Canada: Media: CBC has got to go, says CSM writer Rondi Adamson

The spectacle of a major comment piece in the American daily newspaper, Christian Science Monitor out of Boston, recounting how the largely-American National Hockey League prompted the Canadian Media Guild (a bully union objecting to increased 'contract work' being farmed out by its employer) and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation - English Section (said employer) was too much for the piece's Canadian author, and for me. ["Just pull the plug on CBC already," by Rondi Adamson, Christian Science Monitor, Oct 11, 2005. Click the blue title to live-link this article.

Just this Fall, I was able to breakout of the Liberal stranglehold on Canadian television news and opinion by resorting to the pay-for broadcasts of Fox News Channel on cable TV, as lately rendered by Rogers Cable in my area of Toronto. For these tender mercies, I am no longer subjected to the censorship against American-, Christian-, and conservative-originated news that had been imposed by the Canadian Radio & Television Commission. You see, Canadian TV news had been monolithically leftwing, liberal, and socialist in editorial orientation and reporting - even the free-enterprise broadcasters like CTV, and the Asper chain Global Network with its Kevin Newman hosting the 6:30 PM Global National news show has been a carrier of the CBC-style slant - majoring in sneering clichés against America, President Bush, and most everything else sneered at by the dominant carrier, which has long set the ideological tone in news professions in Canadian media. Which dominant is, of course, the CBC.

Now the difference between the leftwing free-enterprise broadcasters and the leftwing state broadcaster (in English, at least) is the nearly billion dollars paid annually to the CBC by taxpayers, who in the case of pay-for subscription to Fox News on cable get no tax-discount whereby one could avoid supporting a news force inimical to one's values. Indeed, I must pay thru my taxes, like the GST, and must pay again thru the subscription fee monthly just to evade total brainwash via TV news and opinion. I'm enjoying Fox, while also taking in on occasion that Rogers Cable offers with no additional fee - BBC, CNN, and even a few stops on the remote at othr Canadian newsmongers of the Line. That state-sponsored news Linet is unbelievably dismal and uncritical, but I like a taste of all views available.

Oh yes, the apparent reason why the CRTC finally let us subscribe to <'b>Fox<'b>, is that it had already greenlited the Islamofascist pro-terrorist TV channel, Al-Jezeera!, I've heard. But, bless them, Rogers doesn't include Al-J on its pay-for menu. The state could provide a basic allocation of monies to a truly pluralist list of newsbroadcasters, with each taxpayer being permitted to choose to which broadcaster one's portion of funding would go. But that's too obvious and too fair for the Canadian political system even to contemplate. I'd have my portion passed on to Fox if it added a Canadian news show, and to a Christian newscast were one generated of professional quality, instead of supporting the news mediocrity of Crossroads TV in its present form. By the way, why can't Crossroads compete against the CBC for the NHL media contract?- Owlb