Global Courant 2023-04-13 19:13:45
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The vexing and nonsensical CBC lawsuit against the conservatives was an unashamed desecration of the broadcaster’s impartial status
Published April 13, 2023 • Last updated 0 minutes ago • read for 3 minutes
During the 2021-2022 fiscal year, the CBC received $1.2 billion in federal funding, according to the CBC’s annual report, as other broadcasters and news outlets continue to deplete their newsrooms and staff to cut costs. Photo by National Post File
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Probably some of our readers this week are chuckling at the chaos that has erupted on Twitter over proper verification labels for various public broadcasters. A few days ago, Elon Musk, the owner and CEO of the social media site, appeared on BBC television and was challenged on Twitter’s decision to label the BBC’s main account “government-funded media”. The “government-funded” tag isn’t meant purely as a criticism or warning: In Twitter’s scheme of tags, a media company or news agency directly controlled by the government and used to promote one country’s foreign policy would “become another” labeled “affiliated with the state”.
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But not everyone understands the nuances of the plan, which is now subject to Musk’s notoriously whimsical decision-making, and the BBC, like all government-funded western state media, is hypersensitive to its political independence. However, the BBC goes on to stress that it is not really government funded at all. The revenue comes from the infamous and archaic television license fee – a tax on the ownership and use of a television enforced by the government (including a fleet of BBC electromagnetic sensing vans prowling the streets and alleys of Britain). ), but which go directly to the company rather than to the general revenue of the United Kingdom Government. According to the BBC, it is semi-voluntarily funded directly by the citizenry; and in fact, if you don’t care about owning a TV or turning one on, you’re not forced to pay for the Beeb.
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How much real political independence does this narrow technical consideration give the BBC? Well, the BBC has a pretty strong global reputation for impartiality, one that Musk even endorsed in his BBC interview. People in Britain can have different opinions. (In reality, they’re the opinions you’d derive by analogy as a CBC viewer: the Labor left and the Labor left complain that the BBC isn’t more aggressively promoting the socialist revolution, and the Conservatives see the BBC as a hereditary enemy.)
What we noticed about the BBC’s self-defense, based on the license fee model, is that it doesn’t apply to Canada’s spiritual offspring, the CBC, whose Twitter accounts are not yet labeled “government-funded.” CBC-baiting Conservative leader Pierre Poilièvre noted this with amusing enthusiasm, tweeting (to the Queen-educated Musk) that the CBC accounts should be labeled “government-funded.”
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Again, let’s return to Twitter’s official doctrine on these labels: a “government-funded” news channel identified as such is one “where the government provides some or all of the news channel’s funding and may involve government involvement to varying degrees.” has in editorial content.” A CBC spokesperson, interviewed by the Post’s Anja Karadeglija, made the point you’d expect from him: The government of Canada has no editorial involvement with the CBC. Well, his political independence is specified in, er, the Broadcasting Act. That’s the federal statute that, ummm, defines the CBC’s editorial mandate, requiring the company to promote “national awareness and identity” and “reflect Canada’s multicultural and multiracial nature.”
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In short, as any Canadian adult knows, the CBC has a legal political doctrine that it must interpret and promote in a way that is independent of day-to-day partisan politics. For example, the CBC would never file a report frivolous garbage lawsuit against a political party in the closing hours of a federal election for strategic reasons — that’s the kind of thing that makes its proud editorial independence completely impossible, right?
We’ve heard from friends who wonder why Poilièvre spends time unnecessarily antagonizing the CBC. All we can say is that these people quickly forgot that the irritating and nonsensical CBC lawsuit against the Conservatives was a blatant desecration of the broadcaster’s impartial status, and that the CBC never issued an explanation for the lawsuit, let alone made an apology to the Canadian public for it. Maybe Musk can come up with an entirely new label for “out of control state media that can’t even convincingly pretend to be independent.”
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