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Media Bias [Merged]

Of course I could, but I'm not going to make your argument for you.  If you want to opine about the value of the CBC based on its audience share, then it's up to you to back up your numbers.

lol? Wow just wow. I remember Mark Steyn saying once that the usual argument of the Left is to call facts opinions. Never thought I'd see such a direct case of it haha..

The real point here is if you want to argue against something, maybe you should first educate yourself on the subject, right? Never let the facts get in the way of a good story lol

EDIT: Guess you edited your post. Will leave your quote up though cause it makes me smile.
 
ERC:
and all after.

Hilarious!

Also add to your post: Source CBC.  As posted: http://www2.canada.com/topics/news/story.html?id=5528272

The quoted info brought to you by the corporation accused by many to skew the news, and who refused to inform taxpayers how the corporation spends their money.
 
jollyjacktar said:
Neil, let me help you with your data collection.  Ahem.... my name is jollyjacktar and I listen to CBC (English) radio as my primary source of listening activty whilst driving to and from work.  There, that should help.  Only 14.99999999% of the others out there need to come forward and confess.

Ah....do we have to....it's my secret life....I listen to As It Happens.....sigh.......(disgust, shame, where's the 12 steps!! )  :)
 
N. McKay said:
Do you imagine that there are no crown corporations doing useful work?

I imagine that if there was an actual market for said goods and services, the private sector would provide such goods and services.

For example, if there was a market for television entertainment, there might be companies called CTV, SUN, and so on to provide the service...If the market was drawn more narrowly to specialty programming, there might be companies called "Discovery Channel", or "HGTV", or "Space" or....

Even if you grant that Crown Corporations are doing "useful" work, their private sector counterparts are probably doing similar work for far less than $8 billion dollars, and are paying taxes to support their own competition.
 
It's not just the CBC. Consider this bit, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright from the Globe and Mail:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-notebook/ndp-sought-air-canada-upgrades-for-laytons-funeral/article2203285/
MORNING BUZZ
NDP sought Air Canada upgrades for Layton’s funeral

JANE TABER
OTTAWA— Globe and Mail Update

Posted on Monday, October 17, 2011

Six members of Jack Layton’s family, including his widow Olivia Chow, accepted free seat upgrades from Air Canada in August for travel to the late NDP leader’s lying in state on Parliament Hill.

NDP officials, who were organizing Mr. Layton’s funeral, asked Air Canada for the upgrades, according to an airline source familiar with the funeral arrangements. It is not clear if they were all for family or if some included staff members.

The revelation comes as the opposition accuses Labour Minister Lisa Raitt of conflict of interest. The Ethics Commissioner has been asked to investigate an allegation she accepted a free seat upgrade from a senior Air Canada official while in the midst of stick-handling the dispute between the airline and its 6,800 flight attendants.

Last week, NDP labour critic Yvon Godin sent a letter to Ethics Commissioner Mary Dawson asking her to investigate the allegation. “Electronic flight records show that the Raitt [sic], and her Chief of Staff Douglas Smith, were given complimentary upgrades to business class, approved personally by Duncan Dee, Air Canada’s Chief Operating Officer,” he wrote.

In his letter, Mr. Godin notes the upgrade was allegedly granted on Sept. 25 –“just days after threatening Air Canada employees with back-to-work legislation.” However, Ms. Raitt has denied taking the upgrade to sit in business class.

She told The Globe she used her own points for the upgrade, worth about $550. “I am confused by this one,” she said. “I don’t know what this one is about. I also read that I am on vacation in Hawaii, which I am not.”

Ms. Raitt was in San Francisco meeting with the longshoremen’s union; the House was not sitting last week because of the Thanksgiving break.

Air Canada has also denied giving her an upgrade. In addition, the airline has said that it did not hear from anyone in the Minister’s office requesting one.

Last week, after the flight attendants rejected a second tentative agreement and threatened to go on strike, Ms. Raitt asked the Canadian Industrial Relations Board to review the situation. That effectively put the strike on hold until the board comes back with its findings.

The Air Canada labour dispute is expected to be raised in Question Period after the Commons resumes sitting Monday. But with news of the Layton funeral upgrades, will NDP attacks be deflected as mere stone-throwing from within a glass house?


The headline and the first two paragraphs are about the Dippers asking for (and receiving) free upgrades but most of the story is a retelling of an, apparently untrue, story about Lisa Eaitt not getting a free upgrade.

As to the question at the end? Parliament will dismiss the NDP attacks as lies, but the media will repeat them, the lies, for as long as they can manage.
 
Thucydides said:
I imagine that if there was an actual market for said goods and services, the private sector would provide such goods and services.

For example, if there was a market for television entertainment, there might be companies called CTV, SUN, and so on to provide the service...If the market was drawn more narrowly to specialty programming, there might be companies called "Discovery Channel", or "HGTV", or "Space" or....

Even if you grant that Crown Corporations are doing "useful" work, their private sector counterparts are probably doing similar work for far less than $8 billion dollars, and are paying taxes to support their own competition.

You've precisely encapsulated exactly why Crown Corporations exist - because the private sector would fail to provide a national broadcasting service what would even cover the remote reaches of this country, because it wouldn't be profitable. Ditto why subsidies exist for certain travel services which wouldn't be profitable in certain areas yet are considered by the public to be necessary for the common good.

Thanks for playing.
 
Redeye said:
You've precisely encapsulated exactly why Crown Corporations exist - because the private sector would fail to provide a national broadcasting service what would even cover the remote reaches of this country, because it wouldn't be profitable. Ditto why subsidies exist for certain travel services which wouldn't be profitable in certain areas yet are considered by the public to be necessary for the common good.

Thanks for playing.


Which is precisely why I, and many others, advocate the continued existence of CBC Radio (English, French and International services) as a public, commercial free, network and the immediate defunding of CBC/Radio Canada television services - over the air and cable.

The legal requirement, in the Act I cited a few days ago, is fully, 100%, satisfied by CBC Radio. CBC TV need not and should not exist as a public, taxpayer funded, system because it is not filling any requirement.
 
Before our Bde got a PAFFO, during the period we were sending Reservists to the FRY, during the departure press conference from Minto Armoury, I observed the following:

- TV Crew (Camera, producer, reporter) from CBC Newsworld;
- TV Crew                                                    CBC National News;
- TV Crew                                                    CBC Local News;
- TV Crew                                                    CBC French (But not the National French);
- Reporter                                                    CBC Radio local; and
- Reporter                                                    CBC Radio French local.

Additionally, CTV Local crew of two (days before Global), CJOB Radio, Wpg Free Press, Wpg Sun,and a local community paper.

So we had approximately fourteen CBC employees and six disgruntled other media types. CBC had/has National News and Newsworld crews in Wpg and other cities.

Almost as bad as NDHQ. Send Andy Leslie in.
 
And Edward cuts to the heart of the matter; there is no need for the CBC in the current form.

Modern technology demolishes the second argument; the Internet is accessable virtually anywhere, people in remote regions may have to get satellite downloads but they can still access the universe of information. The fact of the matter is most Canadians don't choose to watch/listen to CBC anymore, but are still required to pay handsomely for it.

If you or I were to offer a service with so little value to the viewing/listening audience, we could never demand a premium for it, so why should the management of the CBC get a pass?
 
I would add CBC North to the "keep CBC Radio/SRC" list. 

What makes little sense is the funding of CBC business units with taxpayers money based on perceived/manufactured requirement to provide a politically/socially-oriented component to compete in a commercial manner against private-sector outlets.  This is particularly true when the leadership of this organization publicly demonstrates  flagrant disregard for the very tools (Access to Information Act) meant to ensure responsible and accountable use of public monies.

Regards
G2G
 
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2011/10/17/pol-vp-milewski-texas-crime.html

Posted: Oct 17, 2011

Texas conservatives reject Harper's crime plan


'Been there; done that; didn't work,' say Texas crime-fighters
By Terry Milewski, CBC News

You don't even have to read it to get the CBC's msg. And look who wrote it.
 
Rifleman62 said:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2011/10/17/pol-vp-milewski-texas-crime.html

Posted: Oct 17, 2011

Texas conservatives reject Harper's crime plan


'Been there; done that; didn't work,' say Texas crime-fighters
By Terry Milewski, CBC News

You don't even have to read it to get the CBC's msg. And look who wrote it.

Yes! I'm not the only one who saw this ridiculous story, there was a full feature on The National last night. No monetary comparisons, no policy comparisons, sheesh. And I love how there was no attempt to show if the Texas judge had ANY clue what the current policy was in Canada, just "Do you think this policy is bad?" "Yes". And I chuckle everytime Milewski says the word "Harper" and gets this snide disapproving tone in the middle of his sentence "But we all know the book was written by... :not-again: Haaaarper  :P...Lee"

Blech
 
Rifleman62 said:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2011/10/17/pol-vp-milewski-texas-crime.html

Posted: Oct 17, 2011

Texas conservatives reject Harper's crime plan


'Been there; done that; didn't work,' say Texas crime-fighters
By Terry Milewski, CBC News

You don't even have to read it to get the CBC's msg. And look who wrote it.

Here's a good piece (produced under S29 of the Copyright Act) from Brian Lee Crowley of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute who dispels some of the myths about the Canadian incarceration rate and the "Americanization" of our prisons:

Claims of wholesale Americanization of our criminal justice system highly exaggerated

Crime will be high on Parliament’s agenda this fall, given the priority that the Conservatives attached to the issue in the last election. Canada must indeed be vigilant to avoid the excesses of the American justice system.

By Brian Lee Crowley, The Hill Times, September 19, 2011

OTTAWA – Crime will be high on Parliament’s agenda in the autumn, given the priority that the Conservatives attached to the issue in the last election. You don’t have to be Conrad Black to have strong feelings about crime and punishment. But like on so many policy issues, feelings, no matter how strong they are, only get you so far.

If we try to think analytically about crime and punishment issues, however, we quickly see that each side in the debate brings something valuable to the table.

Take the opponents of Conservative policy. They are properly concerned to avoid the excesses of American penal policy. There the numbers of people in prison beggar belief: According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, about one per cent of American adults were in prison or jail at the end of 2009.

And many of them are there for frivolous reasons. People can be locked up for years for trivial drug offences or property crimes. Less than a tenth of prisoners are there for violent crimes. Three-strikes-and-you’re-out laws and long mandatory sentences are forcing up the prison population ever more rapidly. Spending on prisons in California now outstrips spending on state universities.

But the debate about corrections and prison in Canada is becoming like the debate on health care. Any attempt to introduce needed reforms is immediately attacked by its opponents as “Americanization,” regardless of the actual merits of the proposal.

In fact to hear the anguished cries from some of the government’s critics, you’d believe that we have already reproduced the American “justice” system in Canada. But according to research by Professor Ian Lee of Carleton University for my institute, the facts belie this view.

Take the numbers of people being put in prison in Canada. In 2009, almost 2.5 million crimes were reported to police in Canada. Only one-tenth of these resulted in a perpetrator being convicted. Of those, about a quarter were sentenced to provincial prisons. How many went to federal prison? Fewer than 5,000. And according to the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC), that number has essentially been stable for the past decade.

In the U.S., long sentences are part of what drive the growth in the prison population. But in Canada, the total federal prison population over the past decade has fluctuated within a very narrow band: a low of 12,400 in 2003-04, and a high of about 13,600 in 2007-08. If just under 5,000 are entering the system every year, and the total population is less than 14,000, the average inmate isn’t staying long.

How about the idea that Ottawa, like the U.S., is locking people up for trivial reasons? In Canada, nearly 70 per cent of federal inmates are there for violent crimes; over a quarter of all federal inmates are in for homicide, for example.

Yet the myth persists that Canada is now locking up a number of people totally disproportionate to other nations. According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), however, (the best source of statistics that allow sensible comparisons between rich industrialized countries) we are no outlier. We incarcerate about one seventh the number of people per 100,000 population in Canada versus the United States, but they are the great outlier. We put fewer people in jail relative to population than any of the other rich English-speaking democracies with a common law tradition (the U.K., New Zealand, and Australia) and we are below average for the OECD countries overall.

How about the idea that we are engaged in a vast orgy of prison-building to house our burgeoning prison population? Not quite. The last new federal prison was built in 1988. On the other hand, 28 federal prisons are over 40 years old. The normal lifespan of a prison is considered to be around 50 years. The Kingston pen, built in 1835, is still very much in use today.

According to testimony from the Parliamentary Budget Office, a new medium or maximum security prison should cost approximately $240-million. The entire annual capital budget of the CSC is $230-million. Far from lavishing scarce tax dollars on unnecessary prison construction, the Government of Canada is starving the prison system of the capital budgets needed merely to maintain what we have in good working order, and has been doing so for decades. Yet old decrepit prisons are a huge obstacle to rehabilitation.

Canada must indeed be vigilant to avoid the excesses of the American justice system. The government has an obligation to justify its corrections policies in terms of the real increased protection they can offer to Canadians while also making all reasonable efforts to rehabilitate offenders. But claims of the wholesale Americanization of the Canadian criminal justice system are highly exaggerated.

Brian Lee Crowley is the managing director of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, an independent non-partisan public policy think tank in Ottawa.

news@hilltimes.com

The Hill Times

Article Link 

* This article also appeared in the Kingston Whig Standard/Toronto Sun.
 
R AF G, it certainly is nice to see solid research put into a cogent article.  Quite a different view when sensationalism is cast aside for accuracy and depth of analysis.

Regards
G2G
 
I agree with the closing para.

"Canada must indeed be vigilant to avoid the excesses of the American justice system. The government has an obligation to justify its corrections policies in terms of the real increased protection they can offer to Canadians while also making all reasonable efforts to rehabilitate offenders. But claims of the wholesale Americanization of the Canadian criminal justice system are highly exaggerated."
Article Link

But IMHO I didn't find the basic premise of the CBC story sensational.
I did find the OECD info very interesting.

 
Baden  Guy said:
But IMHO I didn't find the basic premise of the CBC story sensational.
I did find the OECD info very interesting.
The premise of the story is sensational because the unspoken assumption (the one that Terry wanted to make sure everyone was left with) is that the proposed crime bill is exactly like the system in Texas. To achieve this, he interviewed a bunch of Texas lawmakers and having told them exactly that, went on to quote them critiquing "our" proposed system even though they're just critiquing their own system. In terms of the quantity of minimum sentences and their harshness, the proposed bill is a still a million miles away from Texas.

This is the sort of editorializing-in-the-news story that flies in the face of all that nonsense about "journalistic ethics" (although I admit it's a fabulously effective bit of politicking by the press gallery opposition).
 
You could very well be right. But in my case, in the context of having lived in Houston,Tx for five years, my takeaway from the story was in a state renowned for hangin', chain gangs and very formidable prisons these strong law and order politicans changed their approach for strictly pragmatic reasons. As those interviewed said,the result was lower cost and a decrease in repeat offenders

Hence the impression that stuck with me is Harper wants to spend more money on increasing the number of criminals in jail while here is a program that bears exploration for it's potential benefits.

 
Baden Guy:
Hence the impression that stuck with me is Harper wants to spend more money on increasing the number of criminals in jail ..........

You got it Baden Guy! Unfortunately the ethical requirement to report factually is not CBC's mantra. CBC has continually stated thousands of Canadians will be in jail as a result of the evil Harper government.

While the CBC is correct, as most of the convicted criminals  are probably Canadians, it is a bit of a stretch.
 
Here is an interesting take on political theater and the hows and whys it gets TV coverage. (Since I don't watch CBC news anymore [bad for the blood pressure], the specific example is from CTV news). An "Occupy" protest in Canada got approving coverage about how "spontanious" and "leaderless" the demonstrations were, despite the reporter standing in front of a huge CUPE banner. Obviously it never occured to the reporteer or any member of the crew, the line producer, the news director or the news reader to follow up the meaning of the bammer and how CUPE was involved in an allegedly "leaderless" or "spontanious" demonstration.

The other take away of this article is once you realize the how and why of the futility of street protests, ytou also know why the TEA Party movement is not demonstrating or counterdemonstrating; they are actually doing stuff. This isn't political theater for TV, hence they are not appearing on the screen (and givent he evident curiosity of news "reporters" these days, a movement like that in Canada would pass under the radar with no actual follow up):

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2011/10/18/the-vain-and-empty-rituals-of-protest-on-the-streets/

The Vain And Empty Rituals Of Protest On The Streets
Walter Russell Mead

The news that 175 people were arrested over the weekend in a Chicago OWS protest started me thinking about the ritualized nature of left demonstrations.  The drums, the chants, the defiance, the arrests — and, sometimes, the glass smashing and the fire setting:  it all unfolds according to a predictable pattern that in its modern form is essentially unchanged since the Vietnam War.

And it also made me wonder: what is the point?

There was a time long ago when political protest really mattered.  The Vietnam protests didn’t end the war (and didn’t keep Nixon from carrying 49 states against George McGovern in 1972), but they helped end the draft.  The civil rights movement led to some of the most profound social changes this country has ever seen.  Before that, there were labor and suffragette marches, not to mention the mass rallies and torchlight parades that helped bring us the joys of Prohibition.

But these days the old style protests remind me of political conventions: empty and pointless (though noisy and publicized) rituals.  In the old days, political conventions were where strong institutional parties met to select their nominees.  It was usually not clear going in to a convention who the nominee would be, and sometimes they dragged on for up to one hundred plus ballots.  They were newsworthy because they made news.

These days political conventions are a total waste of time.  They function as infomercials for a nominee who is almost always in control of what is left of the party machinery before the formal investiture at the convention itself.  The choice of the vice presidential nominee is theater, not drama: it is an attempt to keep the ratings and the news coverage up for an insufferably dull and utterly pointless event.  We pay attention to them because they used to be important and have become a habit — but they are vacuous spectacles and it is getting harder and harder to tune in.

I wonder if protests are facing a similar death: if they are turning into reenactments and rituals rather than actual political events.

In a mass democracy where everyone has a vote, and normal peaceful demonstrations carry no professional cost or personal stigma, if 100,000 people gather in Central Park for a protest rally it means that about 8,000,000 New Yorkers chose not to attend.  It is not really news and it doesn’t mean much about where the city is headed.

Back in the day, when most workers in American industry had workweeks of seventy and eighty hours, had little or no formal education and lacked the money and the leisure to do much about politics as individuals, mass demonstrations really meant something.  People were giving up all the leisure time they had in a week, they were risking being blacklisted — losing their jobs and being blocked from working in their field in a time with no unemployment insurance or social safety net — and they were walking into situations where “police brutality” meant getting killed or disabled, with no lawsuits or compensation.

Those demonstrations meant something; they were a powerful signal that could not be sent any other way that people were deeply stirred and that something needed to be done.  Those protests were news, and power brokers and policy makers paid attention.

Those demonstrations were often the only way people had to show what was on their minds and how deeply they felt.  These days, when the electorate is being constantly polled, and cable news channels are feverishly tracing every tiny tick in public opinion, demonstrations don’t really tell us anything. Nor do they change things much; if the Tea Party had stopped with rallies, it would have been forgotten very quickly.  It was only when Tea Party activists stopped dressing up in those ridiculous three cornered hats and started organizing, fundraising and attending town halls that the movement had a substantive impact.

There are places where protests are still news.  When throngs of people defy dictatorial rulers, something is happening.  As the world waits to see whether soldiers will gun the demonstrators down in the streets or break ranks and join them, news is being made.  Here in China, there is a surprising degree of concern — from people connected to the government — about the possibility that OWS style protests could spread to the PRC.  Ironically, the OWS protesters who have the biggest impact could be thousands of miles away from New York.  But protests in non-democratic countries matter more than in democratic ones.  When people are angry, frustrated and/or idealistic and hopeful enough to put their lives on the line in support of political change, this matters.

In America, probably fortunately, protest is so widespread and cost free that no particular protest means anything much.  500,000 people can march through Washington DC to protest Roe vs. Wade; no laws change, no judges change their minds, no politicians (not running for the GOP nomination) change their stands.  Ditto “million man” and “million mom” marches.

Perhaps, like the Tea Party, the OWS folks will go on to become a potent force in politics — though to do they will have to develop a clarity and purpose of outlook that is still lacking. If so, the OWS protests will be remembered as the launching pad of a political movement, but the action will have to leave the streets to produce change.  Signing nominating petitions, raising money, launching websites, turning out caucus and primary voters, attending local government meetings: that is what makes change, not living in squalor or even making love in the park, not getting arrested in acts of civil (or uncivil) disobedience.

Maybe I’m just stupid and old, but whatever the movement you are in and whether it comes from the left or the right, I truly don’t see the point of getting arrested at a protest rally these days.  The civil rights marchers engaged in civil disobedience had a clear strategy and when they got arrested or were beaten up by the police, it had an impact on public opinion.  Not fringe public opinion or upper middle class left wing college student public opinion, but middle middle and lower middle class people who had never thought much about the ugliness of segregation but now suddenly saw it in action — and it made them feel sick to their stomachs.  The courage and quiet dignity of the civil rights protestors, and the hatred and brutality they brought out in their opponents, brought a moral reformation to the United States.

Their tactics were directly related to their goal, and they demonstrated the truth of their cause by the way their dignified nonviolence clashed with ignorance, violence and hate.

We could still have marches today that made a real point.  If 100,000 homeless veterans marched down Pennsylvania Avenue, people would pay attention and something would likely be done.  But events like that are rare.  Just as political parties have debased and devalued the political convention, so the culture of protest over the decades has turned what used to be a major event into a sideshow.

The media still covers protests like it still covers other camera-friendly pseudo-events like political conventions and G8 and G20 summits; the media beast needs to be fed, and events that produce images do not have to produce results to get onto the “news”.  That media coverage in turn draws people to these pseudo-events; groups like Code Pink, Koran-burning preacher nutcases and the “fundamentalist” loons who try to disrupt military funerals are addicted to media exposure and measure their effectiveness by the screen time they get.

The self evident futility of this cycle — the media mistakes a pseudo-event for something real and covers it; protestors mistake media coverage for influence and step up the protests — is one of the reasons that the whole concept of protest has become so debased.

Unfortunately for the left, the more “typical” a protest looks, the less important it appears.  A march of 10,000 bankers up Wall Street would get more press attention than a march of 25,000 “usual suspects”: scruffy students, angry longers, semi-professional media hounds, veterans of multiple protests.  That was one reason the early Tea Party protests got coverage: they had a high proportion of the kind of people who don’t usually do this — neatly dressed suburban moms and middle aged Rotarians.  50,000 students dressed in retro leftie nostalgia gear protest “the system”: not news.  25,000 coiffed and well dressed elderly ladies with pearl necklaces and professionally groomed lapdogs shut down Times Square: news.

Being futile, irrelevant and pointless does not mean you stop flopping uselessly around.  Political conventions would have died out some time ago, but the advent of cable news networks (with their insatiable appetite for live events, their ability to survive on lower ratings than the major networks and their hunger for low cost programming) has given them an extension.  Currently, the desperate hunger of the center left for a populist upsurge of its own is putting wind in the sails of the OWS protests; we shall see.

Right now they are more likely to hollow Wall Street out than to change its ways.  Financial businesses are already looking at ways to cut costs by getting out of the high priced glass canyons of lower Manhattan; dispersing the financial center into anonymous malls and office parks across a wider area (and perhaps in states that don’t have an income tax as zillionaires nervously eye possible changes to the federal tax code) looks much more attractive if Wall Street is going to be a target for protests.

Evacuating Wall Street is the obvious response to the OWS protests; look for the slow trickle of financial center business to less conspicuous — and cheaper — locales to quietly speed up.

Posted in Essays, Politics
 
Both sides - the government and the media - are playing on our fears. Fear is powerful and overwhelms logic and reason.
 
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