It always impressed me the excellent job Tom Clark did with the West Block show on Global Television. Tom always had a leg up with me because I respected his fairness as a reporter and his innovations with the program. I paid even closer attention to the show when Tom retired and Vassy Kapelos took over, though maybe not for the same reasons.
But the Mercedes Stephenson version has led me to stop wasting my time with Global Television. I think the program’s producer and director should find jobs in another industry. After watching the program, the day before a critical election, that was not only biased and deliberately misleading, I am outraged. All I can do, I guess, is to file a complaint with the Canadian Radio-Television Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) and Elections Canada.
The air waves belong to all of us. There are commitments made by all radio and television stations that are licensed to operate in Canada. I am reasonably sure that no licensed broadcaster is allowed to run such a biased and obviously unfair program the day before the election.
What I am complaining about is that half the non-commercial airtime for the show was a political panel commenting on the election. The panel was composed of two people who have either said or would admit to voting conservative. The third person, whom I would expect to not say how he voted, has that right. As he is the mayor of Calgary, Naheed Nenshi deserves the right to anonymity at the polls.
I will also admit that Mayor Nenshi contributed positively to the panel as the Alberta voting situation in this election was unique. He frankly admitted that there was no great shift of voters in Alberta away from the conservative party.
The least politically knowledgeable person on the panel was the former member of parliament Celina Caesar-Chavannes. She has not only publicly stated she would vote conservative in this election, but you can read her book to find out how little she knows about politics and how much she hates liberal leader Justin Trudeau.
The third member of the panel was James Moore who served in the cabinet of conservative prime minister Stephen Harper. He had some credibility to bring to the topic.
What the audience got was about 12 minutes of unpaid political advertising for the conservative party, on the public airwaves.
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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry
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