What should the CBCs mandate be

[TheIronMaiden]

The fact you are sharing these articles and driving traffic to them are going to produce more articles like them. Bad takes are like annoying little brothers, the less you engage with their attention seeking behavior the less it happens. People complain about "outrage culture" but feed it by engaging with it. You are daft if you think anything matters to CBC news more than site traffic when offering jobs and planning editions.

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by RyZ

The CBC is a tabloid.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/londo...vity-1.6639834
https://www.cbc.ca/television/the-pa...zzle-1.6631466

Last year hiking was racist and the year before that mathematics were racist, now its crossword puzzles.

Any political party can defund a propped up national broadcaster that acts like failing VICE or The Huffington Post and nothing will be missed. If chasing stories like this are what my tax dollars are going to, I 'll put in a word against it.

Do you take issue with something factual in the reporting? You clearly don't see this as an issue for yourself, but could you acknowledge it is an issue for others? Should a public broadcaster not provide a diverse slate of stories, particularly those for minorities, even if they may not be an interest to every single Canadian?

[JohnnyB]

Are those being interpreted as outrage stories? I don't see the outrage. They just read as interest articles on a common game that people are trying to make more inclusive. They're practically the least outrageous articles possible.

[Superflyer]

Originally Posted by Redliner

Agree with this 100% but the CBC is absolutely carrying Government water. It’s been years since they’ve been anywhere close to objective with their coverage, and under the Trudeau government they have basically become the Ministry of Truth.

Anytime I read comments like this I equate it to the same people that watch a hockey game and yell that the commentators are biased against their team because they said something positive about the other team and something negative about their team a couple times through the broadcast. Meanwhile people that are not invested in either team and are just watching the game, see it as pretty even.

[TheIronMaiden]

Originally Posted by Superflyer

Anytime I read comments like this I equate it to the same people that watch a hockey game and yell that the commentators are biased against their team because they said something positive about the other team and something negative about their team a couple times through the broadcast. Meanwhile people that are not invested in either team and are just watching the game, see it as pretty even.

Sometimes, but it is true that the CBC news has a pro liberal lean. That said, they are not the only news platform in the world so folks can find a diversity of opinion. Ironically, CBC news is probably the only branch of the CBC that is in the black.

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by TheIronMaiden

Sometimes, but it is true that the CBC news has a pro liberal lean. That said, they are not the only news platform in the world so folks can find a diversity of opinion. Ironically, CBC news is probably the only branch of the CBC that is in the black.

They have a slight left-leaning bias on social issues, as most of Canada does.

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

They have a slight left-leaning bias on social issues, as most of Canada does.

I'm not even sure it is a bias, it's reflection of the makeup of Canada. If you find the CBC is "left" that just means that's where you are relative to the "average" Canadian.

[TheIronMaiden]

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

They have a slight left-leaning bias on social issues, as most of Canada does.

Originally Posted by Fuzz

I'm not even sure it is a bias, it's reflection of the makeup of Canada. If you find the CBC is "left" that just means that's where you are relative to the "average" Canadian.

I was talking specifically about implicate political affiliation in CBC news. There is some overlap between stance of social issues and political affiliation, but general stance on social issues is not the contentious bit, or rather it should not be. The aspect worth discussing, is out and out support of one political party over another. I think that CBC News is well within the limits of acceptable when it comes to political affiliation. That said, there is an obvious bias of support for the federal liberals, when it comes to politics and political action, and it is worth regularly discussing this fact, and indeed the bias of all news broadcasts with respect to this. However the CBC, specifically CBC news deserves extra scrutiny based on its status as a publicly funded platform. Does that mean defund them, no? It means setting up a realistic amount of accountability.

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by TheIronMaiden

I was talking specifically about implicate political affiliation in CBC news. There is some overlap between stance of social issues and political affiliation, but general stance on social issues is not the contentious bit, or rather it should not be. The aspect worth discussing, is out and out support of one political party over another. I think that CBC News is well within the limits of acceptable when it comes to political affiliation. That said, there is an obvious bias of support for the federal liberals, when it comes to politics and political action, and it is worth regularly discussing this fact, and indeed the bias of all news broadcasts with respect to this. However the CBC, specifically CBC news deserves extra scrutiny based on its status as a publicly funded platform. Does that mean defund them, no? It means setting up a realistic amount of accountability.

Have you seen any actual neutral analysis on this? I just did a search and haven't found anything other than angry Sun and WS opinonists arguing it. You would think if it was so obvious academics would have studied it, no?

[TheIronMaiden]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Have you seen any actual neutral analysis on this? I just did a search and haven't found anything other than angry Sun and WS opinonists arguing it. You would think if it was so obvious academics would have studied it, no?

Academics regularly do content analysis on the CBC and all other media broadcasters. Unsurprisingly you get many different conclusions. Suggesting that academics are not biased is hilarious. The Arts are explicitly biased. Folks in Academia do rigorous research and pass through peer review, but they are still biased. Arts are not science. science cannot be applied directly to the humanities. Doing science about humanities is like dancing about architecture. News will always be biased, the discussion is not biased vs unbiased the discussion is - is this bias tolerable? or is this bias supported by quality research?


As for the CBC new I will reiterate my opinion. I think the CBC news bias is tolerable, but worth monitoring and discussing because of its status as a publicly funded organization.

[JohnnyB]

Originally Posted by TheIronMaiden

Academics regularly do content analysis on the CBC and all other media broadcasters. Unsurprisingly you get many different conclusions. Suggesting that academics are not biased is hilarious. The Arts are explicitly biased. Folks in Academia do rigorous research and pass through peer review, but they are still biased. Arts are not science. science cannot be applied directly to the humanities. Doing science about humanities is like dancing about architecture. News will always be biased, the discussion is not biased vs unbiased the discussion is - is this bias tolerable? or is this bias supported by quality research?


As for the CBC new I will reiterate my opinion. I think the CBC news bias is tolerable, but worth monitoring and discussing because of its status as a publicly funded organization.

So, you just don't think social sciences are a thing, or you think they're just not a valid thing?

[Fuzz]

Sure, everyone will have a bias, but that doesn't mean you can't do an analytics of that in a scientific way. Here's what one media bias site says

Overall, we rate CBC Left-Center Biased based on editorial positions that lean slightly left and High for factual reporting due to proper sourcing and a clean fact check record.

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/cbc-n...-broadcasting/

So editorials may lean left, but they don't say that about news. I don't really see anything about the massive bias those deeply in the rightwing media-sphere like to proclaim.
So to me the perceived bias is a non-issue.

[TheIronMaiden]

Originally Posted by JohnnyB

So, you just don't think social sciences are a thing, or you think they're just not a valid thing?

I don't think it is a "science". It is extremely important and valid.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by Erick Estrada

What's that got to do with their all time low viewership? People can dance around it all they want but the reality is that it's 2022 now and we don't need the CBC.

You said your life wouldn’t be different if we got rid of the CBC. I was pointing out how it would be different if there was no CBC.

The news apparatus that feeds the websites is the same one that feeds the television. The bones of it are required.

[timun]

Originally Posted by bizaro86

My primary point here was that you don't have to replace $150 MM (or whatever number) of fictional programming with any dollar value of non-fictional programming, one of the choices is to not spend anything on replacing it. There isn't some magical number of shows they need to do per year. If the mandate changed to do less fictional programming they could replace it on the air with reruns they already own, or news broadcasts they already pay for on the news network, etc.

The argument that it isn't possible to spend less because the fictional programming earns revenue fails. That doesn't mean they shouldn't do it, but it does mean a discussion around the costs and benefits to Canadians can be had without the short-circuiting argument that "any other choice would cost more" because that isn't true.

Okay, fine, I understand your point. If I can summarize on your behalf, you're saying input costs can(/should) be reduced by just not bothering to replace a cancelled new production with anything new at all. That said, I think you're operating from a false premise, in that "airing reruns or news broadcasts they already pay for" isn't entirely cost-free (e.g. re-runs have to be licensed and residuals paid, even for productions "they already own"). And it will result in the diminished ad revenues I spoke of earlier, so our net position as taxpayers isn't necessarily production $$$ cut = net $$$ saved.

Is there a "happy medium" for you, some point to which you slash production budget and we as taxpayers have our overall net costs go down? Sure. However, to reiterate what I was saying earlier in a different way, I think you'd be surprised just how significantly you'd have to slash the production funding to get to that point. And at that point I think it becomes a greater conversation about the viability of the CBC/Ici Radio-Canada Télé television networks as ongoing concerns. Maybe that's the outcome you'd prefer—just get rid of the TV networks entirely and keep the CBCNN/RDI cable news channels going—but I feel like your posts took us on a very long sojourn to get there.

[bizaro86]

Originally Posted by timun

Okay, fine, I understand your point. If I can summarize on your behalf, you're saying input costs can(/should) be reduced by just not bothering to replace a cancelled new production with anything new at all. That said, I think you're operating from a false premise, in that "airing reruns or news broadcasts they already pay for" isn't entirely cost-free (e.g. re-runs have to be licensed and residuals paid, even for productions "they already own"). And it will result in the diminished ad revenues I spoke of earlier, so our net position as taxpayers isn't necessarily production $$$ cut = net $$$ saved.

Is there a "happy medium" for you, some point to which you slash production budget and we as taxpayers have our overall net costs go down? Sure. However, to reiterate what I was saying earlier in a different way, I think you'd be surprised just how significantly you'd have to slash the production funding to get to that point. And at that point I think it becomes a greater conversation about the viability of the CBC/Ici Radio-Canada Télé television networks as ongoing concerns. Maybe that's the outcome you'd prefer—just get rid of the TV networks entirely and keep the CBCNN/RDI cable news channels going—but I feel like your posts took us on a very long sojourn to get there.

I think we're on the same page then.

While I disliked the framing of that argument, because I think all government spending should stand on its own merits where the comparison is the money not being spent, I don't have a strong opinion about what should happen with the CBC.

I watch little TV of any kind because I find it a relatively slow way of acquiring information, so I'm not really equipped to judge whether their programs are very good, which probably isn't the right question anyway. I'd use "does the net benefit to Canada of this exceed the cost of producing it."

For me personally, I'd be more interested in long-form fact-based textual journalism. The private sector has mostly stopped doing that as newspapers die off, and I think that is a public good. Investigative reporting, etc.

[timun]

I think we are mostly on the same page too. I also don't watch much TV. I do however think the work the CBC does is worth the government funding, that fictional television programming done by the CBC is a net benefit.

I also like long-form fact-based journalism, investigative reporting, etc. I don't think they're mutually exclusive, and the CBC can (and does) do both.