Rumours are swirling about a $200 million budget cut being proposed for the CBC. A spokesperson for the Friends of Canadian Broadcasting said recently that a budget document had been leaked to Friends that outlined the plan.
$200 million represents 20% of the Parliamentary grant to the CBC. The impact would be devastating.
Some observers have suggested the cuts are linked to a Conservative bid to secure support from the Canada’s commercial broadcasters who would be delighted to see significant cutbacks at the CBC. Support from Canada’s major broadcasters, so the conjecture goes, would translate into favourable coverage in Stephen Harper’s fight to maintain control in Parliament, and to save his political career.
The CBC is the most important media network in Canada providing coverage for Canadian artists.
Tell your political employees what to do:
Stephen Harper: pm@pm.gc
Stephen Dion: stephane.dion@bellnet.ca
Michael Ignatief: Ignatieff.M@parl.gc.ca
Bob Rae: raeb@ parl.gc.ca
Jack Layton: Layton.J@parl.gc.ca
Gilles Ducepe: Duceppe.G@parl.gc.ca
For more info check out (from Vancouver’s Georgia Straight):
Media watchdog: Conservatives hope to cut CBC funding by $200 million
Get ready for Stephen Harper’s attacks on the next Liberal leader
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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
My father referred to the CBC as the ‘communist broadcasting corporatioon’ back in the seventies and eighties. Now I know what they meant. It is so obviously biased, extremely so against the conservatives. I think they should have to work for their money the same as other broadcasters, they are a pampered elitist left wing propaganda machine. If they had to consider their viewers via sponsorhip, maybe they would clean up their act.
I’ve already written my e-mails to PM Harper and the other leaders asking them to de-fund the CBC all together…
Something to think about is why publicly funded media is publicly funded. Why do nation states fund national media enterprises? How media pay the bills influences the kinds of stories that get told, who gets to tell the stories, who is represented and how. The existence of CBC does not in any way detract from diversity of information in Canada. Just the opposite. The ability to make television and radio without reliance in toto on commercial markets allows non-marketable stories to be told. Is Canadian history important? Are Canadian artists important? Is local news important? These are areas that are chronically under-represented in commercial media programming.
Someone might experience the CBC as communist, and someone else might experience CanWest Global as neoliberal screed. These are debatable interpretations of what are likely much more complicated and nuanced tapestries of ideology, entertainment and information. What is less debatable for those interested in robust democratic cultures, is diversity of media. Democracies thrive in diverse media environments. The CBC costs very little in the grand scheme of things, about 7 cents per day for each Canadian. What we get in return is an admittedly imperfect but valuable addition to public culture in Canada. I am sorry to see such anti-democratic comments in response to the proposed CBC cuts. Lack of diversity in media is a signpost of cultures with diminished democratic accountability.
Harper has dispatched his robots onto the internet. Engage, engage – must destroy CBC – target acquired – separatist – communist – engage, engage. The machines beeped and twirled, they spit out pre-programmed lines. For a while the populace trembled, never before had they seen such machines. Their presence must mean something thought the people, maybe they are here to bring us truth, and the people listened. But the robots kept coming, unannounced and unwanted, bursting in with the same pre-programmed lines. Each time the robots appeared their influence decreased. The people began to notice a pattern – they exhibited very little free thought. Hmm, the people wondered, if these machines can’t think for themselves maybe they aren’t so special after all. One day the people stopped listening to Harper’s little robots.
They continued to appear, they twirled and spat our words but along side the characteristic beep emerged a distinct whine. Harper’s robots had outlived their usefulness and were left to join the pile of outdated wasteful junk.
Grace Gower writes: “they are a pampered elitist left wing propaganda machine”
HA! “Left-wing”?! HARDLY! The CBC is a right-centrist, neo-liberal apologist/official organ of the Liberal Party of Canada (although, of late it *has* taken to a certain amount of self-interested genuflecting toward the Harpokon regime, in recognition of who currently controls the purse-strings).
But “left wing”? The only reason it would appear so is because most of the rest of the Canwest/Global Bell Media/CTV media oligarchy is so drearily, depressingly and unrelentingly a vacuous right-wing echo chamber that parrots the maunderings of such corporate shills as Tom d’Aquino (of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives — formerly the ‘Business Council on National Issues’) in the most toadying and obsequious manner possible.
The CBC may predominantly be an apologist for the Liberal Party of Canada, but it is no more “left wing” than the Liberal Party itself is. Just as the Liberal Party places self-interest above ALL other considerations, the CBC has shown itself to be most concerned with pimping itself out to whoever is in command of its budget allocations. Historically, that has been the Liberal Party, but as the last few years under the “Dear Leader” Harper has shown, the CBC can even accommodate itself to kissing a prodigious amount of Harpokon hiney.
I’ve been wondering for a long time why the CBC exists they have so little unique content.. the news and news shows are so anti conservative anti-bush.. They seem to love to rehash 2 year old news as if it was current… I’ve been lobbying for years to see it’s funding cut to zero.. Let them qualify for funding and compete with the other networks for advertising dollars…
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