Harper Edges Closer To His Goal

That goal would be the destruction of the CBC, an ideological (i.e., publicly-funded) and political (Terry Milewski's fearless journalism) thorn in Dear Leader's side.

A Senate committee that spent 18 months studying the CBC and its place in the media landscape is recommending the public broadcaster explore alternative funding models, shake up its governance structure, be more transparent in its operations and air more amateur sports and high-quality arts.

A closer examination reveals that it is, in fact, a blueprint for eradicating the public broadcaster:

The senators, who travelled to England to study the BBC’s funding models and programming strategy, suggested a so-called “external superfund” be created by setting aside a portion of the CBC’s funding to pay for Canadian content “such as Canadian history and nature documentaries and high-quality comedy and drama, which could then be broadcast on CBC/Radio-Canada.”

The Friends of Canadian Broadcasting watchdog group called that proposal part of “a thinly disguised cut to CBC’s parliamentary grant that could never be implemented without a major contraction of the services that our national public broadcaster offers to Canadians every day.”

But it doesn't stop there. Another Trojan horse lurks in the report:

The Senate’s communications committee is also calling on the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. to find new ways to fund its operations in order to limit the amount of funding it receives from the federal government.

The committee rejected the idea of stable, multi-year funding for the Crown corporation, saying funding is based on “the fiscal demands of the federal government.”

Senators raised the possibility of using the PBS funding model — where viewers donate money or pay for sponsorships of programs — or charging a license fee to every home in the country with a television, which is how the BBC receives some of its funds.

“Even though it’s more subtle, this is proposing to cut CBC’s budget,” said Ian Morrison of the advocacy group Friends of Canadian Broadcasting.

To further erode public confidence in the broadcaster, the report seeks to sow dissension:

There were also testy exchanges between senators and CBC president Hubert Lacroix during his two appearances before the committee, and threats the committee would use its parliamentary powers to force the CBC to hand over the salaries of Mansbridge and others.

And lest we forget,

The Senate report also refers to scandals involving former radio host Jian Ghomeshi and business correspondent Amanda Lang in calling for stricter policies to prevent problems rather than having to react when they become public.

Senator Art Eggleton, whose recommendations were not included in the report, calls the report a missed opportunity,

blaming Conservative senators for spending “too much time denouncing the CBC and not enough on a way forward.”

Sen. Art Eggleton rejected some of the recommendations and says the government should increase funding to the CBC by almost one-fifth.

Eggleton said the government should spend about $40 per capita on the CBC, above the $33 per capita the report notes the broadcaster received in 2011, which would be half of what other industrialized nations spend on their public broadcaster.

He also said the funding should be adjusted to inflation and help the CBC eliminate commercial advertising.

The CBC itself weighed in, expressing its disappointment with the report:

"Frankly, we were hoping for more," said spokeswoman Alexandra Fortier, manager of media relations and issues management.

"CBC/Radio-Canada provided senators with detailed information on audience patterns, broadcasting trends, budgets, and strategies for addressing the challenges of the future," Fortier said. "It explained what it does to maximize the efficiency of its operations, and its accountability to Canadians."

"This report fails to propose constructive suggestions to address any of the real challenges facing the broadcasting system," said Fortier, who until a few months ago worked as the director of communications to Conservative minister Jason Kenney.

I suspect many Canadians will share the public broadcaster's disappointment.

Amanda Lang Interviews Ed Broadbent

If you have as low an opinion of the CBC's disgraced chief business correspondent, Amanda Lang, as I do, watch the following video. I think you will find that, with her absolutist questions typical of the extreme right and the intellectually deficient, she does not exceed expectations.



For Broadbent's thoughts on how Harper has failed this country, click here.

And Speaking Of Ethics

Or, more accurately, the lack of them at the CBC, letter-writer John Page of Toronto offers this thought:

Re: Minimal mindset of CBC managers, Jan. 16

As a faithful listener and hard-core supporter of the CBC for over 42 years, I recently changed the channel — literally. The story on the conduct of Amanda Lang and CBC management brings home the reality of the decline and likely extinction of the CBC.

Maybe I am naive to think that Harry Brown, Joe Cote, Barbara Frum, and Knowlton Nash would have ever placed themselves in the ethically grey areas that your article touches.

Hoping the Star and other media can do some more investigation and reporting on this important subject.

More On The Amanda Lang Imbroglio

The Star's John Semley offers his thoughts on the inadequacy and ineptitude of the CBC's response to the Amanda Lang scandal:

Accountability, Whither Goest Thou?

If there is one good thing to be said about the Leslie Roberts scandal, it is that privately owned Global Television has acted with dispatch both in its investigation of the newsman/PR firm co-owner's terrible breach of ethics, and its subsequent actions. While the official 'story' is that Roberts has resigned, there is little doubt in my mind that he was given that option by management lest he be unceremoniously turfed.

This decisive behaviour stands in sharp contrast to the inaction of other media outlets. Perhaps the most notorious example of patently unethical choices is Margaret Wente's much-reported serial plagiarism which the Globe and Mail treated as some form of pecadillo that merited exactly what? All we know is that the editor at the time, John Stackhouse, said she had been disciplined; the terms of that discipline were private.

More recently, of course, we have had the sad spectacle of the CBC's Amanda Lang who, it is alleged, tried to stop a story exposing the RBC's use of the Temporary Foreign Workers Program to train and replace permanent employees; Lang's was a clear conflict-of-interest violation given the nature of her relationship with an RBC board member and the fact that she has accepted paying gigs from the bank.

As of this writing, the CBC continues to insist that Lang did nothing wrong, essentially the same approach that it took with conflict allegations against Peter Mansbridge and Rex Murphy.

These are hardly decisions that inspire confidence in the public broadcaster.

In his column today, Rick Salutin explores who is to blame for the sad state of affairs at the CBC (it is the managers, who cower in the shadows behind their “stars”) and remembers a time when when public institutions adhered to public values for the benefit of all:

Canada’s other main public cultural institution, the National Film Board, was built by John Grierson in the 1940s. He was a titan of global film. He acted imperiously. He recruited young Canadians and dazzled them with his ego and vision. One said, “A day never passed at the Board that Grierson didn’t remind us we were there to serve the people of Canada.”

Among his recruits was Sidney Newman. Newman went to the UK and worked in private TV, creating The Avengers. Then the (public) BBC hired him as head of drama. He revelled. He created Doctor Who, now in its 51st brilliant year. For the 50th anniversary, BBC did a film about Newman! He was its superhero.

Today, we regularly read reports of the death of traditional media, reports that, if I may borrow from Mark Twain, seem greatly exaggerated. However, those media do themselves no favours by trying to rationalize and justify failures when they occur. We, the news-consuming public, deserve much better.

A Blog Post Recommendation

I have only one purpose in this brief post, and that is to strongly recommend that you take a look at Dr. Dawg's latest post. A trenchant and incisive dissection of the rot that has beset the CBC, Dawg concludes that there is little worth saving at what he calls the 'MotherCorpse', given its increasingly flagrant disregard for conflict of interest issues, Amanda Lang's case being only the latest.

Who is to blame for this sorry state? Well, you'll have to read Dawg's post for his answer.

Setting The Record Straight

Weakly constituted as I am when it comes to tolerating disingenuous and dishonest political theatre, I was unable to watch the Chief Prevaricator, a.k.a. the Prime Minister, while his chief courtier and media enabler, the most Reverend (and reverent) Peter Mansbridge, performed what Michael Harris described as his Yuletide foot massage during their year-end chatfest.

However, I was able to muster up the strength to watch this snippet, after which follows a critical analysis on the CBC website of Mr. Harper's claims:



Harper Whopper Number One:

"We’ve got more work to do, but our emissions are falling," Harper said on Wednesday.

"Other countries’ emissions for the most part are going up. World emissions are going up. Canada’s have not been going up."

But the government's own report suggests emissions will go up dramatically by the end of the decade because of oil and gas production, Canada's emissions will be 22 per cent higher than its Copenhagen target of reducing greenhouse gases by 17 per cent below their 2005 levels by 2020.

Harper Whopper Number Two:

Harper says he'd be open to using a carbon-pricing system like Alberta's for the entire continent, a concept he's previously opposed.

"I think it’s a model on which you could, on which you could go broader," Harper said in Wednesday's interview.

Says David McLaughlin, an adviser at the University of Waterloo’s school of environment,

... emissions continue to rise under Alberta's system of carbon pricing.

"The price of $15 a tonne is too low to actually get the emissions reductions we want from these big emitters. So it would not do the job of reducing emissions in Canada."

Harper Whopper Number Three

The prime minister also took credit for getting tough on coal.

"We are phasing out in Canada through regulations, we are phasing out the use of traditional dirty coal. It’s going to go to zero in the next 15 years or so," Harper said.

Alas, as with most pronouncements by the Prime Minister, there is less here than meets the eye:

New federal coal regulations apply to new plants built after 2015. Existing plants built in the last 50 years are grandfathered, meaning they would have up to 2030 to close or introduce carbon capture and storage technology to reduce emissions.

And Ontario's Environment Minister Glen Murray points out an inconvenient truth:

...the province closed coal plants with no help from Ottawa.

[I]"f the federal government wants to start taking credit for provincially funded initiatives, they could at least have the decency to make a commitment to support those initiatives in the future."

Thanks for taking a few moments to see through the Emperor's diaphanous attire.

Peter Mansbridge Speaks Out

Readers of this blog will know that I am a frequent critic of both the CBC and Peter Mansbridge. Both 'institutions,' in my view, often fail to live up to the standards ethical and brave journalism demands. They have been far too passive, even complicit in, the Harper regime's scorn for the so-called 'state-broadcaster.' And of course this disdain has culminated in a series of deep and devastating funding cuts to the CBC that threaten the very nature of its existence.

A new dynamic is perhaps now at work. Stung by the latest cuts, have both the corporation and its chief correspondent decided there is little to lose by speaking truth to power?

On Friday, at a conference co-sponsored by the CBC and the University of Winnipeg called “Holding Power to Account,” an international conference on investigative journalism, democracy, and human rights, Mansbridge decried a “culture of secrecy” within Canada’s public institutions.

He recalled a headline in the Toronto Star back in April that read, “What the public is not allowed to know. Public information being kept secret.” That headline, he said, was not about blocked access to public information in countries notorious for their secrecy, but about his own country.

“Not China. Not North Korea. Canada,” he said.

While not directly naming the regime responsible, Mansbridge also said:

“My company, my corporation, the CBC, the public broadcaster who has a mandated interest in investigative journalism. Who boasts that we have more investigative journalists that any media organization. This is where we’re cutting back?” he asked.

“We should be investing more in these programs. Not cutting them.”

Perhaps there is some hope, after all, for both 'institutions'?

The Good Lord Gets His Comeuppance

Those who, over the years, have grown weary of the pretentious blather of Conrad Black, the lord and baron much put upon by the requirement that he be subject to the same laws that bind mere mortals, may take some delight in the lesson in real journalism given him by As It Happens' Carol Off.

The former Lord Tubby, much slimmed down following his six-and-a-half years as a guest of the U.S. justice system (prison, I guess, imposes all kinds of disciplines including, one assumes, those of a dietary nature) received his rebukes as Off took him to task for his softball interview of Toronto Mayor-in-name-only Rob Ford in which he permitted the offish civic embarrassment to imply that The Star's Daniel Dale is a pedophile and that Chief Blair has orchestrated a massive conspiracy against him because of police budget restrictions led by the gravy-train foe.

Taking exception to having his talents called into question by a mere public servant, Black grew somewhat testy as the interview proceeded. Clearly, Ms Off doesn't know her place in the world of the gods.

If, like me, you take a certain delight in seeing the arrogant chastised, you can enjoy a transcript of the interview here or listen to the actual interview here.

P.S. No word on how Black is able to work and be paid by Zoomer for his interview work, given his temporary residence status. Then again, perhaps he is part of some kind of work-release program, given the $3 million that he owes Canada Revenue.

He Was A Man...

While many in the so-called liberal blogosphere tend to see the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez as an unalloyed saint striding far above the corruption that infested that country's politics before his arrival on the scene, the truth is far more nuanced. A man who had a genuine empathy for the poor and did much to relieve their most egregious suffering through education, healthy care, land reform, etc., he also had the vindictiveness of the autocrat toward those he perceived as his enemies, and, like our Albertan cousins, did little to diversify his economy, preferring to rest on the largess brought about through his country's oil reserves.

However, I am writing this post neither to praise Chavez nor to bury him, but to simply point out probably one of the best sources for balanced news coverage, both of Chavez's legacy and all other world events. Available online, Al Jazeera's work makes me pine for the days when our national broadcaster, The CBC, could be counted on for in-depth reportage that made all Canadians proud. Neither seeking to curry favor with political masters nor beholden to ratings, Al Jazeera last night provided very balanced and extensive coverage of Chavez's life and legacy.

That's all for now.

The Synchronous Decline of Peter Mansbridge and The CBC

I admit that I stopped being a regular viewer of the CBC years ago; I think the catalyst for my disaffection was its transparent policy of appeasement (under the pretext of balanced reporting) of the Harper regime which, of course, holds its funding strings. Especially evident in its flagship news program, The National, hosted by that one-time icon of journalistic integrity, Peter Mansbridge, the Corporation has become a parody of itself. And as I have written in past posts, Mansbridge himself has to take the bulk of the blame for its sad decline.

On February 8, The Star's Rick Salutin wrote a piece entitled CBC’s Peter Mansbridge coulda bin a contender. Somewhat dirgelike in tone, Salutin asserts that Mansbridge just seems to have given up on doing any substantive journalism, contrasting him with the redoubtable Walter Cronkite, who he describes as ... ready to stand up against the state and the flow and was solid as the bronze statue of the American revolutionary minuteman who stood “by the rude bridge that spanned the flood/ His flag to April’s breeze unfurled.”

Mansbridge, on the other hand, has happily gone with the flow — and the pressure. CBC has become numero uno for crime stories, weather coverage (today’s snow), product launches, celebrities and awards gossip. None of this is new, or news, and CBC itself doesn’t contest the point.

In this morning's Star, the majority of readers appear to agree with Salutin's assessment. I am taking the liberty of reproducing some of them below:

Leave Mansbridge alone. After his last interview with Stephen Harper, it seems obvious he’s angling for a Senate appointment a la Mike Duffy. Calling attention to his soft-shoe journalism will only make his task that much harder.

Mike Sampat, Toronto

I watch CBC’s The National mostly for entertainment. For real news I watch Aljazeera English and BBC World.

Entertainment, news.

Raja Khouri, Toronto

.... How can one explain that in every half-hour broadcast the “weather person” comes on three times. I suppose it is easier to kill time having the weather person on than to go out an find some news. If we want to dwell on weather there is always the Weather Channel. We can surely do better.

Bob Joakim, Oakville

.... Yes, he is rather apolitical and borderline fawning at times, such as his interview with Stephen Harper before the last federal election, but I can forgive him for that. At least he hasn’t pulled a Mike Duffy and obtained a sinecure in the seniors club we call the Senate. He could have gone to New York a few years ago, but decided to stay, to his and our benefit.

Sigmund Roseth, Mississauga

Expect nothing to change in the near future.

Canada's Domestic Israeli State

I have purposely stayed out of the blogosphere discussion of the latest atrocities between Israel and Gaza, atrocities that both sides must bear responsibility for. I have done so simply because I don't feel I have anything new or startling to add to the discussion.

However, I have always been troubled by the reflexive and unwavering support accorded to Israel, no matter what actions it takes in response to attacks, even those involving 'collective punishment," something explicitly forbidden under the Geneva Conventions. No matter what, both the Harper regime and the U.S. President repeat that tired refrain about Israel's right to defend itself (as if that were ever in question). As politicians and commentators well know, to offer any overt criticism is to risk being labelled anti-Semitic.

However, it occurs to me amidst this politically-motivated hysteria that Canada has its own version of a sacred state beyond criticism. That would be the province of Alberta.

Being the repository of Conservative support, it is hardly surprising that Mr. Harper seeks political advantage while denouncing any criticism of his adopted province. To hear him speak would be to believe the sun rises and sets there, it is the sole key to Canada's economic future, and that anyone who proffers criticism is essentially an enemy of Canada unfit to hold political office.

Recall, for example, the outrage that was provoked when Thomas Mulcair raised the spectre of Dutch disease with the headlong extraction of tarsand oil in the holy province. The Harper regime's response was as swift as it was predictable.

And now Justin Trudeau, whose leadership potential I have grave doubts about, is being targeted by the right-wing for a comment he made two years ago. Dredged up by the always reliable champion of all things Canadian, Sun Media reports that he once said in a French-language interview the following:

“Canada isn’t doing well right now because it’s Albertans who control our community and socio-democratic agenda.

Predictably, the Conservative propaganda machine was galvanized by such temerity:

“This is the worst kind of divisiveness, the worst kind of arrogance of the Liberal Party and it brings back for many Westerners the kind of arrogance of the national energy program which of course devastated the Western economy,” Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney told reporters.

And so this silly dance goes on and on, affronting and alienating more and more from the political process. The only question is whether Canadians will continue to allow their thinking to be done for them by such patently dishonest and manipulative tactics.

P.S. If you want to see all the tut-tutting going on over Trudeau's remark at that national bastion of Harper appeasement, the CBC, check out the At Issue Panel on last night's National:

Mulcair's Dutch Disease Comments: A More Rational Assessment

Despite the near-hysterical reaction of certain CBC broadcasters to the comments made last week by Thomas Mulcair about how tarsands developments are inflating the value of the Canadian dollar, thereby weakening our manufacturing sector, there are those who are able to more objectively assess his comments. One of them is Lawrence Martin.

In his column today entitled Ottawa’s industrial policy divides Canada against itself, Martin observes that we made progress in the decades before 2000 in moving away from an economy based on resource extraction. Using figures from Jim Stanford's research, he reveals that well over half of Canada’s exports consisted of an increasingly sophisticated portfolio of value-added products in areas such as automotive assembly, telecommunications, aerospace technology and more.

However, as of July 2011, unprocessed and semi-processed resource exports accounted for two-thirds of Canada’s total exports, the highest in decades,” Mr. Stanford wrote. “Compare that to 1999, when finished goods made up almost 60 per cent of our exports.”

So while the Conservatives and their apologists at the CBC (aka Peter Mansbridge and Rex Murphy) can wax apoplectic about the 'divisiveness' of this national leader's comments, Lawrence Martin ends his piece thus:

But let the debate roar on. The country needs a new industrial strategy, one based on more than corporate tax cuts, free-trade agreements and rampant resource exploitation.

Rick Salutin Today

While the CBC's Peter Mansbridge may often pronounce ponderously and authoritatively on issues, there is another source of information that should, in many ways, be taken more seriously, says Rick Salutin in his column today.

Well worth the read.

Rick Salutin Skewers the Mythology of the NDP and CBC's Leftishness

My favorite columnist, Rick Salutin, has a brief video on The Star website in which he asserts that the NDP and the CBC are no more leftist than Rex Murphy, Kevin O'Leary, or Don Cherry. You can watch it here.