Many of us have been watching in horror as the Conservative government has casually and constantly whittled away the funding of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. It is a death of a thousand cuts. Yet there are those concerned that the CBC’s priority for news coverage is at the expense of the corporation’s cultural offerings. Let us make ourselves clear at this time: kill the culture, keep the news.
The one thing that the CBC can still offer Canadians is the truth. This is a commodity beyond value. Though no news outlet can ever be perfect, the CBC strives for excellence in a field overwhelmed with laissez faire mediocrity.
Suffer through the major news hours of either CTV or Shaw in English or TVA in French and you will be revolted by the shallow and biased coverage of our country, the endless rehashing of old news and the treacle sweet nausea created by the networks’ endless self promotion. The on-air people spend more time on their inside jokes than on the real news of the day. The coverage also suffers from the endless starving of the outside news gathering resources and they fill the gaps with made up drivel.
But we still trust the CBC. Sure we make fun of the studio lights glinting off the dome of St. Peter but we will admit that Mansbridge is knowledgeable. He actually understands many of the subjects he reads from his teleprompters. He hosts smart and erudite panels to delve into questions of importance to our well being.
But preserving a culture that includes Rex Smith and Ann of Green Gables might not be among our highest priorities. We feel most bitterly the loss of Hockey Night in Canada as the bloated capitalists of the media elite feast on the Corporation’s remains. It started when CTV proved the vulnerability of the CBC by blatantly stealing the London Olympics from it and then added insult by stealing the people who could do the job. The prospect of the non-broadcaster leeches at Rogers controlling our hockey broadcasts foretells the destruction of a Canadian icon.
If there is anything left to save when we finally oust Harper and his heathens, we will raise a glass to the stamina of Peter Mansbridge and his cohorts. The CBC has served Canadians well through the tough times, the sad times, through austerity and success. We should honour the Corporation for its stamina and its service. And it still has a job to do to be an example for the upstarts and wannabes of broadcasting. We can only hope it continues to serve us well.
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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry
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