After decades of neo-liberal assault, our public institutions are in sad shape, none more so than CBC. A recently leaked survey of 24 CBC national radio reporters revealed that 95 percent felt morale was lower than it had ever been during their careers. Yes, 24 is a small sample for any survey, but this one reflects a deep crisis at Canada’s largest journalistic institution. Believe me, I know, having toiled for two decades in the Mother Corp’s trenches as a national reporter and producer overseeing major network radio programs such as The World at Six, World Report and The House. My ears and eyes tell me CBC journalism is getting steadily weaker. The leaked survey simply confirms it.
“We are dumbing down,” said one reporter. “Things are more superficial.”
“There’s no time available to investigate or research,” another complained. “Much of the work we’ve done in the past that won awards and acclaim would never get done today.” These typical comments should worry everyone, even those who don’t listen to or watch CBC news. Daily journalism is getting weaker everywhere. Here in Halifax, the once feeble Herald is feebler still after slashing a quarter of its news staff. Its only daily print competitor is an anemic freebie that calls itself “The world’s largest global newspaper.” It’s not for a lack of good, talented journalists—they just aren’t being given the time or freedom to do their jobs. News staffs at all of Halifax’s broadcast outlets are laughably thin after more than a decade of cuts and hiring freezes.
CBC is no exception. Ten years ago, CBC Halifax cut its TV supper-hour news in half and gutted the staff. Ratings fell to near zero and advertisers fled. In a desperate attempt to revive the Mother Corpse, CBC managers came up with a 90-minute show based on the “action news” format touted by American consultants. If you want to gauge quality, tune in at 5pm and chug a beer for every crime, accident, fire or weather story; you’ll be shit-faced by 5:15.
To fill the 90 minutes, CBC managers moved the radio news staff into the TV building. In theory, that makes sense. But in practice, it’s been a disaster for radio. With reporters pressed into service to feed the TV monster, there’s almost no time for original radio reporting. Now, radio newscasts crackle with TV’s crime, accident, fire and weather stories, while the woefully under-budgeted radio current-affairs programs, which fill more than six-and-a-half hours of airtime each weekday, work in isolation, blocks away from their radio news colleagues. In the mornings, when CBC radio has its biggest local audience, there’s almost no hard-hitting journalism and little to show that CBC is acting as a watchdog on behalf of the taxpayers who fund it.
It gets even worse. CBC bureaucrats chopped two-and-a-half minutes out of World Report, radio’s national morning newscast. Jane Anido, a manager in Toronto, says CBC shortened WR to compete with commercial stations that run traffic and weather at 10 minutes past the hour. Judging by the leaked survey, reporters believe that cutting CBC Radio’s most listened to newscast has weakened CBC journalism. “World Report as a whole is now more superficial, the journalism is less accurate, respect for language and creative writing is diminished and the format is formulaic,” one radio reporter complained.
“WR used to be the place to go for significant, important, original stories. Now it feels like TV lite or TV without the pictures,” said another. “At the end of a WR newscast, I often feel I don’t have a clue what’s going on in the world,” said a third.
For all their faults, journalists are society’s first line of defence against fraud, waste, incompetence and abuse in public institutions. That defence gets notably weaker when the relatively few journalists we have left are increasingly chasing superficial, daily stories. Budweiser anyone?
This article appears in May 13-19, 2010.
It’s a sign of the times, unfortunately there’s not a lot you can get from World Report that you can’t get from any number of news websites. If there’s one show that sets CBC Radio far ahead of the pack it’s As It Happens. Let’s hope they leave that one alone.
The ascent of U.S. style infotainment plays a part I’m sure. For instance, CBC television goes from Don Newman to Evan Solomon. Nuff said.
“…journalists are society’s first line of defence against fraud, waste, incompetence and abuse in public institutions.”
I suspect that, on reflection, Bruce would agree that this is only one aspect of the journalist’s remit. But this much is true: within what is left of journalism, critiques of the abuse of public power now tends to dominate, pushing aside the examination of (often) greater abuses by private power. Could this be one of the reasons that press coverage of the Auditor General’s report–which also revealed even greater abuse within the administration of P3 contracts–was skewed to a cry about MLA expenses alone?
“Neo-liberal assaults”? The slashing of staff by the Herald and CBC is more about fiscal conservatism. That aside, the dumbing-down of media coverage is a problem across most Western countries with as much emphasis on the salacious as the factual. The battle is for advertising dollars and advertisers seem to think that their target demographic is celebrity driven with a short attention span. That means hit that audience with a bang and don’t take too long with explanations or background information.
Would the Watergate expose by Woodward and Bernstein gotten off the ground today? Perhaps but the lack of tall leggy blondes or celebrities in this affair would relegate it to the back pages. Then again there was Deepthroat.
When a public medium (read: CBC TV) starts vying for money from advertisers and tries to concertedly up their ratings we have completely lost sight of the purpose of a public medium. It’s supposed to be informative (and maybe even arcane at times).
A public medium is supposed to fill that void between sound bites and pseudo-news.
Listen the the BBC or NPR if you want decent radio journalism… which you can get online.
Frosty— either contribute to the conversation or write a letter to the editor, Either way, this isn’t an appropriate forum for that.
Anyways, I feel that this is endemic of non-satellite radio and paper media in general. Thanks to declining ad revenue, media in general has needed to resort to sensationalism and hyperbole to garner attention. How do we fix it? I don’t actually think we can. I think Canadian media is slowly dying a slow death thanks to RSS and larger, more powerful media conglomerates from the US. Even the BBC has seen this to an extent, especially in their television news.
I used to be an avid watcher of CBC supper time news, since they went to the 90 minute format I’ve deserted what I percieve is a sinking ship. The international news is covered better and in depth by either BBC or PBS, and really how much local news is there in NS?
Lololololol So funny this is on the The Coast. Been awhile since you looked in the mirror?
Accusing journalists of “dumbing down” news is like accusing fast food joint employees of not serving quality meals. And hey, the wage is about the same for both “careers” too!! The only real source of news in NS now is Frank magazine, sorry!
Hey Frankly Speaking: I like to write about the news media because I know a lot about them having spent my whole adult life either working in the journalistic trenches or studying how journalism works from a perch in academe.
On the other hand, I hate to write about the news media because my stuff always attracts uninformed comments such as yours: “Accusing journalists of ‘dumbing down’ news is like accusing fast food joint employees of not serving quality meals.”
Yes, on the surface that looks like a clever thing to say, but, if you know anything about journalism, a moment’s thought reveals that it is not a very clever thing to say. In fact, its surface cleverness actually prevents you from understanding how journalism works.
Here, for example, are a couple of paragraphs from Noam Chomsky on researching the media:
“First of all, you find that there are different media which do different things, like the entertainment/Hollywood, soap operas, and so on, or even most of the newspapers in the country (the overwhelming majority of them). They are directing the mass audience.
“There is another sector of the media, the elite media, sometimes called the agenda-setting media because they are the ones with the big resources, they set the framework in which everyone else operates.” (Here Chomsky mentions the New York Times or CBS.)
You can read what Chomsky says for yourself at: http://www.chomsky.info/articles/199710–.…
My point here is related to what I’m trying to say in the editorial. As a public broadcaster (and Canada’s largest journalistic institution), the CBC used to be part of Chomsky’s elite, agenda-setting media. Yet for various reasons, it has chosen to go “down market” to compete with the commercial outlets by focusing its reporting on crime, accidents, fires, weather and other stories (sports, for example,) that pander to the perceived tastes of “mass” audiences.
I criticize CBC for doing this because I think the taxpayers that fund it deserve more than junk food journalism — to follow your analogy.
However, as Chomsky points out again and again, elite, agenda-setting media are purveyors of establishment propaganda. But they also have traditionally provided at least some space (however marginal) for free thinking and dissent. Nowadays, however, that space is fast disappearing for those trying to pursue a career in mainstream journalism. That is one reason why CBC’s national radio reporters are so upset.
Comparing Journalists to fast-food employees is much akin to comparing Radiohead to the people that shrinkwrap their CDs on the manufacturing line. Ie. it’s bonkers!