One of our favourite Canadian journalists, Allan Fotheringham, wrote years ago about a Saskatchewan farmer who had everything go wrong who ends up blaming all his problems on the CPR. That is understandable. The Canadian Pacific Railroad has been a major factor in the economy of our west since Confederation.
But other than that cornball W.O. Mitchell series, Jake and the Kid on radio and television, what has the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation ever done to the west? Certainly Corner Gas and Little Mosque on the Prairies were not that bad? Even Rex Murphy on Cross Canada Checkup listens to the west occasionally. It must be the consistency of ignorant ideologues that turns Conservatives against a government owned broadcasting enterprise. They just do not like the CBC.
The Harper government has been causing the CBC the death of a thousand cuts since squeaking into power in 2006. They also had some help from their free-enterprise friends. Mind you with friends such as Bell Canada, Shaw, Rogers and Péladeau, Harper is travelling with his own improvised explosive devices. These people only hate each other more than they hate the CBC. First CTV outrageously took the Olympics away from the CBC after many years of excellent pioneering work. Then Rogers screwed the CBC out of its iconic Hockey Night in Canada. These people are neither decent nor are they worthy of trust.
And what the stupid Conservatives do not realize is that they are compromising the trust that Canadians need to have in broadcasters. Canadians need fair and unbiased reporting of their world. The CBC and Radio Canada set that standard and the rest of Canada’s broadcast Quislings have been letting us down.
Watching CTV or Global news over recent years has become an increasingly boring repetition of very little news interlaced with extensive self promotion for the networks. It is not only boring and bad television but it is turning Canadians away from the news of their own country.
And it is the same as the reason the railways are more eager to ship tar sands bitumen to our seaports than grain—it simply pays better. And who caused that? All the Conservatives have proved in office is that they do not know how to run railways or broadcast networks.
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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry
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