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Comment by mmastrac | Hacker News Reader

This is quite sad. PBS and NPR were jewels of the American system. The right-wing has latched on to the message that all public-funded media that isn't right-wing-biased is _bad_ and are trying to kill it everywhere.

We are constantly fighting the same battle in Canada where the right-wing accuses media of being left-leaning, while most major news outlets are actually American-owned and slant right a lot of the time.

We are truly in a post-fact world now.

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The issue in Canada is that the CBC, despite having excellent journalists, investigative, local, and otherwise, and being an invaluable resource to many small communities, is overwhelmingly (but not entirely) biased in favour of one political party and whatever identity politics are currently the mainstay of their image. And it’s the party that nearly always campaigns on increasing their funding.

I love(d) the CBC. I grew up watching it every day, and listening to it on the radio in the car. Some of the programming is still fantastic, but tuning into a national broadcast funded by the taxpayer, one would expect by chance alone to go more than 5 consecutive minutes without hearing someone bring up “black”, “queer”, “indigenous”, “climate change” or having every caller or interview be some sort of spokesperson or research chair with one of those words in their title. Combined with things like job listings explicitly but professionally saying “white men need not apply”, most reasonable individuals would say they turned certain dials a little too far left for anyone listening that’s not a young progressive or outside of an urban core.

They also tend to leave out facts or context from certain topics and news stories where including it may reflect poorly on certain groups or a person of a certain identity. Lying by omission for the greater good is an editorial decision they’re comfortable with, leaving those who use it as their sole news source with stances that align broadly with progressive beliefs of systemic XYZ or discrimination in events where it’s a spurious assertion when considering details they leave out.

Some of this stuff bugs me as well, but there's no good reason to defund an organization with some problems when you can fix it instead.

I read the poster's comment more closely and they sound paranoid tbh.

Paranoid about what? The things I’ve mentioned have been noticeable across the political spectrum for years.

https://www.reddit.com/r/CBC_Radio/comments/1ao0ie1/what_the...

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskACanadian/comments/18cz52m/why_d...

Etc.

Pointing out why many people take issue with the modern state of CBC, particularly all of their non-news content, doesn’t put one in opposition with the things they’re prioritizing.

> And it’s the party that nearly always campaigns on increasing their funding

Sounds like there's an obvious way for any party to get good press from the CBC /s

The fact that you think "climate change" is an evidence of bias betrays your own bias.

Inserting it into every conversation is an example of them playing to certain audiences, particularly when it’s being mentioned in a way that appears to be checking a box versus being relevant or substantial.

I refrained from including in my original reply that another issue is that those they’ve increasingly tailored their personas/programming to legitimately can’t see any issue with how CBC has changed in the last 10 years. Whether that’s because they’re not old enough to remember the CBC when it was far more dry and neutral I’m not sure.

I mean sure the diversity angle could definitely be about playing to certain audiences. Climate change ain't though. You believing it's proof of that tells us about your own biases.

Also I missed this in your original comment

> Combined with things like job listings explicitly but professionally saying “white men need not apply”,

This sounds shockingly illegal. Do you have an example?

Perhaps you’re assuming that I’m a climate change denier or that I take issue with it being discussed because I included it as an example. Neither is true. My point is that there was a period of time when listeners would tune in and hear things like “Coming up in the next hour, how climate change is impacting the Jazz scene in Toronto’s entertainment district!”. Perhaps they’ve dialed it back recently but it was the equivalent of keyword stuffing in radio form, and rarely anything worth listening to when considering a coast-to-coast audience.

As far as the job posting controversy it has happened a few times, the worst being where they put “any race except Caucasian” in a casting call for a kids tv host, and “preference given to women etc” on most others. It’s legal in Canada though you’re not supposed to say the quiet parts out loud like the former example.

What's sad is that something that can take decades to build, can take a single term to destroy. Some things are not easily reverted when power changes. Sometimes it reminds me of a ratchet tool. One side can turn it and make changes, but the other side can only maintain status quo, and then the other side gains power again and turns it further.

I'm at the other side of the world, but one example from my local area is the municipality selling off and privatizing lots of stuff. When the worm is out of the can, you can't get it back in.

A lot of Canadians seem to think the CBC is overly biased but that the BBC is less biased, but the BBC is actually more biased than the CBC.

A lot of Canadians also think the CBC is too expensive but it is less expensive than the BBC and public media in most of the EU. The British government pays BBC $100/person/year. The Canadian government pays CBC $29/person/year.

The CBC is biased in the sense of what they won’t include in a story, or not cover until they’re the only Canadian news outlet not covering an event. You will never see the CBC break a story about something that makes the Liberal party or a person or group they consider marginalized look bad. Only once CTV, Global, NatPost, G&M have it on the front page will CBC cover it and usually leave out certain things that might be off-putting to marginalized groups or Liberal supporters.

This is incorrect. CBC has broken stories that made the Liberal party look bad.

Such as? And let’s limit the scope to Justin Trudeau’s time as PM. I’m not aware of them breaking any of the dozen major scandals or even one of the countless minor controversies involving the LPC in the last decade. I’m sure since you say I’m incorrect you can give at least a couple examples going back to 2016.

The good news is that the President has no authority whatsoever over the CPB, so they will likely not cut any funding to either of these.

At the end of the day, if the people in the executive who push the button to transfer the money decide to listen to the president over the courts or congress it doesn’t matter what the law says.

Yeah I remind my right wing friends that the "legacy media" practices "journalism" where the journalists are expected to engage in ethical practices including properly sourcing and researching their stories.

Unfortunately these things get attacked because they're primarily enjoyed Americans who happen to be left-leaning. Ideologues will argue these outlets are "brainwashing" Americans but I find that to be absurd argument. Listening to Terry Gross interview Maurice Sendak isn't going to turn you into some left-wing communist.

Reality is left-leaning because right-leaning is narratives created from human fear of the unknown. Their marching orders frequently come from billionaire robber barons who own too much, and want to tell the public that's OK.

If we actually swallowed the red pills, we'd all be slaves with no ownership, no education, and no rights. The same thing they frequently accuse socialism of.

It's the "reality has a left wing bias" problem. The modern right relies so heavily on misinformation, misdirection, hyperbole, and outright dishonesty that anything approaching objectivity is seen as biased.

> This is quite sad. PBS and NPR were jewels of the American system. The right-wing has latched on to the message that all public-funded media that isn't right-wing-biased is _bad_ and are trying to kill it everywhere.

It's pretty hard to argue that PBS and NPR do not have a left wing bias. The closest thing they'd have to a conservative voice would be bringing in a token anti-Trump (generally former) Republican.

NPR's legal affairs correspondent was close friends with Justice Ginsburg. The latter even officiated Totenberg's wedding. Do you really think she could give an unbiased report on anything involving the court? Get real... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nina_Totenberg#Conflicts_of_in...

Real question is, why are we subsidizing it all?

If the masses want to consume left wing dribble, let them fund it themselves. The right already does that for conservative talk radio. Let the market decide.

PBS would always make mention of support from, 'Viewers like you". When in reality it was from "Tax payers of which 50+% likely do not agree with funding this content".

> PBS would always make mention of support from, 'Viewers like you". When in reality it was from "Tax payers of which 50+% likely do not agree with funding this content".

'Viewers like you' send in donations that public broadcasting stations use to purchase rights to broadcast NPR/PBS programming or programming from whatever other sources they want. The CPB doesn't dictate what the stations can broadcast they provide resources so that they can broadcast. The money they get from the CPB usually goes to cover operational costs, which donations may not cover, especially in rural areas.

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