I thought of my dear departed parents last week when a guy in Amherst collared a would-be bank robber and held him for the cops. The CBC dubbed the guy a hero, but my parents, who grew up poor in the Dirty Thirties, would have sided with the robber. “I hope they never catch him,” they’d say whenever a bank robber got away. Yet my parents were intensely law-abiding, endlessly preaching the virtues of thrift, hard work and honesty. They condemned stealing. “Once a thief, always a thief,” was their slogan—except when it came to banks. I suspect most would secretly agree, especially these days when banksters are bilking Canadians out of billions in interest and fees while raking in sky-high profits and paying themselves obscene salaries and bonuses. Yet the Canadian media habitually side with the banks, even portraying them as the virtuous pillars of stability that saved us from a US-style financial meltdown.
This media tendency to back authority and parrot official points of view is one of the main failings of journalism. Last week, for example, a CBC Washington correspondent lamented Barack Obama’s failure to cut the deficit further by slashing pensions and medical programs that benefit poor Americans most. Not one word did she say about the trillions the US government squanders on foreign wars and corrupt military contractors. Her reporting was a great example of the kind of biased and incomplete journalism documented for the past 35 years by professors and their students at California’s Sonoma State University. Their “Project Censored” calls attention to stories that are ignored, suppressed or downplayed by corporate media.
This year’s list includes a story about the world’s biggest polluter—the US military. The American forces produce “more hazardous waste than the five largest US chemical companies combined” including depleted uranium, radiation from weapons production, testing and use, pesticides, petroleum and lead. Project Censored also reveals that even though the American military burns hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil every day, the US government has officially exempted it from reducing or even measuring its greenhouse gas emissions. Meanwhile, the US (and Canada) are engaging in a military buildup in the environmentally sensitive but potentially resource-rich Arctic.
Project Censored also reports on US moves to give Emperor Obama the legal authority to shut down the internet in an “emergency” even as the US government continues to spy on internet users.
Another of this year’s Project Censored stories reports that elites in African countries such as Ethiopia are selling off prime agricultural land to foreigners while local populations go hungry or starve. Although the biggest “land grabbers” appear to be state-subsidized companies in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, international agribusiness corporations, investment banks, hedge funds and commodity traders are also being “attracted by some of the world’s cheapest land.” The report says that a “tangled consortium of multinational corporations” is using US aid money to promote genetically engineered seeds and industrial-farming methods in Africa. It quotes the Indian activist Vandana Shiva who warns that large-scale agriculture robs people of their land while making food production dependent on expensive chemicals, pesticides and herbicides. “We are seeing dispossession on a massive scale,” Shiva says. “It means less food is available and local people will have less. There will be more conflict and political instability and cultures will be uprooted.”
Mainstream journalists are great for working themselves into a lather over MLAs who buy big-screen TVs or else chasing after some “hero” who nabs a bank robber. But when it comes to political stories about rich and poor, they habitually tilt to the PR messages of the powerful. “We all have to tighten our belts in these tough times,” they say, echoing the Dexter-Steele mantra about living within our means. And in the CBC’s case, without even a hint of irony, they happily promote themselves by gathering Christmas donations for the food bank.
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This article appears in Feb 24 – Mar 2, 2011.
“…else chasing after some “hero” who nabs a bank robber”
Why would you put hero in quotation marks?
Do you think the tellers enjoyed being robbed?
Another whine from the perpetually unhappy. The whole world seems out to screw you, the banks, Obama, the CBC, elites in Africa, blah, blah, blah… don’t worry (noone cares), be happy :-).
I think Wark qualified why he chose to use the bank robber example. With a robber, he sticks a gun in your face and demands the money and it is a rare event, but the bank he chose to rob ‘steals’ money in a more sneaky, relentless way, constantly helping themselves to your hard earned money.
One example I can think of that pisses me off–if the banks take their charges and fees out, and it drives you over a 0 balance, they then charge you for going over a 0 balance, then they charge you an overdraft fee for having to spend their own money to pay themselves.
In the case of the duplicity of local government, I don’t anyone is really fooled.
The pollution caused by the military, on the hand, is an eye-opener.
As for the selling off of prime land to foreign countries, the foreign investors can greedily grab up as much as they want but in the end if the people decide that the land is theirs, they will take it back–one way or another.
Since you brought up the subject about journalism censorship Bruce, I in particular would like to know why you didn’t include in your recent trial update re: Ocean vs Economical and Raymond Sullivan, pertinent evidence that I brought forward in my closing arguements?
http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=5083…
If you don’t like bank fees join a credit union or keep cash.
So what Bruce
your bias too, since you use bias souces and write articles based on Wikipedia. I think can be creiablitaly in your artlices as well and only have far left communist, marxist spin on almost everything
@May
Woohooo Boy!
Unleash the crazy!
@ Charles
“…have far left communist, marxist spin…”
LOL, any more for the kitchen sink?
I always love it when Bruce Wank cites his sources. It reminds me of watching Jim Keegstra on the news in the mid ’80s, staring into the camera with his wide-eyed demagogue’s leer and defending his stance on the Holocaust because he had books that proved it. So, The US military is a bigger polluter than the decrepit industrial apparatus of the former Soviet bloc; or the burgeoning industrial capacity of India and China. Tell me another fable Cousin Brucie. Tell me about the 12 foot tall lizards from another dimension that really run the world.
It never ceases to amaze me that some people will always attack someone who questions authority figures. It seems tempting (correct?) to suggest that people who are neither rich nor powerful, but defend those groups bitterly, are not unlike chickens who support Colonel Sanders. Keep up the muckraking, Bruce – and to the authoritarian commenters, I assume that you are either millionaires or uninformed. I doubt many millionaires visit or comment on this site anyway.
It’s easy to sit back and self-righteously criticize other journalists for their choice of content. At the end of the day they are doing the same thing you are – trying to entertain and inform using every trick they can to sensationalize and in some cases be as alarmist as possible to increase their media footprint and agenda. People can still access this “censored” information by choosing their sources accordingly (say for example by reading the Economist over watching CTV news). If the mainstream media had this sort of focus it wouldn’t be the mainstream media.
Thats why you do not find RT or Al Jazeera on Eastlink Cable and why the internet providers in Canada have a cap
LOLZ. Who needs David Icke, when we’ve got this…
Feed the crazy, reap the crazy!!!!!
You may not get aljazeera on cable, but you can get it online. It’s my new Fave:)
http://english.aljazeera.net/
I would just like to point out that CBC radio had a story and an interview with the professor behind “Project Censored” at least a month ago. They talked about a number of the un-reported stories that you mention in this article and focused particularly on the information regarding the U.S. military and pollution. I am offended that this article is so poorly researched and is essentially a rant-like opinion piece veiled as some sort of investigative journalism. What a hypocritical article! No media outlet is bias-free, as this article clearly proves.
“Mainstream journalists regurgitate the spin of the wealthy and connected, while missing the impact on the poor???” How about “Coast journalists regurgitate the spin of the hypocritical and judgmental, while insulting the quality journalism of the CBC, and frankly missing reality altogether.”
This article is trash. Funny how you ridicule the same news “corporation” that probably told you about Project Censored in the first place.
The poor quality of journalism and obvious bias in this newspaper never fails to dissapoint. Pathetic.
Has anybody seriously analyzed the credibility of Project Censored, or is the fact that it dovetails quite neatly with your prejudices sufficient? Please, no endorsements from Michael Moore, Noam Chomsky or N.P.R.
Yes, it is true. The CBC does cover Project Censored from time to time. In fact, I may have been one of the first CBC journalists to cover it when I produced the CBC Radio program “Media File” from 1989 to 1991. We invited our listeners to submit suggestions for a Project Censored Canada and ended up broadcasting a number of interesting (and previously under-reported) stories. In fact, there were quite a few feathers flying inside the CBC when an As It Happens producer defended the program’s decision to ignore the genocide in East Timor. He said AIH producers had concluded listeners would not be interested in events happening so far away from Canada. Both Media File and AIH received a ton of mail from listeners who were outraged by his comments.
At that time I was nearing the end of a 20-year CBC journalism career that included stints producing World at Six, World Report and working in legislative and national reporting jobs. So, I know what I’m talking about when I criticize CBC. Yes, I’m a firm believer in public broadcasting. We need the CBC now more than ever — and I fear we are steadily losing it. The CBC now receives about a third less public money than it did in 1991. But that does not mean CBC journalism should be exempt from criticism.
Here are two things to keep in mind when bringing a critical perspective to the analysis of journalism. (1) It’s important to determine who are the main sources for news stories. Who is quoted in stories and whose points of view are most often reflected? In the case of mainstream journalism, official points of view are dominant. That means senior politicians, high-ranking bureaucrats and academics, the heads of institutions including business lobby groups etc. In other words, the voices of the powerful and well-connected dominate the news. In his landmark book on the Canadian newsmedia “Representing Order,” scholar Richard Ericson refers to the main news sources as “authorized knowers” — people with official, institutional titles. In this sense, the mainstream media are well plugged into dominant institutions.
In covering the war in Afghanistan, the CBC most often interviews senior politicians (Harper, Ignatieff, Rae), the military and senior academics. On rare occasions, members of peace groups get interviewed too, but they are always treated as less expert and therefore less authoritative than people with official credentials.
Secondly, it’s important to consider the issue of “framing” in analyzing stories. A week or so ago, the Maritime Noon phone-in question was: “Where would you cut the education system?” This framing automatically presumes that cuts are needed. Thus, framing introduces bias into coverage. For example, the mainstream media frame government deficits as undesirable and social spending as unsustainable. How many times do we hear about “soaring” health care costs that will only soar higher and out of control with a steadily aging population? I believe this frame is open to question. It does not necessarily reflect reality, but it is the dominant one in mainstream media coverage of health spending.
Generally, once a frame is set, it is very difficult to change because reporters and editors work from standard frames. It took a revolution in Egypt to overthrow the frame that as a trusted ally of the west, Hosni Mubarak was a force for peace and stability in the Middle East. That’s why I wrote in my editorial: “This media tendency to back authority and parrot official points of view is one of the main failings of journalism.”
Bruce, i have no problem reading/hearing a difference of opinion. The problem comes from the credibility of those in opposition, ie PETA and EAC on the seal hunt where they still use pictures of whitecoats, Global Warming experts caught with their pants down, peace activists whose only chant is peace and love (great message but as you know it takes two) but have no practical solutions to genocide and dicators (but then again neither has the UN). When they go out into left field or start conspiracy theories with no common sense approach, they lose credibility. One of the problems with the UN is they lack credibility due to too many failures in the past and present. So I’m not only picking on one side.
Self censorship is alive at the CBC where the newsroom in Toronto has spent the last two weeks ignoring the health problems of Jack Layton until Andrew Coyne spilled the beans.
The health of Mr Layton is a part of the discussion as to the possibility of a spring election and yet it would be a little inconvenient for the ‘Power and Politics’ endless navel gazing if they had to broadcast the ill health of Mr Layton and how that will affect the decisions he makes in the next few weeks. Where were the ace reporters on Parliamnet Hill when Layton was in visible pain ?