Sunday, November 28, 2010

With Friends Like These......???

This blog entry is dedicated the Ian Morrison of the Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, under whose watch, the organization has just become the worst enemy the CBC could ever hope for.

It begins over at SDA, were the alert was sounded. It was there that I learned the Friends of Canadian Broadcasting had posted a survey form about the CBC.

The survey is a doozy. It begins by asking the respondent to insert their email address into a box "To ensure the security of our survey, please enter the email address at which you received an invitation to participate." So right off the bat, we know they are not interested in criticism of the CBC and will only take into consideration the views of CBC's genuine "friends". But that didn't stop me, of course, nor many SDAers.

Besides, a simple little search reveals the Friends of Canadian Broadcasting are actually enemies of Canadian Broadcasting.
"QMI Agency asked Friends for more information on what they do and how they spend their millions in donations. An official said the group does not publish an annual report and directed QMI Agency to the audited financial statements posted on their website.

QMI Agency attempted to contact Friends spokesman Ian Morrison by telephone and e-mail regarding its lobbying position and its financial statements. Specific questions included whether the $78,750 listed as a “management fee” in the financial statements was his salary for what is described as a part-time job. Those questions were not answered."
Indeed, they seem to think Canadian broadcasting consists only of the CBC.

But back to the survey. It was one of the worst, if not THE WORST survey instruments I have ever seen. If you missed it, I copied it and will now show you the questions that were asked.

The questions asked in the first section are as follows (there were five responses to choose from ranging from "Strongly agree" to "Strongly disagree"):
  • "How much do you agree or disagree with the following statements about the CBC? "

"We should build a new CBC capable of providing high quality Canadian programming with strong regional content throughout Canada."

This is a reasonably phrased question. You can either agree or disagree with it.
  • "The CBC is the one thing that helps distinguish Canada from the U.S."

Now, with only one question out of the way, we already have the beginning of the anti-American bias creeping in and it gets worse in subsequent questions. However, this one is a reasonable question in that you can either agree with it or disagree with it.
  • The CBC provides value for taxpayers' money.

Again, another reasonable question. It's easy to answer with one of the five response options made available.
  • As Canada’s economic ties with the United States increase, it is becoming more important to strengthen Canadian culture and identity.

Again with the America-phobia, but nevertheless, easy to answer.

The question remains, though, to what degree, if any, would answers from those who are not on the privileged "invited" list differ from those who were invited. I'm sure if it truly was a randomly chosen set of respondents, rather than a special group of invitees, the responses would be very different.

Now on to the next set of questions and again there are five possible responses to choose from. This time they are: Very important / Somewhat important / Not very important / Not at all important / Don't know
  • Do you feel that the Canadian television and radio production industry is important to the Canadian economy and jobs?

  • How important is Canadian programming and content on television and radio for maintaining and developing Canadian culture and identity?

We're beginning to see why the responses of only those who were "invited" to participate will be taken into consideration. Decades ago the Canadian "arts community" set itself up as the saviour of Canadian "culture", assuming for themselves the exclusive privilege of defining what our culture is, and forthwith began spinning tales which had as their bedrock, anti-Americanism - Canadian culture was defined as "not America" and to ensure this was firmly implanted in the brains of the great unwashed peasantry of the land, they began to build the anti-American cornerstone of their brand of "Canadian Culture", primarily through the CBC. All throughout, the question of whether or not the underlying assumption (that Canadian culture and identity is threatened) was true or false was never asked.
  • Do you feel that the CBC plays an important role in your community?

A reasonable question which can be answered with one of the five possible responses allowed. My answer was "Not at all important", although it would have been nice to be able to choose "CBC is the enemy of democracy" or some such thing. But you can see how surveys can be construed to give a certain pre-determined tilt to things. That tilt gets decidedly worse later in the survey.
  • Do you feel that the CBC is important in protecting Canadian identity and culture?

Well, that depends on what Canadian identity and culture are. If its soul is America and Conservative bashing, then sure, CBC is an important tool. But, nonetheless, it's a reasonable question that folks like me can answer with "Not at all important", even if we'd like to challenge the premise of the question in the first place. How about asking, "Do you feel Canadian culture and identity are threatened?" or "Do Canadian culture and identity need to be protected against encroachment by American culture?" My answer to both those questions would be "Not in the least. Get over your inferiority complex and grow up." But, alas, such questions do not serve to buttress the narrative, so they are left out.



Excellent / Very good / Good / Fair / Poor / Very poor / No opinion

"We'd like to know your opinions on two aspects of the CBC's performance.

  • As you may know, as the national broadcaster the mandate of the CBC is to provide radio and television services incorporating a wide range of programming that informs, enlightens, and entertains. Overall, how would you rate the performance of the CBC in fulfilling this mandate to date?"

Fair question, but my hunch is that people who have not been invited to participate would have a very different view than the one held by invitees.

The second aspect goes as follows:

  • "As part of its mandate, the CBC is required to provide television and radio content that reflects Canada and its regions to national and regional audiences, and to serve the special needs of Canada’s diverse regions. Overall, how would you rate the performance of the CBC in fulfilling this mandate?"

This is again a fair question, but what I'd really like to see is a question meant to gauge whether or not there is widespread support for the mandate itself. In fact, it would be nice to know if there ever was widespread agreement with it.

Moving on to the next section of the survey, the mask slips further off and the underlying assumptions are further strengthened:
  • How much confidence or trust do you personally have in the CBC to protect Canadian culture and identity on television. Please use a scale of 1 meaning very low trust and confidence to 7 meaning very high trust and confidence.

This question assumes you agree not only with the mandate, but with the idea that Canadian culture and identity is under threat, and is likely meant to solicit ammunition to hurl at the government for not funding the CBC well enough to meet its mandate and thereby protect Canadian culture and identity. What a load of set-up crap. But there's more:

Which of the following statements do you most agree with?

  • The CBC is Canada's broadcaster. It's a shame it lets other networks do its work for it.
  • I don't care which network I watch, so long as it's Canadian.
Again, there are important options missing. What if you don't care whether it's Canadian or not? What if you don't care for TV period? How do you expect the results of such a manipulated survey design to yield usable, valid information. If I were to deal with this question honestly, I couldn't answer either of them and would skip them. What then would the Friends of Canadian Broadcasting do with that response? And more:

Which of the following statements do you most agree with?

  • The CBC has a special responsibility: providing not only national, but also local and regional broadcasting.
  • The CBC is not the only one who has a responsibility to cover local and regional issues: all Canadian broadcasters share this responsibility.

Okay. These ones gets a little closer to questioning the mandate, but doesn't quite come to the real question, which is, is the mandate necessary or justified? There are not only alternatives in the local television market, but alternatives in other media, such as radio and online versions of newspapers.  What's so special about the CBC?

Moving further along:

Please tell us how much you agree with the following statements.

Strongly Disagree / Disagree / Undecided / Agree / Strongly Agree

  • Canada's cultural sovereignty is under attack. What's next? Ads on CBC Radio? The way things are going, the CBC will be sold off to the highest bidder. Then the Americans will really take over.

Oh, how I wish. I would love to see the elitist snobs squirm, spit and howl as they rush over the cliff.  And finally, the mask falls right off and crashes on the floor:
  • "In Canada, Stephen Harper decides who runs the CBC. Harper appointed a President with no experience in radio or television broadcasting. Other countries leave the appointment decision in the hands of those with experience in broadcasting and radio. It's time to take the political manipulation out of the management of the CBC."

Complete dingbats, these friends. The whole structure of CBC is that it is state created, state funded and state regulated via Acts of Parliament. Yes. It is the Prime Minister who appoints the President and all the members of the board. That doesn't change just because the Prime Minister happens to be the leader of the Conservative Party. It would be the same under a Liberal Party. And that's the biggest problem I, and thousands of other Canadians, have with the Corpse.

It's very foundational documents set it up to be a stooge for the sitting government, and whether or not the Ceeb pays tribute to the party in power is not so much the point as it is that the party in power has too much influence and in order to maintain a semblance of separation, the Ceeb bends over whether the Prime Minister swallowed or pocketed a communion wafer, and, conversely, ignores things that are of interest, like the AGW fraud.

Rather, they focus on things that serve the goal of keeping themselves employed.  There's nothing wrong with that in the real world. In the real world, you want to keep yourself employed by doing a good job for your employer, or, if you are in business, by doing a good job for your customers.

But in the case of CBC, they do this by whipping up enthusiasm for causes that are more likely to be within the purview of the political party most likely to endorse those causes and most likely to reward the Corpse with adequate funding.  It's a marriage made on a slippery slope. That slope leads to it becoming an official organ for the dissemination of not just state propaganda, but liberal/left propaganda. And to keep the spotlight off that fact, there exists a group calling itself the "Friends" who are all to happy to act on the Ceeb's behalf, even to the point of attempting to keep other Canadian broadcasters from competing with her.

So it really doesn't matter who resides at 24 Sussex Drive, the CBC will cater to whichever party and which ever causes it thinks will ensure its continued survival, and given our history, that means the Liberal Party of Canada and general left-wing causes.  In fact, the Liberal Party's success is in large part due to its capitalizing on the CBC's leftist slant as a propaganda tool.

The Conservatives are far less likely to find the Ceeb a willing propagandists, and, conversely, the Ceeb is far less likely to advocate for its own fiscal starvation by endorsing Conservative ideology.

And so, the Ceeb puts a muzzle on the party selected by a healthy plurality or an outright majority of Canadian voters and the Conservative Party behaves accordingly, playing their cards close to their chests, being careful what they say or do for fear of being destroyed by the media.

The CBC is in a perpetual bind, from which it cannot, and apparently does not want to, escape. Other than through privatization, any threat of which, of course, will have them whipped up into a frenzy, there is no way for the Ceeb to escape this conundrum. In order to assure the funding continues, it must favour left-wing causes.  But there were no questions on the Friends' survey hinting at anything close to that nasty little factoid.  Pravda they are and Pravda they must remain - until and unless there is a grassroots revolt.

The Friends of Canadian Broadcasting then asks the participants to indicate their level of income and their gender. It's generally not a good idea to ask personal questions like that without a good reason, so I have to wonder why they need to know it.  Could it be they want to know who to aim their propaganda at? Is it the young angry male? The older worn out socialist whose youthful enthusiasm kept him from climbing the ladder or obtaining credentials that would earn him a good living?  Is the privileged list of elites entitled to take the Friends' surveys about to become even more narrowly defined?

And finally, they provide a spot for survey participants to comment. These are the comments I made, but since I wasn't one of the privileged few who got an invitation, I doubt they will count.
"How does one get "invited" to participate in this survey and how do you expect to pull the wool over the eyes of anyone with more than a grade school education. This survey was the most poorly designed survey instrument I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot of them.

Like the CBC does on a daily basis, you have just thoroughly discredited yourselves as an organization that can be taken seriously. What a self-serving bunch of crap."
Anyway, well done Friends. With "friends" like you, the CBC hardly needs any more enemies.

Privatize the damned thing now!!!!

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3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

great stuff!! WELL WRITTEN AND RESEARCHED ..it is hard to imagine anyone coming up with this 'survey'' in the first place.it reminds me of the ''white privilege''thingy in Edmonton.I'd love to see this abomination sink

November 29, 2010 8:19 am  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

http://tinyurl.com/2e2rlop--CAN'T BELIEVE CEEB ACTUALLY LET THIS GO

November 29, 2010 6:00 pm  
Blogger Louise said...

CEEBs fans are letting her rip in the comments, though, at least the first few. I've gotten so as I don't read the comments on most of their stories. The first line of that article is bang on, though: "Canadians and their courts had (have) an "Alice in Wonderland" worldview. Thank you progressives. The dates referenced in the article are interesting, too. This is the very early part of Harper's current administration. Judd is no doubt talking about the prevailing modus operandi of Liberal administration.

November 29, 2010 6:41 pm  

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