CBC to study whether they are biased

[Pastiche]

Frank Graves is a liberal donator that is also hired by the CBC to do polling and has offered advice to the Liberals on how to beat the Cons. Do you really not comprehend the difference?

Ok, so the Globe and Mail, CTV, and Canwest are all biased too then because they have all contracted for EKOS' services in the past year. Please explain to me the difference.

[HOZ]

Originally Posted by Pastiche

Graves is an EKOS pollster who the CBC pays for polling. If I extend your line of logic, all media bodies that use EKOS polling are biased too then right?

This is interesting but has nothing to do with the question of CBC bias. For CBC to be biased they would have to represent those views of their own and offer no counter-points or opinions. In this clip they explicitly state that those aren't the views of the networks and have a lively debate on the validity of those opinions. Again, how is this biased?

If you are truly unable to see the bias there then


Well done!

[Pastiche]

Give a reasoned argument, ask for a rebuttal get a glib internet jpeg.

Is that an admission of defeat?

[HOZ]

Originally Posted by Pastiche

Ok, so the Globe and Mail, CTV, and Canwest are all biased too then because they have all contracted for EKOS' services in the past year. Please explain to me the difference.

Awesome!

[transplant99]

Ok, so the Globe and Mail, CTV, and Canwest are all biased too then because they have all contracted for EKOS' services in the past year. Please explain to me the difference.

Oy vay. OK...they are biased. Know what else they are? PRIVATE corporations that dont completely rely on taxpayer money to exist and can do as they wish politically.

Though this thread is not about what bias does or does not exist against those media groups. This is about the CBC having a slant to the left and being the one true entity of all of them that should be striving for neutrality more than any, since they receive money from people who cover the complete political spectrum.

Again...the freaking Ombudsman of CBC has admitted bias on their programming in the past.

Are you disagreeing with him as well?

[zuluking]

Originally Posted by Pastiche

Ok, so the Globe and Mail, CTV, and Canwest are all biased too then because they have all contracted for EKOS' services in the past year. Please explain to me the difference.

Because they present Mr. Graves as a pollster, not a Liberal commenter. Because people inherently think that pollsters just speak the numbers, the statistics, with impartial analysis. EKOS, as a gatherer of statistics, is fine. The issue is with the CBC bringing someone with a self-professed bias (and a history of advising / financially contributing to one party) and not providing any disclosure.

Add the CBC feeding Liberal MPs questions in a Parliamentary committee, their leading stories on *gasp* Wafergate, the use of prorogation as a faux-outrage medium, their (Pete Mansbridge's, in particular) childlike glee and excitement for the coalition gov't coupled with their palpable disappointment when it fell through... a couple off the top of my head. At best, cheerleaders; at worst, backroom manipulators. On our dime.

[CaptainCrunch]

Don't forget to add that when they surveyed the CBC board of directors that 80% of the political contributions from that board went to the Liberals.

[VladtheImpaler]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

Don't forget to add that when they surveyed the CBC board of directors that 80% of the political contributions from that board went to the Liberals.

That's simple common sense. The Liberals are the party of power - makes sense to keep the people that hire you happy.
I don't care that CBC is lefty - I stopped watching a long time ago - I just don't want to pay for it. Let the NDP/LP supporters fund their network.

[Flame Of Liberty]

Sometimes I wonder if Pastiche is moon's second account, but then again, moon sometimes makes sense.

quote internal CBC studies which conclude that its hosts and producers are “products of the more radical sixties and appear unsympathetic to the new conservatism of the eighties” and that public complaints of a leftist slant have been significant and growing since the early seventies.

This is spot on, and it doesn't apply just to canadian public tv. public media, people in public offices are largely "products" of radical sixties, they wanted to change the world, and what a better way to change the world than become a politician or push your morally bankrupt ideology through a tv screen?

In Europe, the current president of european commision, j.m. barosso "was" a marxist in his younger days:

He was one of the leaders of the underground Maoist MRPP (Reorganising Movement of the Proletariat Party, later PCTP/MRPP, Communist Party of the Portuguese Workers/Revolutionary Movement of the Portuguese Proletariat)

Left wing propaganda is so deeply rooted in the west that many people aren't even able to see the bias anymore. Pretty sad actually.

[Bunk]

quote internal CBC studies which conclude that its hosts and producers are “products of the more radical sixties and appear unsympathetic to the new conservatism of the eighties” and that public complaints of a leftist slant have been significant and growing since the early seventies.


This is so absurd. So anyone who is old enough to have experienced the late 60s is subject to its social and political norms, but the same people having lived through the 80s should have become more sympathetic to Reagonomics, or something?

[John Doe]

Originally Posted by zuluking

Because they present Mr. Graves as a pollster, not a Liberal commenter. Because people inherently think that pollsters just speak the numbers, the statistics, with impartial analysis. EKOS, as a gatherer of statistics, is fine. The issue is with the CBC bringing someone with a self-professed bias (and a history of advising / financially contributing to one party) and not providing any disclosure.

First of all, he is a pollster and if hiring him shows a political bias by the CBC, then the Conservatives are also biased against the CPC as they have also hired EKOSto do polling for them.
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Co...453/story.html

since the Conservatives took office in 2006, EKOS has received $12 million in federal government contracts

There is a difference between a pollster who is a liberal and a Liberal pollster, just as there is a difference between a commentator who is a conservative and a Conservative commentator. Graves is not a member of the Liberal party, nor has he done any work for the Liberal party. Pollsters are professionals paid to get unbiased information about a particular population, and if Graves was unable to do that he would have been out of work years ago. By the way, he has also donated to a conservative candidate, so does that mean he is also biased against the Liberals?

Besides, how does he show a bias by the CBC? His quote came from a Globe and Mail article. In the attached video from CBC, they have a Conservative commentator (paid member of the Conservative party, worked for the Conservative party, paid by CBC to give a conservative slant) and a pollster who by what we know looks like he might be liberal leaning (but doesn't belong to the Liberal party, doesn't work for the Liberal party, is paid to give non-biased information and by the look of how much work he gets must be pretty good at it). If anything, the CBC is showing a conservative bias in this clip, as they have a paid conservative commentator attacking a private company owner who is not affiliated with any political party on his views expressed (but not paid for by any party) in an interview with the Globe and Mail.

[Cowperson]

In the USA, there used to be something called "The Fairness Doctrine," essentially a government regulatory agency - the FCC - mandated responsibility of all holders of broadcast rights to present issues in an even-handed manner.

In 1969, a court case settled that the FCC had the right to enforce the Fairness Doctrine but decided as well that it did not have to.

In 1987, the FCC dropped the Fairness Doctrine.

Some would say the Fairness Doctrine needs to be re-introduced while others, myself included, do not want a government agency telling anyone what it thinks is "fair." "Government," after all, is really a collection of individuals with all their own baggage and peccadillos.

With social media and all manner of communication being what it is today, only the idiots amongst us - or the truly partisan - would seriously argue against the notion that the common American/Canadian has never had a wider access to information and differing opinions than we see today.

That also creates it's own set of issues, including the apparently ever-increasing predilection of the common news consumer to surround himself/herself with the comfort food of like-minded opinions.

This is called "Confirmation Bias."

FOX was essentially the first to note this trend and wisely began to formulate a business model based on a certain bias to the right, feeling the "confirmation bias" on that side was under-serviced. They were right and are far and away, I believe, the most watched cable network.

MSNBC in the last year has begun to seriously exit any pretense of being even-handed to service the left wing and has seen it's ratings starting to climb. The New York Times, to it's everlasting shame, had it's public editor declare "of course we're a liberal newspaper" in print a few years ago.

CNN has tried to make a living in the middle and seems to be getting clobbered. That hasn't gone unnoticed and you've seen several media commentators wondering if it's possible in this day and age to succeed presenting an even-handed approach.

Increasingly, money is talking and that money is driven by the consumer of news.

If someone asks you what your favourite news source is, the right answer is probably "nothing." Theoretically, you should be observing them all to get an enlightened view of both sides of any discourse.

We, as normal people of course, do not do that, as predicted along the lines of "confirmation bias." We chose to surround ourselves with like-minded opinions, even though we don't have to.

Of course the CBC has a bias to the left side. A survey in the 1990's, as one example, found 70% of CBC radio staff had voted NDP in the previous election. Whaddya expect from programming as a result? Or throughout the Corp.

Nevertheless, picking sides has become increasingly good business.

Secondly, given the wide range of differing biases and opinions you have access to in the new media age, that's not necessarily a killer if you're genuinely curious (most of us aren't).

All taxpayers, however, pay for CBC's bias and, yes, there is something wrong with that. Public broadcasters should have some greater responsibility than the private sector.

My two cents on that topic.

Lastly, I do watch a few things on CBC. I've found myself hooked on the insipid, weepy "Heartland" as I'm trying to identify all the locations they shoot in my immediate area. And, I might note, it's a show syndicated around the world, indicating it's quality. "Being Erica," which I don't watch, is another show which has expanded it's viewership beyond Canada. For every success like that, however, there is are several explosions like the great concept behind "Little Mosque On The Prairie," a terrible non-comedy which somehow keeps hanging around.

Cowperson

[transplant99]

Graves is not a member of the Liberal party, nor has he done any work for the Liberal party.

He donates money to the Liberals....what part of that makes him a non-supporter.

Beyond all that he is trying to give advice to the Liberals on how to defeat the Conservatives. Unsolicited advice according to him and a statement he himself has apologized for. he is trying to save his ass right now and its quite amusing.

“I told them that they should invoke a culture war. Cosmopolitanism versus parochialism, secularism versus moralism, Obama versus Palin, tolerance versus racism and homophobia, democracy versus autocracy. If the cranky old men in Alberta don’t like it, too bad. Go south and vote for Palin.”

the CBC is showing a conservative bias in this clip

[Pastiche]

Add the CBC feeding Liberal MPs questions in a Parliamentary committee, their leading stories on *gasp* Wafergate, the use of prorogation as a faux-outrage medium, their (Pete Mansbridge's, in particular) childlike glee and excitement for the coalition gov't coupled with their palpable disappointment when it fell through... a couple off the top of my head. At best, cheerleaders; at worst, backroom manipulators. On our dime

The only bias these examples show is your own.

[transplant99]

Originally Posted by Pastiche

The only bias these examples show is your own.

Again...if the CBC Ombudman admits it, what are you basing your "conclusions" on?

Or are you going to continue to ignore actual facts because they simply fly in the face of your political position?

[Pastiche]

I've never actually said that the CBC wasn't biased in this thread.

All I've asked is for examples of CBC bias. The example I got, of Frank Graves, I'm arguing isn't demonstrating any bias on CBC's part. Nobody has yet been able to demonstrate otherwise using that example.

The larger point I wanted to make that these accusations of bias using Frank Graves are pure politics and snide politics at that. Trying to demonstrate that CBC is out to get the Conservatives should be one of the last orders of business this government has. What they're doing is pre-emptively attacking the CBC to avoid any type of dissention. I think it's a form of censorship because the Graves issue is not an issue of bias. Conservatives saw an opportunity to silence the CBC, confused some and convinced the partisans that this is a problem when there is no indication of bias whatsoever. The result is a weakened 5th estate.

[SeeBass]

Originally Posted by Pastiche

The only bias these examples show is your own.

So a media service that serves up questions for a political party to ask in Parliament is not bias according to your own opinion.

I think the bias is running two ways here.

[John Doe]

Originally Posted by transplant99

He donates money to the Liberals....what part of that makes him a non-supporter.

He also donated money to the Conservatives...what part of that makes him a non-supporter of the conservatives? Besides, nobody said that he never supported the Liberals. Are you suggesting that if you ever donate money to a political party you should then be exempt from ever getting work from a crown corporation? Or is it only donations to the Liberals?

Originally Posted by transplant99

Beyond all that he is trying to give advice to the Liberals on how to defeat the Conservatives. Unsolicited advice according to him and a statement he himself has apologized for. he is trying to save his ass right now and its quite amusing.

So you think it is funny that the Government of Canada is attacking a successful businessman for his political views? How about that guy from Calgary that wanted to set up a firewall around Alberta? Shouldn't they attack him as well? Now what was his name again?

Originally Posted by transplant99

So, the CBC has a Conservative mouthpiece on giving their slant but no other political parties are represented and you don't see a bias there?

[Resolute 14]

Originally Posted by John Doe

So you think it is funny that the Government of Canada is attacking a successful businessman for his political views? How about that guy from Calgary that wanted to set up a firewall around Alberta? Shouldn't they attack him as well? Now what was his name again?

Why should they? That man from Calgary who opined about the idea of setting up a firewall did not do so on the dime of the Canadian tax payer. The idiot Liberal pollster did.

I have no problem at all with the CBC's bias - so long as I am not forced to pay for it.

[transplant99]

He also donated money to the Conservatives...what part of that makes him a non-supporter of the conservatives

400 bucks to a guy in his riding, vs 11,000 to the federal libs. Same thing you say? OK then.

Are you suggesting that if you ever donate money to a political party you should then be exempt from ever getting work from a crown corporation?

No. I am suggesting that if you donate money to a political party, then offer advice on starting a culture war based on polling data as a way to garner votes in hopes of re-gaining power.... all the while getting contracts from Canadian taxpayers, there is a blatent and obvious conflict of interest.

So you think it is funny that the Government of Canada is attacking a successful businessman for his political views? How about that guy from Calgary that wanted to set up a firewall around Alberta? Shouldn't they attack him as well? Now what was his name again?

Where did anyone attack his politcal views?

, the CBC has a Conservative mouthpiece on giving their slant but no other political parties are represented and you don't see a bias there

you have to be joking.