CBC Releases Report on News Content
The CBC released an interim report on its journalism and reporting this afternoon.
The report describes itself as “the most comprehensive and detailed examination” of CBC News in history. It was commissioned in January 2009 and this is the first glimpse at the findings. These interim findings are being released following weeks of criticism that CBC news coverage has a left-wing bias.
The executive summary of the report deals with both the tone of the CBC reporting and the amount of coverage the government receives. “Overall, the tone of CBC news is very close to that on competing sources,” the report says, noting that the tone on The National is very close to that on Global and CTV.
The study also looked at how much interview time each party received on from CBC News on both radio and TV at the network level. “The Conservatives had 70% of the interview time and the opposition parties 30%,” the study says. Comparing that to other networks, “the Conservatives had 74% of federal interview time on The National, 67% on the CTV National News, and 55% on Global National.”
Jennifer McGuire, the general manager and editor in chief of CBC News had this to say as the report was released:
Journalism isn’t a science. It isn’t a business. It’s unpredictable, sometimes chaotic. It’s frequently criticized. Some of our critics have skin in the game – the coverage we offer can have a material effect on their fortunes, as in the world of politics. We understand that.
In evaluating our political coverage, we see that the government gets more coverage than opposition. We have also evaluated the tone of our political coverage (with stories categorized as “positive,” “neutral” or “negative”). The majority of the coverage is neutral. However, the government attracts both more negative and more positive coverage than the opposition. Coverage of the opposition is more likely to be neutral. This is perhaps not surprising, since it is the government that makes decisions and is held accountable — and criticized — for them.
The interim report is available here.
The executive summary is available here.
The full report will be available later in the fall.
What do you think of the findings so far?
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[...] on your definition of bias… how independent was the “report” or was it just another insider dust [...]
Does the never-ending Mulroney witch hunt count as government or opposition? What about Adscam? It’s newer and involved many more millions of taxpayers dollars but it’s all but gone from the news, even though the money still hasn’t been repaid.
I guess it all depends on what your bias is. From the look of the forum below, most people disagree.
now if we could just get all our journalists to “talk good”…
Who, pray tell, was complaining about “gender balance” at the CBC???!! Locations in Canada’s news stories?? Representation of visible minorities???
You haven’t asked the right questions nor have you used the right methods.
Instead, you’ve engaged in an exercise that essentially amounts to the accused drawing up the charge, putting itself on trial, cherry-picking what should be admitted as evidence, using itself as judge and jury and in no time at all finding itself innocent – all conducted behind closed doors! Quelle surprise that you should find what you found. What a farce at the taxpayers expense!
I note that you haven’t paid any attention to giving a rationale for what you neglect to cover. After all, gotta leave enough time to cover old, warmed up stories like Mulroney. You’re coverage of Climategate, for example, was a epic fail. Have you asked yourselves why your two science guys do not give any quarter to the growing number of both scientists and the public who are increasingly skeptical.
Let me give you a hint. Your bias shows up in areas such as the following:
1) Who do you choose to interview and what perspective do those individuals bring with them, and I’m not talking about elected officials? The Climategate thing would be a good place to examine on that score.
2) What questions do you ask of the people you interview and what questions do you not ask? Will we ever see Suzuki or McDonald ask AGW fanatics some hard questions? If your staff and personalities have already swallowed the Kool-ade, can we expect balance or indoctrination?
3) What do you choose to cover and what do you choose to ignore, or, how much time do you give to the issues that you do cover? Is there a pattern that can be related to the potential for political spin? On some issues you seem to go on and on and on and on, as Bill points out. On others that are important, there’s barely a peep.
4) Beyond delivering “the facts”, in those cases where you actually do, there is invariably at least some editorializing mixed in. It’s often delivered with a sneer or an air of contempt. The news analysis programs are particularly bad, on that front. Anna Maria Tremonti (The Current) and Michael Enright (Sunday Morning) are prime examples. When will we see CBC personalities whose politics is as far to the right, as those two are to the left? And if you were to hire some, how long would it be before they jump ship?
If you really want an analysis of bias that is believable, you need to allow some outside agency chosen by some other party to do the job. Since you are a creation of federal legislation, perhaps a joint Senate-House of Commons inquiry would be the ticket, or a Royal Commission. In reality, though, I would rather save us all from more tax supported investigations and just privatize the albatross. Let the viewer/listener – or – gasp – advertisers pay for it.
Well said, Louise. If CBC is so “neutral”, then why do Global & CTV almost always beat it in ratings? Have you listened to CBC radio? It’s a bunch of hippie-new age philosophical intellectual mumbo jumbo. And news— information — entertainment— media most definitely *is* a business. (Unless you’re ingsoc in 1984…) And the CBC performs dismally at conveying this information; at performing this business.
In all fairness, the cbc *did* have someone on their station recenlty who tells it the way it is: Ezra Levant.
Imagine that! CBC exonerates itself, again!!
The National is getting worse every night.
I can hardly stand to watch. Last night was baaaaaad!
That earthquake thing — could ya tell us something we don’t know? And the tour of the ‘emergency hq’ — do ya think Mansbridge could have asked what happens when there is no electricity and none that stuff works?
How about even some just basic facts?
I am still reeling from the less than average interview with Calderone. “Is Mexico safe?” — Who thought that one up for an opener?
Fox News has more than 60% female reporters. Fox News reports mostly from Left wing places (LA & NYC). So what does this prove???? And Fox News reports about some minorities in terms of the painful truth — that they’re overrepresented in unemployment & crime, due to failed socialist policies and handouts — but also the success stories of minorities: Asians, for example, are overrepresented in the private sector because they study hard and have a good work ethic. Gosh forbid that ALL Canadians should study and work hard — and we should eliminate handouts for those who don’t — oh, but that wouldn’t fit in with the CBC’s pro-union pro-socialist pro-victim pro-don’tstudyifyoudon’twanttobecauserichpeoplewillfootthebill mentality.
Where to start?
Newsbeat1 asks:
> …how independent was the “report”…
Why not visit the site of Erin Research and see what their past record on research is? The awards they’ve won, the methods they use, the private and public sector organizations they’ve surveyed. Here’s the link:
http://www.erinresearch.com/index.html
On the front page, there’s a link to a study of CBC vs CTV coverage of the 2008 federal election. Download the pdf at:
http://www.erinresearch.com/images/cbc.pdf
Bill asks:
> Does the never-ending Mulroney witch hunt count as government or opposition? What about Adscam?
I can’t speak for the CBC, just offer my own opinion which is that the case investigating Mulroney related to allegations of corrupt behaviour involving him personally. By contrast, Adscam related to behaviour by Liberal party functionaries and petty bureaucrats. There’s a considerable difference in the level of ministerial accountability there.
Incidently, both scandals involved heavy interaction with the saintly private sector which seems to have escaped comparable scrutiny or outrage.
On the issue of the monetary value (as opposed to the news value) of the two scandals, if you consider that the Mulroney inquiry refused to examine the possible connection to the Airbus deal, the monetary value of the Adscam case would shrink in comparison to Airbus.
Louise says:
> You haven’t asked the right questions nor have you used the right methods.
This is a complaint that should be made against Erin Research. Why don’t you challenge their methods, past results, and awards? And also state what methods you used to make your judgement?
> The Climategate thing would be a good place to examine on that score.
> Will we ever see Suzuki or McDonald ask AGW fanatics some hard questions?
What questions would you suggest?
> The news analysis programs are particularly bad, on that front.
> It’s often delivered with a sneer or an air of contempt.
> Anna Maria Tremonti (The Current) and Michael Enright (Sunday Morning) are prime examples.
Can you give these examples? The Erin report gives us many pages to support their claims. Can you find a podcast or transcript that shows evidence of a sneer?
> If you really want an analysis of bias that is believable, you need to allow some outside agency chosen by some other party to do the job.
Are you saying that Erin Research is biased or not credible? Here’s a link to some of their past clients:
http://www.erinresearch.com/clients.html
The list includes governments, large corporations, industry and media associations, school boards, and various professional organizations.
Dennis Brown:
Canadian taxpayers money vs Euro arms dealers money.
Prime minister vs ex pime minister.
You can spin it as you like but those basic facts make Adscam a far larger story. The only reason it’s not is because the CBC is the media arm of the Liberal party.
CBC was also front & center during the swine flu nonsense.. propagating the non-story and worrying the general public about nothing.
Dennis Brown says: “Incidently (sic), both scandals involved heavy interaction with the saintly private sector which seems to have escaped comparable scrutiny or outrage.”
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I don’t recall the private sector broadcasters forcibly taking my hard earned money to pay for their operations.
Dennis Brown also says: “And also state what methods you used to make your judgement (sic)?”
I listen to CBC and read their web reports. Of course, being a member of the great unwashed, I should eat cake and shut up. Right? No, Dennis, it’s call a basic human right to make up my own mind.
Dennis Brown goes on: What questions (about AGW) would you suggest?
CBCs refusal to report on the Climategate scandal for days after it broke and then only in the “science” section, when in fact the AGW scam is entirely a political matter with global financial impacts. Does CBC’s science reporting ever feature solid science on the other side? Where’s the balance?
Are they aware that public opinion has shifted? If so, why aren’t they reporting it. The BBC has. Why aren’t they speaking to the growing number of scientists who are on the skeptics side?
“BBC survey which “found that only 26 percent of Britons believed that ‘climate change is happening and is now established as largely manmade,’ down from 41 percent in November 2009.” The Times attributed the public opinion swing in Great Britain and similar shifts in Germany and the US to what it referred to as “a series of climate science controversies unearthed and highlighted by skeptics since November.” In other words, the climate fraud uncovered at the University of East Anglia (aka Climategate) and the multitude of errors uncovered in the latest IPCC (AR4) report. “
Even Britain’s esteemed Royal Society is now allowing the skeptics’ views to be published: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7139407.ece
“The society appears to have conceded that it needs to correct previous statements. It said: “Any public perception that science is somehow fully settled is wholly incorrect — there is always room for new observations, theories, measurements.” This contradicts a comment by the society’s previous president, Lord May, who was once quoted as saying: “The debate on climate change is over.””
Did the CBC cover any of the proceedings of the Heartland Institute’s 4th International Conference on Climate Change (http://www.heartland.org/events/2010Chicago/index.html)? If not, why not?
Dennis Brown further says: “Can you find a podcast or transcript that shows evidence of a sneer?”
Nearly every one of those two programs is dripping with anti-conservative and anti-American slurs. Maybe you should listen to them once in a while.
Dennis Brown asks: “Are you saying that Erin Research is biased or not credible?”
Depends on what their marching orders were. Considering the fact that the CBC reports that there is no “gender imbalance” at the CBC” and that “Locations in Canada’s news stories” are according to policy and adequate “Representation of visible minorities” were among the findings, I would suspect their research was conducted along lines that the CBC asked them to examine. Either that, or they neglected to actually ask the Canadian public what their views of Mother Corpse really are. Some research assignment, that! I wonder who engaged their services and paid them for it? You don’t suppose it could have been CBC, do you? Does a researcher under contract not sit down with their client and brainstorm about what the researcher should investigate? That’s standard practice, is it not? Funny, I don’t know anyone among the general public who got a call to answer some questions.
Here’s the latest bit of bias, this time by way of omission:
http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2010/06/04/f-gaza-ships.html
Funny, they mention that most of the funding came from Malaysia, but conveniently neglect to mention that the Malaysian funder was none other than former strongman Mahathir Mohamad, the self same antisemite who referred to Jews as “hook-nosed, but understand money instinctively” and infamously said in October, 2003: “But today the Jews rule the world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them. They invented socialism, communism, human rights and democracy so that persecuting them would appear to be wrong so they may enjoy equal rights with others. With these they have now gained control of the most powerful countries. And they, this tiny community, have become a world power.”
Shall I add Jew hatred to my list of complaints about CBC?
The best commentary on the significance of Justice Oliphant’s report on Mulroney’s conduct and credibility comes from Andrew Coyne, well-known conservative critic of everything Liberal or NDP.
http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/06/04/the-judge-isnt-buying-it-nor-should-we/
I seem to remember the most significant thing about Chretien’s testimony at the Gomery inquiry being about monogrammed golf balls. And that a federal judge later quashed the Gomery inquiry’s finding of any responsibility by Chretien, awarding Chretien his legal costs.
http://www.thestar.com/News/Canada/article/450179
Those are the cold hard facts, not spin. And neither of these sources are CBC taxpayer funded reports. Both are from the saintly private sector media.
Tell it to Chretien. I don’t think he’ll ever agree with you about that claim. Nor would Trudeau Sr. were he still with us.
.. and Mulroney was found not guilty either.
Again, taxpayers money vs someone else.
Do you work for the CBC, Mr. Brown? It’s pretty clear from your rhetoric that you don’t work in the private sector.
Louise says:
> I don’t recall the private sector broadcasters forcibly taking my hard earned money to pay for their operations.
My point was that private sector sources could be as critical of Mulroney or Chretien as the CBC yet not be considered biased for doing so. Libertarian concepts such as the notion that taxation is theft don’t really fit the topic which is CBC bias and the Erin report.
But since you’ve raised the issue, popular with libertarians and the de-tax movement everywhere, I’ll address it like this.
The province of Quebec, where my family has a cottage that has been in the family since 1908, “forcibly” collects school taxes from us every year even though none of our family have ever received schooling across the river. Cable companies have “forcibly” required us to buy channel packages we don’t want just to get the few channels we do want. Life is unfair, then you die.
> I listen to CBC and read their web reports.
Fair enough, the participants in the Erin report did that and a lot more to arrive at their conclusions. Erin Research gave an account of their methodology, which one can examine and dispute or agree with. And you have made some valid criticisms of it.
> Nearly every one of those two programs is dripping with anti-conservative and anti-American slurs. Maybe you should listen to them once in a while.
I listen to them regularly. However, you claim they are “dripping with anti-conservative and anti-American slurs”. If this is so, you should be able to give some examples.
As far as Erin Research goes, my understanding is that they are commissioned by various clients (e.g. CBC or TD Bank) to examine the services the client delivers to its customers by either direct polling or some form of measurement and analysis. The idea that an organization might hire a research firm to investigate its own practices has its critics but it is nonetheless widespread. Governments and companies hire auditing firms to audit their books. And hire bond rating agencies to rate their bonds. Wall Street anyone?
I too found the references to gender parity and minorities somewhat puzzling until I realized that there are pressure groups on the left accusing the CBC of bias as well. So no doubt the CBC would feel it has to satisfy those critics as well.
Here’s one item from the Erin report that gave me pause for thought. In the bar graphs for reporting by subject comparing CBC national versus regional/local coverage, the crime and trial reporting percentage is double (21% vs 11%) at the local level. This makes sense because most crimes are local, not national in scope. But, if somebody watched only the local news to get the city news, weather and sports, this individual would be exposed to twice as much crime reporting and could well conclude that there is a crime wave happening even if the actual stats showed a decline in crime, not an increase. This could well have political implications for a party wanting to get votes by being seen as tough on crime. CBC local crime reporting as a factor aiding the Conservative Party of Canada. Who would have thought, eh?
Similarly, Afghanistan gets 8 times more coverage at the national level versus the regional/local. This makes sense because the story is national and international in scope. What that means in perception terms is that anyone watching the National might be getting a lot of battleground details, status and benchmark analysis that wouldn’t show up in local reports. Our local only news viewer might get funeral stories of local soldiers killed in battle but not much other war coverage. These two viewers might have significantly different outlooks on how the war was proceeding.
Yet in neither of the above cases does the difference in coverage constitute a bias at the reporting level. It is at the receiving level that the viewer self-selects what level of coverage s/he will receive.
> Here’s the latest bit of bias, this time by way of omission:
Here’s a comparable story from CTV on the Gaza ships:
http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/World/20100604/gaza-ship-israel-100604/
Oh, and one by the Asper family owned Ottawa Citizen:
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Activists+expelled+Israel+defends+Gaza+siege/3119370/story.html
Notice anything wrong? No mention of Mahathir Mohamad in either of the above. Are these examples of CTV and CanWest bias by omission also?
> Shall I add Jew hatred to my list of complaints about CBC?
Only if you add “Jew hatred” to your complaints against CTV and CanWest as well.
I realize I didn’t address Louise’s points on what she calls “the AGW scam”. In my previous post, I wanted to present my thoughts on the Erin report. Let’s look at the links on the climate change issue that Louise has provided. In the first one, a story that appeared May 29 in the Times of London, a small group of scientists affiliated with the Royal Society has demanded that the Society revoke a statement made by the previous head of the Society, Lord May, that “the debate on climate change is over.”
Lord May’s science specialty is chemical engineering and theoretical physics. Heavy stuff but not climatology or meteorology. Sir Alan Rudge, leader of the dissenters, has a specialty in electrical engineering. Again heavy stuff but not in the field where the observations, measurement and analysis must be done.
The Global Warming Policy Foundation, with which Rudge is affiliated, has its own controversies to deal with, its funding sources private, and temperature graphs on its website showing data contrary to actual measurements.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Warming_Policy_Foundation#Temperature_graph
So the fact that one non-specialist in the field made a sweeping statement of opinion as if it were official consensus in the field, and the fact that a representative of a climate skeptic advocacy group dissents doesn’t really settle any science question, does it?
What I can agree with is that the CBC should have reported this as political controversy under the politics or international section. Not hidden away in the science section.
The second link is to a conference sponsored, not by a gathering of climate researchers or even the Royal Society, but by the Heartland Institute, whose mission statement reads:
Heartland’s mission is to discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems. Such solutions include parental choice in education, choice and personal responsibility in health care, market-based approaches to environmental protection, privatization of public services, and deregulation in areas where property rights and markets do a better job than government bureaucracies.
Maybe free market theoreticians know more about climate change than chemists or physics professors? The Heartland has its own list of critics and controversies:
Similarly, SourceWatch reports contributions to Heartland by ExxonMobil and implies improper influence, but again presents no evidence of this occurring. Walter Buchholtz was a public relations advisor for ExxonMobil during his service on The Heartland Institute’s Board of Directors, and like Marden, he helped persuade his company to contribute to Heartland. He never exerted improper influence on any Heartland staff, and his company never gave more than 5 percent the organization’s annual receipts.
http://www.heartland.org/about/truthsquad.html
At least the Heartland is up front about its funding, which is more than you can say about the GWPF.
I didn’t find these stories covered on the CBC website. Does that constitute bias? No, but in my opinion it constitutes negligence. If there are climate skeptic organizations or promoters of climate change controversies with unclear funding or qualifications, I’d want to know about it, wouldn’t you?
Nearly a month after the event, someone else investigates what the CBC resuses to investigate:
Police said Quebec MP smelled of booze after crash
By STEPHEN MAHER Ottawa Bureau
Liberal MP Pablo Rodriguez was red-eyed and smelled of alcohol after losing control of his BMW and colliding with a parked car late at night in downtown Montreal, says a police report examined by The Chronicle Herald.
The MP had “lightly red eyes” and smelled of alcohol, the report alleges, and his car had damaged the driver’s side of a parked Toyota, and the airbags in the BMW had gone off.
He first denied having had anything to drink and then told police he had just driven from Ottawa, where he had had “two small glasses of wine.”
When the officer told Rodriguez that he would be charged for refusing to blow, and outlined the penalties, the MP became upset.
“Rodriguez told me several times that we were going to damage his career that he had taken 30 years to build,” the officer reported. “He also mentioned that he hoped that it wasn’t because he was in the Liberal party that I was charging him. I told the monsieur that I was only doing my job.”
A pretty damning story but you won’t read it on the CBC.
Dennis Brown says: “The province of Quebec, where my family has a cottage that has been in the family since 1908, “forcibly” collects school taxes from us every year even though none of our family have ever received schooling across the river. Cable companies have “forcibly” required us to buy channel packages we don’t want just to get the few channels we do want.”
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Both of those examples are weak analogies. I’ll deal with the property one first. Whether you consume educational services in Quebec or not, you have equity in the property, or at least the potential for equity. If you were to sell it, you’d presumably make some money, probably a lot of money, since I presume your mortgage has long since been paid, but even if it’s been recently remortgaged, you still have a prime piece of property in cottage country that would be the envy of a great many property owners, which you can use as collateral, so it does have value for you, even if you don’t receive the services for which you are taxed.
Problem is, I can’t sell my shares in the CBC, even though, as a tax payer, I’ve been investing in it for years and years and years. I have no equity built up and I can’t use it as collateral. And that just kind of sucks.
Regarding cable, I have no complaints against any network that I don’t pay for and neither would I have complaints against CBC if I didn’t have to pay for it. The fact is, because I have the choice, I canceled my cable subscription and put my TV in storage about three or four years ago, because there is nothing on any of the channels that’s worth spending the money I had to pay for it. They are all the same; primarily vapid, uninteresting pap with nothing for the mind, except at the very top end of the tiers. On the few occasions I visit with relatives, though, I do get to watch TV, which is a good thing, because it confirms over and over that my decision to live without TV was a wise choice. But I continue to have to pay for CBC. With it, I have no choice.
I do listen to CBC radio once in a while, when I’m driving, since there isn’t much else to bring in, especially when I’m driving way out in the sticks of Saskatchewan, but even that little bit is enough to make my skin crawl. With the right gizmos in their car, anyone can bring in radio stations from all over North America.
I listen to talk radio a lot via my computer, mostly Canadian, but I can also tune in to many American stations, and get my fill from there, just as I’m sure many Americans, especially those that live close to the Canadian border, listen to CBC because they’re interested in what’s up with their neighbours.
And as I said, I read CBC web pages and watch the vids if there are any attached to the story, if and when there is some story breaking that interests me and CBC is covering it. I take note that the comments attached to those CBC web pages tend to lean rather heavily to the left. There’s a huge amount of Harper bashing, but hardly any LiberaI or NDP bashing. And it is the left that screams the loudest when we righties talk about privatization or outright canning the CBC. I wonder why?
Could it be a reflection of who CBC’s most loyal audience is? If that’s the case, that speaks to CBC’s bias, right there. The lefties lap it up because it speaks to them and jump to its defense.
I’ve noticed the same thing about the callers to Cross Country Checkup. Seems people on the Conservative side have stopped listening and viewing and rarely call in to our “national” (cough) call-in radio program. Why is that, Dennis?
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Dennis Brown says: “However, you claim they are “dripping with anti-conservative and anti-American slurs”. If this is so, you should be able to give some examples.”
======================
I can’t. In the last two or three years I’ve got to the point where I quickly switch to some other place on the dial after only a few minutes of listening to those two in particular. I might also add that Carol Off is another one that completely turns me off. Those three collectively host three of the supposedly flagship programs offered on CBC radio. That should tell you something.
I long for the days of Barbara Frum (may she rest in peace), but I’m afraid journalists like her are long gone from CBC. But I think it’s rather telling that her son is a prominent right-winger in the US, ’cause as the saying goes, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
So sorry, I’m not going to subject myself to the agony of listening to them, just so I can give you some examples. I mean, a person can only take so much without popping handfuls of blood pressure pills.
+++++++++++++++++++
Dennis Brown says: “I too found the references to gender parity and minorities somewhat puzzling until I realized that there are pressure groups on the left accusing the CBC of bias as well. So no doubt the CBC would feel it has to satisfy those critics as well.”
==================
I should think it would be obvious, Dennis, that if CBC was responding to “pressure groups”, why were these points that are supposedly meant to respond to “pressure groups on the left” the only ones they responded to? Surely there must have been some “pressure groups” from the right as well, but maybe not. Perhaps we’ve just stopped listening/viewing/reading the CBC altogether, in which case, CBC is deluding itself. If the last election can be used as a benchmark, that means they have lost 30%, or thereabouts, of the country. Not a very good performance, by any measure.
And again, if my hunches are correct, is that not evidence of who the CBC considers to be its constituency? Sure looks like it to me. If it isn’t then it’s plain stupidity on CBC’s part to leave out any mention conservative perspective on issues that might be burning with 30% of the people who pay for the service. That might be okay with the private sector, if 60% brings in a big enough audience, and they can get along without the other 30%, but it’s not okay in the public sector.
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Dennis Brown says: “But, if somebody watched only the local news to get the city news, weather and sports, this individual would be exposed to twice as much crime reporting and could well conclude that there is a crime wave happening even if the actual stats showed a decline in crime, not an increase.
=======================
You can get all of the local news you want on the web. No need for TV. That, in fact, is one of the problems. Competition for viewers/listeners/readers has expanded exponentially. All television broadcasters, not just CBC, seem to have tuned out the fact that people can get news from almost everywhere, including sites as far away as Russia, India, or South Korea. Broadcasters from most countries in the world offer services in English. (I don’t know how French language television services fair in this brave new world, but I would imagine it suffers the same, or even worse, from exponential expansion of access to the global network we call the World Wide Web, because English is the most widely used language in the world.)
We don’t need to depend on local or even national television broadcasters any more. In fact, most of the information I read on the web comes from news.google.ca and from like-minded blogs, which by the way, along with left-minded blogs, are ubiquitous. Perhaps there is a problem with that, but it’s promising to be a mortal blow to the television industry across the board, just as it is to the print-on-paper industry. But even so, supporting a dieing industry with tax dollars is a very unwise use of public funds, no matter what the industry. Dinosaurs have to be allowed to die a natural death.
As far as crime reporting itself is concerned, I pay no attention to that at all. Other than “Amber Alerts” and similar issues, like the release of pedophiles from prison, which amount to a public service, it’s boring and salacious.
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Dennis Brown says: “Yet in neither of the above cases does the difference in coverage constitute a bias at the reporting level.”
================
You’re speaking of the mechanics or perhaps the logistics, but not the content. Even those reporters in the field in, say, Afghanistan, display a bias in how they frame their reports, in what they investigate while they are in the field, in who they speak to and how they distill what they have learned into a one or two minute report.
It’s the distilling process where the bias creeps in and even at that, I’m sure not all reports filed by their field staff get to the nightly news. There are filters applied at every level, beginning with the personal biases of the reporter in the field, right on down, which, of course, is only natural. Bias is inherent in any news broadcast, but again, that’s just one more reason a broadcaster should not be dependent on government for its funding.
And since you’ve raised the issue of crime, this old leftie meme about the drop in the crime rate isn’t the issue. It’s the whole justice system that’s the issue. It’s how crime and criminal behavior are dealt with, regardless of whether crime is on the rise or on the decline. You should expand your list of memes, Dennis. Think outside your box once in a while.
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Dennis Brown says: “and one by the Asper family owned Ottawa Citizen”
===================
Again, we get the tired old meme about the media barons. The.Asper family. Rupert Murdock. Conrad Black. Ted Turner. Blah, blah, blah.
The thing they all have in common is the drive for profits. If their empires offer products that a significant portion of the potential consumer/audience couldn’t care less about, they’d soon be out of business.
Besides, most broadcasters, including the CBC I presume, get their copy from a handful of international organizations like Associated Press and Reuters. It means nothing that CanWest News and CTV offered similar stories. Their source was likely the same – one of those international services. But if a private broadcaster loses 30% of its audience, it’s in serious trouble. I’ve read recently that CNN is losing its audience at a staggering rate. If they don’t shape up, they’ll go under. Not so with the CBC.
I’d like to deal with your second comment, the one about AGW, but I’d rather do that on my blog. That’s not meant to be a shameless plug, although I admit it amounts to it just the same. But if you are interested, click on my name and it will lead you to my blog. I may not get around to it today, but perhaps in the next two or three days. I’m fearing that we may be boring the other readers with this personal conversation between just two of us. But, it’s your choice.
Bill says:
> A pretty damning story but you won’t read it on the CBC.
I found this story, dated May 14, on the CBC site:
Liberal MP remains in caucus after charge
Pablo Rodriguez faces charge of refusing breathalyzer test
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/montreal/story/2010/05/14/mtl-rodriguez-charges.html
Beyond Repair
CBC hoped its news renewal would revitalize the sputtering network, but how much can you do with the same broken engine under the hood?
By TYLER HARPER
Ryerson Journalism Review – Summer 2010
In the din of the newsroom, an orchestra of hammers struck the first note. Old sets were hastily torn down and replaced by transparent desks, luminescent backdrops and television screens. As the sound of buzz saws and workboots grew louder, so did the pressure to meet the on-air deadline. Newscasters rehearsed their standups on unfinished sets. Staff complained privately about increased work hours. In the days leading up to October 26, 2009, the music playing out at CBC News was a cacophony of anxiety and uncertainty. And when the orchestra finished, the performance began.
Peter Mansbridge stood on the new set of CBC News: The National, grinning into the camera as kinetic text and colours flashed behind him. Gone was the generic background. Instead, Mansbridge walked from screen to screen, story to story, reporter to reporter, in a bright, plastic space where everything seemed faster paced. Stories were sometimes introduced on different parts of the set. Some reporters delivered their reports and standups live rather than on location. Retired General Rick Hillier stood at a desk as he talked about his new book. To everyone involved, it was an excruciatingly choreographed production.
Mansbridge appeared to be playing a different role. Previously dignified as the rock of Canadian journalism, the 61-year-old anchor now looked uncomfortably jovial, as if he were trying to be younger, to keep stride, to be cool. In the middle of a Wendy Mesley piece on the H1N1 virus, Mansbridge looked at her and awkwardly asked, “What’s up with that?” Mansbridge wasn’t the only player who seemed out of place: London correspondent Adrienne Arsenault filed a piece on a poll concluding Canadians don’t care about the British monarchy, and Mesley dressed up in a haz-mat suit and asked for a book on swine flu at a local Chapters. It was a broadcast without bite.
When the show ended and the curtains closed, the actors retired for the night. There was a sense of momentary relief among the staff. They had produced a show that, because of the choreography between reporters and screens, was near impossible to direct. Part had been taped prior to broadcast because, as one former staffer recalls, there were concerns it would “blow up on television.” Though the show wasn’t as smooth as producers would have liked, there were few lineup glitches and reporters made no noticeable mistakes.
Despite the supreme effort, audience reaction to the October 26 revamp of The National did not sound like applause. Globe and Mail columnist Rick Salutin called it “talking down to dim, self-absorbed viewers, with weak attention spans who don’t care about complex issues or, yuck, details.” One viewer wrote to the Globe asking, “How stupid do they think the audience is?…[T]he banter between reporters is even worse on this new program and totally unreal. The stories are much too bitty and the whole program comes across as unprofessional.” Furthermore, viewers did not flock to the new version. Opening night audience numbers hit 704,000, according to an article television critic John Doyle wrote for the Globe—just over half the audience of that evening’s CTV National News—but as usual, dropped off 20 minutes into the broadcast to 573,000. Low numbers are nothing unusual; CBC’s main competitors, CTV and Global, typically dominate ratings.
The most common criticism, that reporters, anchors and guests now stood up on The National, was easier to defend than more valid concerns of fellow journalists: Why were the stories shorter? What had become of the long-form pieces that usually ran in the back half of The National? Why were CBC’s star reporters such as Arsenault and Mesley filing puff pieces? And, finally, why did everything seem sensationalist and populist—the type of flash news associated with CNN?
The uncomfortable truth about the network’s approach to news is that it had to change. It had become stale and predictable. It was a common joke that CBC Newsworld, renamed CBC News Network, took weekends off, and The National hadn’t had a major overhaul since the early 1990s. It needed, as Doyle observed, a “shot of adrenalin.” But had CBC gone too far?
The network is in distress. CBC must maintain its viewers under a perpetually thin budget. Its parliamentary appropriation, which in the last 20 years topped out at a little over $1.5 billion in 1991, took a cut in the late ’90s and hasn’t been adjusted annually for inflation. CBC/Radio-Canada’s revenue in 2008-2009, including advertising and other income, totalled just over $1.8 billion, about $16 million short of its operating costs. Last year, a $171 million budgetary shortfall forced CBC to cut approximately 800 jobs.
What Canadians get, then, is a network that has to do more with less, and how much CBC spent on the relaunch hasn’t been made public. Most troubling, however, is that CBC is on the verge of losing its relevance. With stiff competition and an audience that has more news options than ever, Canada’s public broadcaster, a national and cultural institution since 1936, is struggling to remind viewers of its own importance. CBC’s answer, a massive overhaul of news and programming, has the network under tremendous pressure in one of the most turbulent years of its existence.
Although Richard Stursberg, executive vice-president of English services, has publicly said the news renewal began around 2006, its origins date back to 2003, when Tony Burman, the former head of CBC News, commissioned a study that explored the state of CBC News and how it needed to change. The 248-page document is extensive, a thick manifesto detailing everything from branding and presentation to a new system of newsgathering called “tri-media collaboration,” or “editorial engine,” that would integrate CBC’s different news platforms.
It made no concrete suggestions. The study pointed out that many viewers wanted more international coverage made “local.” It suggested CBC move toward flashier branding to attract a younger demographic, yet contradictorily noted the problems with the overly slick news associated with U.S. networks. One of CBC’s issues, according to the study, was the “superficial, cosmetic or style changes that seem out of character or, worse, compromise the core integrity of the brand.”
“It became the manual and the justification to do anything you wanted, because you could read anything into it,” says a former staffer. “Viewers wanted foreign news, they wanted local news, they wanted more weather, they wanted shorter pieces, they hated politics. You could read anything into it, so anytime anyone had an idea, management would say, ‘That’s what the news study says.’ The fact that something entirely different was said four pages later mattered not.”
Burman left CBC in July 2007 and in May 2008 became managing director of Al Jazeera English. The study died. But from its corpse, Stursberg had a clear field to implement his vision. “Richard doesn’t give a shit about the news. And this is completely about the news,” says a former CBC News producer. “All he gave a shit about was power between him and Tony.”
What Stursberg wants—a network that isn’t just surviving but thriving—is the dream shared by everyone at CBC, and it’s ironic that it was Burman’s study that opened the door for the news renewal, as Burman is revered while Stursberg is vilified.
Both Burman and Stursberg declined multiple requests to comment for this story, but some former CBC staffers believe Stursberg won a power struggle between the two. “He hated that Tony had an area of influence that he didn’t control, which was the news,” says one. “He probably also hated the fact that whenever you talk to anyone anywhere, they’ll tell you the news is what CBC exists for. And, as you know, what Richard wished it existed for is Little Mosque on the Prairie”—a reference to the fact that, since he arrived in 2004 and was put in charge of all English-language programming services in 2007,Stursberg has been criticized inside and outside the network for his populist vision.
Todd Spencer, executive director of news content, was given the task of reconfiguring the divided newsroom into a hub system, where television, radio and online assignments, plus planning, would be merged into one desk. Executive producer Mark Harrison and director Jonathan Whitten were charged with guiding The National through the extensive revamp, with Whitten planning the changes and Harrison keeping the show running in the meantime. (In March, Whitten took over the hub while Spencer was made executive director of CBC News Network, a shuffle not considered a lateral move.)
But Stursberg wanted a team capable of not just running CBC, but selling it as well. Jeffrey Dvorkin was a managing editor of CBC Radio before he left in 1997, after 21 years, to become head of news at National Public Radio in the U.S. He encountered Stursberg’s hiring preference in 2008 when he applied for the job of head of radio. He recalls Stursberg calling about 10 days later to tell Dvorkin he didn’t get the job. “You’re a good journalist and programmer and all that, but that’s not what we’re looking for.”
“What are you looking for?”
“Well, we’re looking for someone with experience in the music industry because we think CBC Radio is underperforming as a marketing agency,” said Stursberg.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, CBC Radio could do better in marketing for its products, like music.”
“You mean like iTunes?”
“Exactly.”
Stursberg still found capable people. He hired John Cruickshank, a former chief operating officer of the Sun-Times Media Group’s Chicago portfolio, to replace Burman, making him publisher of CBC News. But Cruickshank soon left to become publisher of the Toronto Star. So Stursberg looked again, this time within CBC. He hired Jennifer McGuire as interim general manager and editor-in-chief of CBC News—same job, different title—in November 2008, then made the job official the following May. By the time she reached the top, McGuire had an impressive resumé at the network. She had been in charge of programming on CBC Radio and previously worked as a producer on television shows such as Foreign Assignment and Sunday Morning Live.
McGuire is considered by many to be a loyal, ambitious, competent employee. But some express concern that she speaks Stursberg’s language too well to ever really lead her staff, and that she is not Burman. The sentiment is unfair to McGuire: Burman’s legacy casts a long shadow over CBC, and McGuire took over at a time when her every decision was being scrutinized. For her part, McGuire says she didn’t think too much about it. “Tony’s held the reins in news for a very long time. He’s a big personality and he’s a journalist with great credentials. I’m not intimidated by that nor am I disrespectful of it. I think it’s wonderful; Burman had a great legacy, and on we go.”
Endless meetings and committees were scheduled, and it appeared that one major influence on what Stursberg did came from representatives of Frank N. Magid Associates, an American media consulting firm known for its “if it bleeds, it leads” mandate that found an ear at CBC around 2005 and has seen its influence grow since. The Magid approach emphasized crime, weather and traffic. Newscasts were to carry more stories with shorter run times, or stories cut up into segments scattered across the program, to keep viewers engaged.
Ian Morrison, spokesman for Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, says Magid’s reputation for “promoting sizzle rather than steak” doesn’t jibe with the ideals of a public broadcaster. “In the mainstream of the Western democratic tradition, public broadcasting has a distinctive something. It’s not something that follows, apes or mimics the private sector. It’s something that goes into more depth, covers things longer, tries to get behind the news to explain what’s going on and not chase fire trucks, sensationalizing, using news as entertainment, shock. Magid’s reputation is moving it in that direction and that is consistent with the current CBC management’s preoccupation with audience numbers and stylistically copying things that happen in the private sector in this country, and particularly in the United States.”
An access to information request for Magid’s contract and details of the company’s consultation with CBC was denied by the network on the grounds of journalistic exemption, and McGuire disputes the company’s perceived influence on the relaunch. “I think it’s ludicrous; it implies Magid somehow has a decision-making role here, and they don’t,” she says, adding that CBC made all decisions internally and that Magid’s consultations were specific to work flow, content analysis and local programming.
It can be argued that while hundreds of people took part in the relaunch committees, opposition to CBC’s new direction never had a chance to develop because so many experienced staff were taking themselves out of the game through voluntary retirement packages. CBC News senior correspondent Brian Stewart and Don Newman, host of Newsworld’s Politics, were among the biggest names to take the buyout, and newsroom morale was damaged by reassignments, layoffs and buyouts.
Stewart likens it to a troubled sports team being reinvented from the bottom up. Veterans are traded for rookies and draft picks in the hope that a fresh look can spark the team’s fortunes. But in a newsroom, that breeds anxiety. “People lose confidence,” says Stewart. “They wonder if they’re the mistake, if they’re the weak link. It had to linger as long as the rediscovery period went on. And I’m not sure how management could have soft-coated that in any way. They had to be honest and say a lot is going to change. Human beings can only live within that cycle for so long before they get kind of spooked. It happens with athletes, it happens in business, it happens in media.”
Under the hood, one of the biggest changes is the introduction of the hub, an assignment system meant to integrate television, radio and online editorial into one unit. Previously, assignment on each platform operated independently. A radio reporter and a television reporter might, for example, be sent to cover a protest unaware of each other. The hub is a way to do more with less in a clean, efficient manner. Theoretically, it should help CBC get ahead of the curve.
The system is organized into a desk in the middle of the CBC Toronto newsroom, with about 60 people working among three sections. At the planning desk, editors work out CBC’s future coverage. The daily desk assigns traditional stories, and the live-now desk feeds new information and footage to platforms—such as CBC News Network and the network’s website—that are capable of relaying breaking news. “Seventy to 80 percent of news can actually be planned for,” Spencer explained last January before he was reassigned to News Network. “You can’t plan for an earthquake in Haiti but you can plan for how you’re going to respond to an earthquake somewhere, so you can be a little bit ready. We can certainly be planning for most events that we end up covering.”
Spencer said the idea of a hub had been floated around the network even before Burman’s study, but that staff were skeptical because nothing had ever materialized. “When I had conversations with the staff they said, ‘Yeah, you know, we’ve been talking about this for years.’”
Spencer and McGuire began gathering suggestions in the spring of 2008. By the fall, they had enough information to assemble three small “blue-sky” groups that would come up with possible models for the hub. Then, for eight gruelling days at the end of January 2009, a work group tested each model and decided on how the hub would operate. The new system was unveiled in March 2009. A version of it was tested in Vancouver, then implemented in smaller newsrooms such as CBC Manitoba, where it fit with ease, though many regional newsrooms were already using their own versions of the hub. When the Toronto hub, which handles national coverage, launched last September, it ran 24/7.
Internally, the hub has met with plenty of complaints. Following the layoffs, there was grumbling that CBC should have been hiring reporters instead of adding a new layer of bureaucracy. A newsroom joke was that it took nine people to assign one reporter, though Spencer said there is little truth to this. He admitted it was challenging getting reassigned staffers, a mix from television, radio and online, used to new ways of working.
“We did a lot the last 12 months. People are very tired, and that leads to stressful situations,” he says. “But people are amazing and they’ve worked really, really hard.
“We’ve got at least another two years of work to refining, to making it work. This whole change of CBC News is a five-year project, in my view. You plan the work, you work the plan, and then you make sure it’s all working over the next few years.”
While the early months of 2009 were marked by the purging of the old guard and their old ways from CBC, the following five months—leading up to the October relaunch—can be defined by the network’s dash to reveal its reinvention. The public’s first look came in August when the previously 60-minute local broadcast expanded to three 30-minute segments. The network pitched it as a better way to serve its audience, but some speculated that it was an attempt to boost ad revenue. Thirty new minutes would mean more content, and recasting stories meant viewers would be less likely to miss the day’s top news. But in practice, the news seems diluted. Each 30-minute segment contains streeters almost identical to its incarnation in the previous block, often the only change being a different camera angle.
The local news reboot was, however, a mild precursor to the October relaunch, in which CBC changed its focus from delivering the news to connecting with the viewer. On The National, this can be seen in a number of ways. Reporters in the studio casually discuss their stories with Mansbridge instead of authoritatively delivering the news to the camera. Pieces are shorter. A typical long piece might run five or six minutes, down considerably from the 17- to 20-minute stories that used to air on the program’s back half. (Mansbridge attributes the shorter stories to a lack of resources and access. “That programming’s not as successful as it used to be. Long-form documentary programming has its home; we have lots of it on our network. There still is longer form on The National, but the documentaries have got to be worth it.”)Time is set aside to promote upcoming stories before commercial breaks. What the stories have lost in time, and therefore content, has theoretically been gained in keeping the viewers’ short attention spans throughout the program.
Derek Foster, an assistant professor at Brock University who has written several academic papers about the network, calls CBC’s attempt to establish a relationship with the viewer “a rhetoric of display. It’s a mode of presentation much like museums, which are constantly updating the way in which they try to appeal to their visitors. That’s the same thing CBC is doing. How can we encourage more visitors to come to our broadcast and how can we encourage them to stay through the half-hour and want to come back again? So they try to make it more homey.”
In a bid to use social media and get even cozier with viewers, CBC has placed a greater emphasis on The National’s Facebook page. Along with providing a space for comments, CBC also invites viewers to suggest the stories they want to see. And if you ever forget about it, Mansbridge is there at the end of The National to remind you CBC is online.
Such cross-promotion was given a greater focus after the relaunch. On local news, sports stories were sometimes replaced by plugs for upcoming sports programming. On The National, the cross-promotion was more shameless. When Battle of the Blades, a ratings hit for CBC in 2009, ended its final episode, one of the stories on The National following the broadcast was an interview with one of the show’s executive producers, Sandra Bezic, that included her speculating on future spinoffs. Increasingly, it seemed as though CBC treated The National as a billboard rather than a sacrosanct news program. That’s because CBC no longer had viewers; it had fans.
“This is part of their new identity,” says Foster, “that they’re not necessarily going to educate or service people in the way that has been traditionally understood as the mandate of public service broadcasting.
“So CBC is now on Facebook and they’re saying, ‘Tell us what you’d like covered.’ Like they’re literally saying, ‘If you express enough interest in this story, maybe we’ll put it higher up on the actual nightly coverage.’ It’s quite fascinating, the degree to which they are trying to actually not just become more of a public broadcaster but more of a popular broadcaster.”
When Brian Stewart looks back on his 45-year career as a journalist—37 of which he spent at CBC—he uses words like “fun” and “lucky” to describe his time in the ’70s and ’80s. Before he became one of CBC’s star foreign correspondents, Stewart was having a gas in ’70s Montreal covering city politics, protests and the FLQ crisis. Like many current and former CBC staffers, Stewart recalls that period with nostalgic fondness. Canada was eager to bolster its status in the world, and CBC was one of only a few networks worldwide that had the resources to bring the story home. For his own part, Stewart made his name in 1984 reporting on Ethiopia’s famine with daring footage of dying children and terrible living conditions. “There was a very good backup to our efforts abroad,” says Stewart. “If we could sell them on the importance of a story, there was much more the atmosphere or the attitude that, fine, we gotta be there and let’s beat the world.” It was a gutsy time for a network that could afford to show some swagger. CBC had little domestic competition and rarely worried about ratings. It also had The Journal
When The Journal went to air in 1982, hosted by Barbara Frum and Mary Lou Finlay, it represented a ballsy gambit: A 38-minute current affairs program tacked onto the back half of The National with no male host and densely reported stories with run times that often exceeded 20 minutes. It was expensive, relevant and critically acclaimed.
Then Frum died in 1992. Soon after, CBC management decided to roll The National and The Journal into one seamless program called Prime Time News, which many agree was a negative turning point for the network.
“The decision to kill The Journal was a grave mistake. A very grave mistake. It had tremendous potential to move on, like 60 Minutes, like Panorama on the BBC. But to kill it off a decade after it was launched, it was only 10 years old and it was one of the major names,” says Stewart. “Probably for 10 years people would still refer to The National’s back end or any other manifestation as The Journal.”
In the face of a new rival in CNN and stronger domestic competition from CTV, CBC hoped Prime Time News would revitalize the network. Hosted by Peter Mansbridge and Pamela Wallin, the show combined the current affairs aspects of The Journal with the news stories of The National in a 9 p.m. time slot.
“The idea at the time was that it would be a unique newscast,” says the Globe’s Doyle. “It would not necessarily lead with the biggest hard news event that happened that day. It would lead with the most interesting story of the day. If there was a big political story that day, it might ignore that and lead with a long report on some new research on breast cancer. It was a very experimental CBC program. Highly unusual for its time. Possibly ahead of its time.”
It was also a disaster. Prime Time News competed against American rating monsters such as Frasier, Seinfeld and Melrose Place, and viewers weren’t interested in watching news earlier than 10 p.m. The new format lasted less than three years before CBC quietly slumped away from the changes.
In the months since the October relaunch, The National has in many ways returned to a calmer format. The new set remains, but the stories and nightly lineup have strengthened. The choreography has largely been done away with in favour of the camera focused on Mansbridge standing behind the desk. This can be credited to the show’s leadership under Harrison and Whitten, both of whom Stewart says kept the show functioning during the relaunch. Plus, they have succeeded in breaking away from what Whitten calls the traditional newscast format of intro, item, repeat. The National has been flashy, yes, but it’s also been consistently interesting.
Harrison and Whitten are both sensitive to the impact on the audience, but they also feel the show had to respond to the times if it were to continue. Whitten points to The National’s website and 10-minute downloadable podcast (updated every weekday at 6 p.m. ET before the main broadcast) as examples of the show’s attempts to adapt to the times. “It’s recognizing that, 10 years from now, are people really going to be still sitting waiting for 10 o’clock at night to get the news? And The National is a hugely important brand for CBC, so why have people wait until 10 o’clock at night?” Whitten says. “This was a pretty wide-ranging change in the way we do things. It didn’t really involve the set and whether Peter stood or not. And I think that gets kind of lost in a lot of the hubbub.”
All of this may be too little, too late for CBC. Doyle thinks these changes should have come 20 years ago, during the rise of CNN in Canada, and that it cost CBC an opportunity, in particular with Newsworld, to be effective. “They knew there was a huge interest in the kind of live, on-the-spot reporting that CNN was doing. I think CBC was caught completely unaware. They failed to use Newsworld to respond to the existence of CNN in Canada.”
CBC’s troubles today are a far cry from the network’s glory days. In January, Spencer conceded CBC isn’t necessarily the first choice for Canadians anymore. “No one really loves anyone in Canadian news,” he says, adding the relaunch was informed by viewer feedback. “There’s no big winner. This myth that, Don’t worry, when it’s really hitting the fan people will go to CBC News. That isn’t true anymore. They go to whatever they’re going to on a regular basis more and more. So the audience was telling us, You’re not as important as you think you are.
“Numbers are really important to us and ratings are really important to us, because that’s the only way we know if we’re actually making a difference with Canadians.”
Still, CBC is undeniably a ratings underdog, though according to Mansbridge, it’s also a network “that survives on the strength of our journalists and what they deliver for us. We don’t survive on the strength of the lead-ins to our program. We never have. We’re not CTV at 11 o’clock coming out of viewers watching CSI. We’re The National coming out at 10 o’clock, which is the heart of prime time, against the heaviest competition, which isn’t news. And our lead-ins are usually very small in TV prime-time numbers.”
But that a public broadcaster would measure itself in terms of viewers, Foster says, is inevitably going to anger part of CBC’s audience, even though healthy viewer numbers lead to more advertising revenue. “Then you can continue to put more money into these things that will build and drive increasing future audiences.
“That is really problematic for some people, the traditional cultural nationalist public that says the CBC should not be servicing this master of advertising. That they’re serving dual masters: the public interest and commercial interest.”
In an ideal world, CBC would provide the stories Canadians need, not what they want. In reality, CBC must labour to convince the audience and federal government that a public broadcaster is still necessary.
CBC News then walks a tightrope of expectations between two types of audience: the one that thinks CBC as a public broadcaster has a duty to give Canadians vital content without pandering for advertising money, and the other that wants CBC to maintain its quality while providing a return on taxpayers’ investment. CBC News can either continue, underfunded and struggling to compete for shorter attention spans, or be burnt to the ground.
“Public opinion, public interest and public expectations. All these things are wrapped up in this idea of what a public broadcaster can do,” says Foster. “And the CBC as a public broadcaster almost inevitably is going to fall short.”
Give it a rest, Brown. Itls like that was written by the Liberal party press corp.
“Rodriguez told me several times that we were going to damage his career that he had taken 30 years to build,” the officer reported. “He also mentioned that he hoped that it wasn’t because he was in the Liberal party that I was charging him. I told the monsieur that I was only doing my job.”
http://thechronicleherald.ca/Canada/1186307.html
If that was a Conservative, this would have been front page, every day with reporters hounding the person into the ground.