No local news is bad news

Thanks for your comment Keith. You should know however that advocating a doubling of the CBC’s parliamentary appropriation is hardly an outrageous suggestion especially in terms of international comparisons. In its 2006 report on the Canadian news media, the Senate Committee on Transport and Communications reiterated what the Commons Heritage Committee found in 2003. “The current CBC budget is less than what it received in the early 1990s and is far less in constant dollars (after inflation adjustment).” Both committees also noted that Canada ranked well below most other industrial nations in the OECD in terms of government funding for public broadcasting. “Indeed, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has a budget four times greater to serve a country physically many times smaller and more densely populated than Canada.” The Senate committee went on to point out that CBC local and regional coverage is vital in many parts of the country and that lack of money hampers such coverage. “Important news happens in all parts of the country, but if the CBC does not cover it, many Canadians will never know about it.” The Senate committee was especially concerned about the fact that only a handful of big corporations own and control most Canadian media outlets. An effective and well-funded public broadcasting sector is an obvious way of providing a counterweight to the power of a handful of media owners.

I guess we have to decide whether we’re going to live in the real public world or in the fantasy world of our own private imaginings. AMAC/NS writes that it’s likely most Canadians would prefer that CBC money be spent on “employment and tax relief programs.” Well, the $1.1 billion the feds currently spend on CBC sounds like a lot of money but it wouldn’t go very far in employing people or relieving taxes. The latest federal budget forecasts program spending this year and next at $229.1 billion. Obviously, the relatively tiny amount spent on CBC (less than half of one percent of the federal budget) wouldn’t make much of a difference to program spending. But if it were taken away, it would mean a huge loss to the artists and journalists CBC employs. It would also mean a huge loss to those who depend on CBC for the many services it provides, including its extensive national, regional and local news service.

Yes Keith I have to agree, you do sound pretty cynical in your blanket condemnation of CBC. You’re just plain wrong however, when you claim “people don’t want a dime of their tax money going there.” In fact, when pollsters at Nanos Research asked people in late September whether the $1.1 billion spent on the CBC was a good or bad use of taxpayer’s money, 63 percent replied that it was a good use of money and almost a quarter said the feds should increase the budget. The poll’s sample size was 1,201. Its margin of error was plus or minus 2.8 percentage points. http://www.friends.ca/files/PDF/Nanos09oct…

You assert that people don’t want their tax money going to CBC because its news and public affairs “has a distinct left-wing slant and really does seem to act as the communications arm of the NDP.” This comment demonstrates that you don’t know much about how power works in Ottawa. Do you really think your assertion is credible when both Liberal and Conservative governments have been supporting the CBC financially for more than 70 years? Would they willingly fund an agency that functions as the “communications arm” of a relatively minor federal opposition party?

You may not know that both the Liberal and Conservative parties had a hand in creating public broadcasting in the 1930s as a cultural protection measure. For the last 73 years, Liberal and Conservative prime ministers have appointed CBC presidents and boards of directors. Since the late 1950s, they have also appointed the members of the regulatory bodies which have overseen the CBC under the terms of legislation drafted by successive Liberal and Conservative governments. Moreover, Liberals and Conservatives have controlled the parliamentary committees that the CBC is required to report to. With all that in mind, it is laughable to suggest that the two old-line parties would sit by helplessly while the CBC acted as the NDP’s “communications arm.”

Your assertion that CBC coverage has “a distinct left-wing slant” is based on a misconception about how journalists function in liberal democracies. Broadcast journalists inherited the traditions of the opinion or party press of the 19th century when newspapers were financed by political parties. In Nova Scotia as elsewhere, Liberal and Conservative newspapers vied in castigating each other’s politicians, policies and behaviour well into the 20th century. This tradition of free, open and often vehement debate was founded on libertarian ideas of the public benefits of free speech. That’s why in Canada, the Charter protects freedom of speech and freedom of the media.

The oppositional character of 19th century newspapers carries over in more restrained form in the modern broadcast media. The restraint is partly due to the fact that broadcasters use public airwaves and must abide by standards set by a federal regulatory agency. Nevertheless, broadcast journalists are expected to report critically on those who exercise political power. This is the public “watchdog” function of journalism. Successive Liberal and Conservative governments have criticized CBC for serving this watchdog function but none has seriously suggested that the public broadcaster act as a mouthpiece for the party in power. Both parties know such a policy would not be in their long-term interests.

For a more realistic understanding of how journalism works, I’d suggest you read “Representing Order: Crime, Law and Justice in the News Media,” by scholar Richard V. Ericson. It is one of three book-length studies Ericson undertook on the Canadian news media. He argues that the journalistic watchdog function actually tends to reinforce the power of dominant institutions and conventional ideas. In “Endless Propaganda: The Advertising of Public Goods,” Canadian historian Paul Rutherford discusses how the news media function to legitimize powerful interests.

As for your criticisms of CBC TV drama and comedy, I’d point out that whether you like it or not, CBC’s wide range of programming results from the terms of the 1991 Broadcasting Act drafted and passed when the Mulroney government was in power. Section 3 of the Act sets out a Declaration of Broadcasting Policy under which CBC is required to fulfill a broad range of cultural and journalistic functions. In colloquial terms, the Act imposes the requirement that the public broadcaster be “all things to all people” in return for its public subsidy. From my perspective, Section 3 is an inspiring affirmation of the role of public broadcasting, except that instead of granting CBC enough funds to fulfill this legislatively imposed mandate, Conservative and Liberal governments have cut its budget instead. You can find the Act through the CRTC at: http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/LEGAL/BROAD.htm

For a critical take on the historical evolution of public and private broadcasting in Canada see, “Missed Opportunities: The Story of Canada’s Broadcasting Policy,” by Marc Raboy.