power, not to convey information. The politics of personalities helps the legitimizers to divert attention from issues that might upset the status quo. (7)

The Conservatives also justifiably felt that the CBC, then as today, gave too great prominence to the Liberal view of Canada. (19)

                                                        --George Grant, Lament for a Nation (1965) 



1.  That was then

For many years I listened to CBC radio; I was proud to be Canadian and the CBC was a part of what made me a proud Canadian. In the early-1970s I listened to Anthology on CBC radio on Saturday evenings; I listened to Morley Callaghan, Kildare Dobbs, Hugh Garner, Al Purdy, bill bissett, and other poets, novelists, and playwrights. I listened to Ideas, founded by Phyllis Webb, and heard talks given by Northrop Frye and Louis Dudek, among others; I first heard of John Glassco's Memoirs of Montparnasse on CBC radio. After hearing interviews with Ivan Illich I read his books and was introduced to a fascinating thinker and writer. I listened to Music and Metaphor weeknights at midnight, they combined poems with music and some years later I listened to a French language version of this same show on Radio Canada.  For many years when I drove to work and when I returned home from work I listened to CBC radio, they were great companions during this daily drive, the programme hosts felt like friends. This was excellent broadcasting.


2.  this is now

I rarely listen to CBC radio and, as for CBC television, I was never a fan and now even less so; this is because their dramas and news shows are often based on an assumption of the correctness of woke values. Whether it is television drama or the news, the CBC filters what they broadcast through climate change, diversity, and gender fluidity. Of course, this does not apply to all of the news items, but their bias is always ready to be included in some news item. As a part of this, they are contemptuous of anyone not woke or who disagrees with them. They don't seem to care that most Canadians don't follow their preconceptions about contemporary society. They do not support Canadian values, they do not represent Canada's history or traditions, it is usually propaganda for Justin Trudeau. 


3.  AIH

Lately, while eating supper, I've begun to listen to As it Happens, on CBC radio; in the past it was always entertaining, it aimed for some humour with interviews of different people. But AIH today is nothing like the old AIH, it's become annoying and woke and it isn't interesting or entertaining; even the new host sounds bored; maybe it's now intended to be educational . . . Gone are the days of Barbara Frum and the announcers who followed her; Frum was always entertaining, intelligent, and humourous; recently Frum's interview with HowardBallard, who owned the Toronto Maple Leafs hockey team, was replayed decades after it was first broadcast, this was in response to Jason Priestly's documentary on Ballard; Ballard wouldn't even be interviewed today, he would have been cancelled long before his passing. 


4.  Morningside

I used to listen to Morningside, broadcast every day from 9 to 12 noon; that programme ended years ago but it was a great format and it was always great radio; gone are the days of Peter Gzowski and other hosts (like Don Harron or Judy LaMarsh); there is no place in the present CBC for intelligent people like Barbara Frum or Peter Gzowski. Or Wendy Mesley who was driven out of the CBC by the zealously politically correct at the CBC. These announcers and programmes were a part of my life and I remember them with fondness and affection. Just think, they got rid of Morningside with its various intelligent hosts who interviewed equally intelligent guests and they gave us "Q" and something called "Commotion". The level of intelligence and ability to entertain has plummeted. No, it's beyond "plummeted", it is no longer the CBC we used to listen to and love, no longer the CBC that built a relationship with listeners; this new manifestation of the CBC is some new manifestation of mostly white, woke, people living in the GTA who know nothing about Canada and don't like Canadians. 


5.  bloated 

My values, not the CBC's, include frugality and being careful with money, including with somebody else's money; the CBC's values include profligacy and actual contempt for the tax payers who pay their way. Just recently the CBC was given $40M dollars in Covid relief; they get $1.2B dollars in subsidy a year and when necessary it is topped up to keep them going. They cannot pay their own way, they were never self-supporting in the past and Canadians never expected them to be self-supporting, they had a mission, to inform, educate, and entertain Canadians; they are now indecently bloated and obese, they have a woke bias, and there is no effort to economize when the national debt is out of control; how can we feel we're all in this together when both the Federal government and their representative, the CBC, continue to spend our tax money when the country is deeper and deeper in debt? While Canadians struggle, the CBC spends.


6.   and obese

Think about the following for bloated: there are two radio networks, Radio One and CBC Music, in every region and city in Canada, which means several dozen radio stations across the country and each broadcasting some original content; CBC television produces most of its own content and has television stations, fully staffed, across the country; CBC News Network, on 24 hours a day, on cable television, with its cohort of announcers and reporters; CBC Gem which streams CBC content and some new programmes that are too woke to be on mainstream CBC and would not be acceptable to most Canadians; CBC News Explore, a new manifestation of waste, is a part of Gem, it's the latest extravagance and its difficult to see why it exists but we are encouraged to watch it because it's "free" (this is especially galling to taxpayers who know it's not "free", we're paying for this); there are CBC podcasts, made at our expense and advertised on CBC television; and there is CBC on the internet which includes CBC News, CBC Listen, and CBC on YouTube. There is also Radio Canada, the French language radio, television, and internet broadcasting network paid for by taxpayers. Radio Canada International was popular on short wave radio and later on the internet but it was jettisoned; and, increasingly, there are broadcasts in indigenous languages. Each of these manifestations of CBC has numerous employees; in fact, you can see these employees in the background when we see a broadcast from one of their numerous regional news offices. Radio Canada has a limited presence across the country. 


7.   Biased

CBC's biased reporting can slip over into being reporting of even greater dubious value; that is, news has become interpretation, bias, and even falsehood. An example: the second day of the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa, in January 2022, CBC announcers would mention that two monuments in Ottawa had been "desecrated" by the demonstrators and they've kept repeating this story; among other things, it effectively cowed people they were interviewing into opposing the Freedom Convoy. It was ammo they could use against the Freedom Convoy. But the CBC has a double standard, it has never referred to beheading, toppling, or throwing paint on statues of our first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, or Queen Victoria, or Egerton Ryerson as "desecrating" these statues because the CBC sympathizes and agrees with the demonstrators who defaced, destroyed, and desecrated statues of these historical figures. The use of the word "desecrate" is also interesting, it is loaded with innuendo and exaggerates the demonstrators' action which was to drape a Canadian flag on the shoulders of the statue of Terry Fox. The CBC assumes an agreement in values between itself and its audience but I suggest that most Canadians are good and fair-minded people who don't identify as much with the values CBC promotes as the CBC thinks. The CBC wasn't always this way; the CBC used to help unify the country and be known for excellence in broadcasting. Now it's come to the point that the sooner they are defunded the better for the country.

In yesterday's Montreal Gazette (30 March 2023) it was reported that a synagogue in the Plateau neighbourhood of Montreal had been "defaced", note the word "defaced" which is used to describe that swastikas were painted on the front of the synagogue, Congregation Temple Solomon. This is more than defacement, this is desecration. The CBC used the word "desecrate" to describe draping a Canadian flag on the statue of a secular figure and have misused the word "desecration" in order to convince the public that the alleged crime was more serious than it actually was and to demonize the Freedom Convoy demonstrators. But by appropriating and misusing the word "desecrate" they have lowered its value, all in the name of their own bias. The synagogue was both desecrated and it was defaced, it is a hate crime. What was done to the statue was minor; but I heard, on day two of the demonstration, on CBC television, one elderly man who was being interviewed by the CBC regarding this incident, he wavered in condemning the Freedom Convoy and then, after hearing that the statue was "desecrated", he opposed the Freedom Convoy. Who could possibly be in favour of "desecrating" a statue of Terry Fox? 

Yet another reason this alleged "desecration" is bogus is that there was no public outcry against the Freedom Convoy for having draped a Canadian flag on the Terry Fox statue. No one cared. Draping a flag on a statue is not to desecrate that statue; there was no outpouring of anger against the Freedom Convoy after this act was reported by the CBC, it was minor. Swastikas painted on a synagogue is to desecrate that religious building. 

 

8.

These people at CBC are so biased and entitled they can't comprehend any criticism, they can't understand that the public no longer supports their biased reporting. They have taken a public broadcaster and turned it into their little fiefdom, given themselves raises, enjoyed their special status and assumed it is the norm and what they deserve; they assume they can do no wrong, but they have lost all connection to the basic tenets of news broadcasting. Had anything been wrong they would have reported it and since criticism of the CBC doesn't appear on their website or in what they broadcast, then it doesn't exist. There are exceptions, excellent exceptions, and their presence makes the CBC News Network worth watching. 

"A 2017 survey of Canadians suggested that CBC TV was the most biased national news media outlet (perceived biased by 50% of Canadians overall, tied with The Globe and Mail) followed closely by CBC Radio (perceived biased by 49% of Canadians overall)." From "CBC News" on Wikipedia.

9.

Google these newspaper articles: "CBC Paid its Employees $16M in Bonuses in 2022: Documents". (10 March 2023)

"Plenty of sunshine for CBC employees". (23 February 2023)

There is something repulsive about people getting bonuses when the rest of the population gets impoverished. As I said, "bloated and obese".


10. Twitter 

Thomas Mulcair, former leader of the Federal NDP, states that the CBC is biased in its reporting, biased in favour of the Liberal Party of Canada. It is not a secret, it is common knowledge.

Refer to George Grant's statement above, that Conservatives felt the CBC "gave too great prominence to the Liberal view of Canada." Even in 1965 this was obvious. It is preposterous to think that the CBC ever gave too much prominence to the Conservative view of Canada. They never did and they never will. Entitled people tend to be smug and not consider that anyone might not agree with how great they are . . . 

Considering that the present NDP has a third party status and buoys up the Liberals, it is curious how many interviews and press conferences feature Jagmeet Singh (talk about over exposure!), the leader of the NDP, and how seldom we see or even hear from Pierre Poilievre; maybe Poilievre doesn't give press conferences (his mistake), but that Singh is interviewed as often as he is, when he has so little to say, and he supports the Liberals, it seems obvious that the CBC's Liberal bias extends to those who support the Liberal Party. This should be embarrassing for Singh because it denies his independence as a politician. (18.04.2023)


11.

Compare CTV's news website to that of the CBC; one (CTV) is straight reporting of the news; the other, that of the CBC, is a combination of opinion and news, some of it biased news, news promoting the causes of the CBC -- climate change, diversity, inclusion -- as well as other news. Seeing the CBC's reporting of Twitter's labeling of the CBC as "government funded news" is to see a bloated and obese corporation defending itself for being bloated and obese, and denying the obvious, that it is government funded. 


12.

My God, even the CBC news panels are usually comprised of people associated with the Liberals, hold liberal biases, are related to people who are prominent Liberals, or have worked for the Trudeau Foundation. The assumption of the panels is that their liberal position is commonly held and self-evident. These are panels of informed journalists and experts commenting on the Liberal Party; they are well-informed, intelligent, and inclined to agreeing with a liberal bias. 


13.

When defunding the CBC is mentioned by the CBC it is with a gasp, as in how could anyone think of such a thing? The CBC is perfect as it is and Poilievre began this crazed mania to defund the state sponsored corporation, but he didn't. The CBC's bias, if not in everything they say, is present in the way they say it. 


13.

Watch the CBC News Network from, let's say, 6 a.m. to 3 p.m., and it's an almost all woman network; the host is a woman and she refers to women reporters; an example: a murder occurs in Montreal and this is mentioned by the host who then goes to another reporter, a woman somewhere in darkest Toronto, and this second woman reporter reads what happened in Montreal, but she obviously knows nothing about Montreal and all she knows about the murder is what she is reading. Why not have the announcer read this news and save the cost of a second reporter? It is also cringe worthy to have what is basically an all woman news network like this. Their bias isn't necessarily only in what they say but is present in the way they say it and in who says it. Is the mostly woman network payback on the men from when there were mainly men running the news rooms? It is no longer this way but these CBC announcers act as though this is still the case. 


14.

Does anyone watch the new CBC News Explore channel? There must be stats on how many people watch this new station since it's only online. Basically, the main problem with CBC News Explore is that it is boring and irrelevant. CBC News Explore was never needed or wanted except by the CBC. I want to know the ratings for CBC News Explore and I suggest that it is very low, daily in the hundreds. CBC News Explore is like CBC's podcasts, the talent pool is running dry but they continue to expand, and it shows in the quality of production. 


15.

The CBC is doing so much that is wrong, beginning by going woke. They have ditched popular shows, like Randy Bachman's, and replaced it with popular music that anyone can hear on privately-run FM stations. BTW, the BBC has the same type of show as Randy Bachman had, it is hosted by Iggy Pop on Radio Three and, like Bachman's, it is very popular. But the CBC is smug, too smug for their own good and Randy Bachman is an old white man, which means he had to go. The CBC should also listen to Walter Parker's daily five hours of classical music on Vermont Public radio, an excellent programme; they should learn something about their audience and radio. 


16.

But they're too entitled and full of themselves. They seem to think the world revolves around a few blocks in downtown Toronto. The problem is that the psyche of an organization or an individual comes across very clearly to other people and the psyche of the CBC is no longer attractive, no longer interesting, no longer of creative people with a desire to communicate something important to their audience. It is of people who think they know better than everyone else. Yes, there is some excellent journalism at the CBC but the psyche is present in other ways, it is a bloated and obese psyche. It is the psyche of people who think they know better than everyone else and no one is permitted to question what they say or their self-belief. Did you see the At Issue panel last night (20 April 2023) when the question of Twitter and the CBC came up? When one panelist suggested that all was not well with the CBC the face of the host was displeased, stony, and because the psyche is always exposed, she was not happy, she appeared angry. Sometimes organizations need to be shaken up and renewed. It's that time for the CBC. Get rid of Catherine Tait who complained about Pierre Poilievre, she has no business commenting on political parties. (21 April 2023)


17.

I could go on and on. The CBC is just not worth $1.2B. 


Note: this has been edited and added, and updated, since it was first posted. (26.04.2023)