Thursday, May 13, 2010

CBC to study whether its news is biased

The CBC has commissioned a study to determine whether its news is biased, the president of the public broadcaster told the Senate finance committee this week.


“Our job — and we take it seriously — is to ensure that the information that we put out is fair and unbiased in everything that we do,” CBC President Hubert Lacroix said.
CANOE -- CNEWS - Media News: CBC to study whether its news is biased
Thousands show up for March For Life and where is the coverage, instead you will spend resources covering a crowd of 50 people and suggest it is a newstory.
 
University of Toronto political economist John Crispo was quoted in the September 29, 1994, issue of Maclean's as calling the CBC "a lousy left-wing, liberal, NDP, pinko network." Barry Cooper, a political scientist at the University of Calgary, says essentially the same thing in this book and goes to some lengths to prove it.Why spend more money to confirm a bias? Does it make sense to examine how resources have been strategically deployed on certain stories and not others? Order Book here

The Roots of CBC Bias: Its Founding Mandate

CBC Bias Rears It’s Ugly Head … Again 
 
CBC 'balanced' in election coverage, studies show






How do you explain the H1N1 Mark Sakamto mistake?
 
How do you explain reporting the PM missing a photo op when he arrives two minutes late as an important newsstory?
 
How do you run religious mistake at a state funeral wafer without double checking the facts?
 
How do you have a film crew show up on Sunday to film body bags drop off?
 
How was climategate reported as an incident or the numerous errors from the IPCC?

Are the guests like David Suzuki that are propontents of Global Warming the only voice treated with credibility?

Canadian climate experts from both camps Tim Ball or John Robinson  to discuss the IPCC.
How much money has been spent in not correcting the record in statements by opposition MP that are factually incorrect that might be harmful to our economic well being?
Has the CBC explained how little Canada, Oilsands contribute to Carbon Emmissions and that Central Canada manufacturing and vehicle emmissions represent a larger figure?

CBC Ombudsman Admits Liberal Bias   
How do you explain spending more resources airing a story of a growing right wing religious conspiracy in Canada without indentifying religious MP's in other parties? This after a few weeks after the "cultural war" comments from a pollster that was outed for his significant donations to the Liberal Party and leadership contests of Rae and Ignatieff?

Update: Alberta Ardvark has a great site visit here.

12 comments:

KURSK said...

They will spend tens of thousands of Canadian taxpayer's dollars for this conclusion:

We are not biased.

Shocking, I know..

wilson said...

Was CBC one of the media outlets with 'camera's rolling' when Elections Canada raided the CPC headquarters?

And then there was Pablo and CBC reporter authoring questions for him.

hunter said...

Even my Liberal parents admit that the CBC is biased, the problem is that my parents don't mind that it is. They have no problem with their coverage.

What we need is a FOX News type station. That way Liberals can watch CBC and we can watch FOX Canada. Of course, the CBC should get no taxpayer money so the playing field is level.

Martin said...

Neil McDonald on CBC reported that Bristol Palin could be the mother of baby Trig. This despite the fact that she was 5 months pregnate with her own child. This biological nonsence was debunked on blogs days before CBC carried it on the National,no less. Biased, They need a study to know for sure?

Anonymous said...

The CBC investigating if they are biased is not unlike communist or dictatorial countries holding elections then declaring 100% turnout and unanimous support for the current despot.

I mean do they think the viewing public are idiots? What, is Strombowhatshisnuts and the assorted affirmitive action talking heads at the news desks suddenly going to be fired for preaching thier Marxist dogma? Guess again.

I predict they will come to a conclusion that they should have more 'town hall' types of programming where they'll stack the audiences with whack job campus activists, rabid climate doom mongers and assorted ugly people from the grievence industry under the guise of 'letting the peple have thier say'.

In short, the Canadian viewing public will be told to lay back and think of England as Mothercorpse askes 'who's your daddy?'

Disband the CBC and use one years worth of thier subsidy (1 billion +) and invest on nation wide broadband internet where the public can seek out thier own news sources. The days of CBC's massive microwave and sattelite network 'bringing the world' to remote outposts of a young nation are long gone. The steam trains and dog teams are but footnotes in history and this philosophy doesn't apply any more and I'm tired of paying for it and I'm tired of being told the 'Canadian way' is some ill conceived notion of politcal correctness and 'social justice'.

Terry Collins said...

Does nobody remember how CBC took Jean Chrétien through the wringer over his comments about scrapping the GST? He never agreed to do another Town Hall after that.

Imho, the CBC does a better job keeping the current government to account than the Opposition ever can in the House. Have you watched question period lately? More and more, the "answers" given by the government are more about scoring political points, than giving any kind of meaningful response.

And frankly, as someone who sees himself as being a centrist politically, I don't care if the CBC leans a little to the left. The only other real TV news source is the right leaning CTV. The two of them together make a good balance.

hunter said... "What we need is a FOX News type station. "

What a troubling wish to Americanize Canadian politics. No thanks.

Patrick Ross said...

At this point I would have thought it unthinkable that one would need to investigate the CBC in order to identify bias.

And, of course, like all self-organized inquiries, the CBC will almost certainly just clear itself.

Bec said...

Terry Collins said,
"Does nobody remember how CBC took Jean Chrétien through the wringer over his comments about scrapping the GST? He never agreed to do another Town Hall after that."

That was 15 years ago, Terry so how is that relevant today and I absolutely must ask you, DID YOU READ THE QUESTIONS posed by CS?
They are serious and expose the issues that exist with the tax payer funded network.
Who cares what CTV does, THEY do it on their own dime and THAT is the issue and the ONLY issue.

This is TODAY, NOW...not yesterday and over 1/3 of the population (the higher paying tax bracket, I'll add)is NOT represented by the CBC, period.

Ardvark said...

On Neil McDonald/ Sarah Palin bogus pregnancy rumour, he was "cleared" by the CBC Ombudsman.

Read the report for yourself: http://www.cbc.ca/ombudsman/page/MACDONALD-PALIN.pdf

Let's hope that the current study does not read like the above Ombudsman report; whitewash.

CanadianSense said...

The disconnect from the CBC is they believe the 'news' is the limit of what they should examine.

If you have a tax funded current affairs show that is used as a soapbox for the left with Georgie Strombo where is the balance?

How much of our tax payers money is being spent to air an agenda for "social justice" and saving the planet through a redistribution of wealth?

Anyone see a skeptic movie aired on failed governments that enacted socialism from Europe or Stalin?

How do you decide to spend $$$, send a television crew to fly down to cover a story leaked by the Toronto Star by a private detective.

CanadianSense said...

Terry did Peter Donolo write a letter complaining to have a CBC reporter removed from a story regarding bias in covering APEC?

Did the CBC have over $ 400 million cut by the Liberals during the Chretien-Martin years?

If the current gov't is asking for an investigation in the Heritage Committee, kept funding at same levels why are they be labeled anti-CBC only?

As a taxpayer a national broadcaster should not waste money covering non-stories for weeks, months and not dig into real details to expose conflicts or bias.

The Face-book group protesting the 22 day sitting day delay calling it undemocratic was organized by NDP, Liberals or just unhappy citizens? How much money has been spent in looking away after giving the story legs?

Ardvark said...

A biased blast from the past from Chasing Apple Pie:

http://chasingapplepie.blogspot.com/2010/05/cbc-bias-goes-waaay-back.html