WHAT DO YOU THINK, FOLKS: KEEP THE CBC?

   

       I'D BE THE LAST TO ARGUE that the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation does a perfect job in its assigned role as a unifying Canadian cultural force, with its obligation to link all regions bilingually, and to provide news coverage in a way that is free of bias, political or other.
      There have been times, in fact, when I have been so ticked off at the CBC -- usually in matters involving general and political news, rather than entertainment programming -- that I'd have backed the idea of dismantling the whole bloody network and selling off its assets in order to reduce the public debt.
       Then I have remembered that lurking in the background, waiting to pounce on the CBC share of the broadcast market, are private broadcasters, whose chief goal seems to be the coining of advertising profits through entertainment, huge chunks of that entertainment emanating from the show biz mills of the U.S.A. (as well as the goal, of course, of providing heavy airing of conservative viewpoints).
       
       BUT THERE'S SOMETHING ELSE that brings me back to the support of the CBC, in spite of its faults, and that's the realization of a peculiarity that I have noticed many times in my professional experience of covering political news.
       Before I describe that peculiarity I must state that in all my years of political reporting, I always tried to be balanced in the way I handled my work. It was standard practice to seek comments from "the other side" in political news. If a premier or prime minister made a statement, or was involved in news in some other way, then getting a response from his or her political opponents was obligatory. In addition, digging into the facts of matters was essential, aside entirely from any politician's statements or desires.
       One is entitled to think that political leaders would understand this obligation on the part of news organizations and their reporters, and not take it amiss. Many of them did, and do today, accept that, but  the peculiarity of which I speak is that there were some who at times did (and do) not.
       On more than one occasion, I heard gripes from government leaders (Premier W.A.C. Bennett was one, Prime Minister John Diefenbaker was another, and, yes, I do go that far back) about the way newspapers could find criticisms of government policy by opposition representatives to be worth much as news.

        BENNETT'S POINT OF VIEW was that we should not give those parties any sizeable coverage because they were not in positions of power; they lacked the ability to do anything more than criticize and present unproven ideas. And he sometimes darkly hinted that -- well, no, he actually used specific terms, sometimes calling us "the Liberal press" and even suggesting reporters were "socialists," and if not that, still were guided by some political motive or other.
       I often suspected that the Bennetts and the Diefenbakers and the like would have been quite content to see the opposition get no publicity at all. In other words, the government won election to power, not the other guys, so why should they receive all that attention?
      This approach, in my experience, tended to come more from the right than from the the left, more from the conservative than from the liberal side of the political spectrum. (To be fair, I should remind readers that Diefenbaker was something of a "red Conservative.")
       We've had a sample of this attitude in the past week, with parliamentary committee hearings in Ottawa on the CBC's budget, which depends upon just over $1 billion a year in government subsidies.

       CONSERVATIVE MP JOHN Williamson accused the CBC of providing one-sided news coverage -- which of course meant he was unhappy with CBC coverage of his side, the government side.
       I think his argument boils down to the same thing: it was the Tory point of view that won the national election last May, so other points of view just don't rate. Therefore (although Mr. Williamson did not put it quite this way), we want to stick our noses into your (CBC) records and maybe get to see who your sources were for this or that, and so on and so forth, and then possibly be able to shut them up. I'm not saying that's precisely the case, I'm just kicking the subject around, being of suspicious mind when it comes to politics.
      Anyway, the motivation is political because the source of the questioning is a politician. And, naturally, the CBC is not going to fold under such outrageous pressure, nor should it.

      POWER IS A PECULIAR THING.  Even in democracies those who gain power can persuade themselves after exercising power for a relatively short time, that they not only deserve to wield it, but truly own it. This leads them to reason further that they therefore are not subject to criticisms and can do no wrong and are entitled to constant public cheering.
      Fortunately, in democracies they always learn they are wrong about that.
      I suppose it can be galling to any Canadian national government to be called to account as a result of news stories generated by an organization that the government itself owns. And I would guess that it's difficult for more than a few politicians to accept the idea that an outfit like the CBC is actually doing its news duty when it holds political feet to the fire, as any self-respecting news organization must.
      My opinion of CBC news coverage -- I'm not constant viewer, but I catch quite a bit of it -- is that it is, on the whole, good, professional and energetic. I do not, however, give such a high rating to the CBC's commentary programs. For one thing, they tend to use too many of the same "talking heads," which can lead to boredom, since the viewer is likely to sense in advance what these talking heads are going to say.   
      And then there's this: On a recent political discussion-analysis program I was astonished to see that one of the "authorities" on the panel was a practitioner of what generally goes under the title "public relations counsel."

       THIS OFFENDS ME,  because my view of "public relations counsel" is not terribly favorable. That is a somewhat dignified occupational title, "public relations counsel," but in my day many in news regarded people with that title (pleasant though they may have been personally) as "press agents" and "publicity agents" and (sorry, but it's the truth) as "flaks." I mean, their job was/is to get favorable publicity for their clients, whatever their ilk, whatever their aims.
      And all I can say about that is, "CBC news, what'n'hell are you doing, giving such formal respect and dignity to flaks?"
       I also have a problem with some of the CBC's entertainment line-up -- it has more import programming than your true-blue Canadian might want. So far, the MPs of the inquiring committee don't seem to have gone into that general question. I think they ought to -- I mean, we can already get "Wheel of Fortune" on American cable. So why does the CBC need to carry it too? (There are other "duplication programs" as well.)
       My opinion is that the CBC can and should be sharpened up a bit, can and should pay attention to some of the things that concern the public, but not for political reasons or purposes.

        WHEN IT COMES RIGHT DOWN TO IT, though, I think I'll vote to keep the CBC, while insisting that it is not beyond improvement and should seriously get to work on improving itself -- but do so while holding firmly to the value that it is not a mouthpiece for any government or political ideology. Period.

        Oh, I almost forgot --

        HAPPY 75th, CBC!