What to Do About the CBC - Part II
Earlier.
Now, from a comment of mine at Inside the CBC:
In another not so humble opinion of mine, the crux of the issue is that a publicly funded institution which is mandated to appeal to all its funders (taxpayers/citizens) is trapped by a structural contradiction (pardon the commie speak).
Either you offer something throughout the day/week/year that will appeal to each and every demographic of every political persuasion, and in doing so only capture a small segment of the taxpaying citizenship at any hour/day of the week - or you pander to a selected portion of the demography.
Either way, you lose the support a significant portion of the population.
I think CBC has chosen the later - consciously or otherwise - perhaps through a steady but imperceptible drift to the left courtesy of Liberal Party appointees to the Board - with the occasional bone thrown at the rest of us.
The problem is magnified in this day and age by the exponential growth of alternatives now delivered globally across the Internet.
It's debatable whether CBC, as it's presently structured and oriented, can survive much longer living on the public teat. This is not 1936, the year CBC first went live on air. It's not even 1996 anymore.
A technological revolution has occurred in the past fifteen years akin to the revolutionary impact of Gutenberg's printing press. Such revolutions have far reaching, often unexpected consequences.
In Europe, the invention of the printing press led to the Reformation and ultimately to the Enlightenment. In today's world the consequences of such revolutionary technologies unfold very, very quickly. That's why we are witnessing a government in Washington trying to regulate and control the Internet. They don't like bloggers who criticize them or might blow the lid off another Dan Rathergate.
Whatever CBC's weekly "reach" is, the question of its value and viability in today's world is something we need to have a healthy debate about. CBC's Board and staff should be available to answer questions raised during such a debate, but it would be a clear violation of ethics and a conflict of interest it they were to attempt, openly or surreptitiously, to sway the debate.
And as far as contracting with a third party to examine the issue, only if that third party consults widely and openly with the Canadian public will it's conclusions be considered valid.
Oh, and about this:
"but the raw data is there. it’s not a Mann graph."
...may I remind you, Mann used raw data to produce the hockey stick graph. The problem was not so much in the data, but in the statistical computer program used to produce the graph. As Steve McIntyre proved, one can feed any old random bunch of numbers into the program and it comes up with a hockey stick.
Consequently, Mann's interpretation of the meaning of the graph was erroneous, although it took several years for the IPCC to quietly dispose of it to the back pages in their annual reports and eventually drop it altogether.
So, Paul, in answer to your question:
" Would it help if I conducted a real analysis over several months, pieced apart hundreds if not thousands of news stories, compared them to the CTV and Global and then backed that all up with some rigorous professional integrity and legitimacy in doing that sort of analysis?"
...and without meaning to be personally disrespectful in any way to you, the answer is a loud unqualified NO! And as I've already said on one of these threads, it's not just CBC's news function that is biased.
Any by the way, did any of your science guys report on the fallacy perpetrated by Mann's hockey stick graph?
Now, from a comment of mine at Inside the CBC:
In another not so humble opinion of mine, the crux of the issue is that a publicly funded institution which is mandated to appeal to all its funders (taxpayers/citizens) is trapped by a structural contradiction (pardon the commie speak).
Either you offer something throughout the day/week/year that will appeal to each and every demographic of every political persuasion, and in doing so only capture a small segment of the taxpaying citizenship at any hour/day of the week - or you pander to a selected portion of the demography.
Either way, you lose the support a significant portion of the population.
I think CBC has chosen the later - consciously or otherwise - perhaps through a steady but imperceptible drift to the left courtesy of Liberal Party appointees to the Board - with the occasional bone thrown at the rest of us.
The problem is magnified in this day and age by the exponential growth of alternatives now delivered globally across the Internet.
It's debatable whether CBC, as it's presently structured and oriented, can survive much longer living on the public teat. This is not 1936, the year CBC first went live on air. It's not even 1996 anymore.
A technological revolution has occurred in the past fifteen years akin to the revolutionary impact of Gutenberg's printing press. Such revolutions have far reaching, often unexpected consequences.
In Europe, the invention of the printing press led to the Reformation and ultimately to the Enlightenment. In today's world the consequences of such revolutionary technologies unfold very, very quickly. That's why we are witnessing a government in Washington trying to regulate and control the Internet. They don't like bloggers who criticize them or might blow the lid off another Dan Rathergate.
Whatever CBC's weekly "reach" is, the question of its value and viability in today's world is something we need to have a healthy debate about. CBC's Board and staff should be available to answer questions raised during such a debate, but it would be a clear violation of ethics and a conflict of interest it they were to attempt, openly or surreptitiously, to sway the debate.
And as far as contracting with a third party to examine the issue, only if that third party consults widely and openly with the Canadian public will it's conclusions be considered valid.
Oh, and about this:
"but the raw data is there. it’s not a Mann graph."
...may I remind you, Mann used raw data to produce the hockey stick graph. The problem was not so much in the data, but in the statistical computer program used to produce the graph. As Steve McIntyre proved, one can feed any old random bunch of numbers into the program and it comes up with a hockey stick.
Consequently, Mann's interpretation of the meaning of the graph was erroneous, although it took several years for the IPCC to quietly dispose of it to the back pages in their annual reports and eventually drop it altogether.
So, Paul, in answer to your question:
" Would it help if I conducted a real analysis over several months, pieced apart hundreds if not thousands of news stories, compared them to the CTV and Global and then backed that all up with some rigorous professional integrity and legitimacy in doing that sort of analysis?"
...and without meaning to be personally disrespectful in any way to you, the answer is a loud unqualified NO! And as I've already said on one of these threads, it's not just CBC's news function that is biased.
Any by the way, did any of your science guys report on the fallacy perpetrated by Mann's hockey stick graph?
Labels: CBC, elitism, Mainstream Media, media bias
posted by Louise at 6:07 pm
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