My name is Jim, and I listen to the CBC. It didn’t start that way. When I was young, my parents listened to the CBC, so of course I didn’t. Because I grew up in Vancouver, I listened to Red Robinson. I coveted Jack Cullen’s enormous personal library of 78-rpm records. My first full-time job was in private radio. The CBC was our publicly-funded enemy. That all changed when I got a job as program producer for a tiny CBC station in Prince Rupert, on B.C.’s north coast. With only 250 watts of power, its signal barely reached beyond the city limits. But it was the only radio station for 100 miles. There was nothing else to listen to. And I began to discover two things – the wealth of thought that went into CBC programs, and the motivation that drove them.
A proud tradition Don’t get me wrong -- working for the CBC in the boonies wasn’t all sweetness and light. Union and management nursed grievances against each other. Equipment failures regularly put us off the air. Senior management in Vancouver, saturated by the broadcast environment of an urban centre, couldn’t understand what listeners wanted on the isolated North Coast. Just as the head office boffins in Toronto couldn’t grasp why Lotusland always wanted to be different. Even so, we were all marinated in the ethos of what the CBC stood for. The CBC was Canada’s national broadcaster, the glue that stuck Canada together. Author John Robert Columbo declared that the two most Canadian things were the United Church of Canada and the National Hockey League. But we knew it was the CBC. It was Foster Hewitt, Peter Gzowski, and the nightly Ten o’clock News. Oh yes, and the Dominion Observatory Time Signal. We also knew it was our responsibility to set standards. Private stations might tolerate sloppy language; we had to know how to pronounce Khachaturian and Ouagadougou correctly. Commercial stations might pass rumours as news; we had to get the facts right.
A national presence We learned how Graham Spry had argued for a public broadcasting system that would tie a scattered country together, the way transcontinental railways had. By no coincidence, the CNR provided a model for the CBC, when it transmitted radio programs along the telegraph lines beside the tracks, to keep its passengers entertained. Before the internet linked everyone to everything, a national network was a brave undertaking. There were lots of private broadcasters, of course. Each had its own loyal audience. But a multitude of puddles do not a mighty ocean make. Private radio segmented the country; public radio integrated it. Halifax and Victoria got the same national news, the same Just Mary and Rawhide programs, the same Lux Radio Theatre…
Still influential Personally, I believe that CBC Radio is and always has been far more Canadian than CBC TV – which tries too hard to be yet another commercial channel. A TV/Radio Trends Survey from a few years ago found that over 40 per cent of Anglophone Canadians listened to CBC Radio very month. Regular listeners (22 per cent of the total survey) listened more than 10 hours a month; many listened to nothing else. Another 19 per cent listened at least occasionally. And that’s across a whole nation. Individual stations attracted higher numbers, but only in their own broadcast areas. Those audience figures suggest that the CBC can still have a huge influence. If I had my druthers, I would want the CBC to go totally non-commercial. As long as it depends on advertising revenue, top brass will be constantly looking over their shoulders to see if a program might offend an influential sponsor. Ditto for government funding. To bring the CBC to heel, a touchy Stephen Harper slashed its budget by $115 million, and appointed nine political partisans to the 11-member CBC Board of Directors. I hope the new government will reverse some of those appointments. I hope it will make the CBC independent of all outside pressures – like the Auditor-General in Ottawa or the Children’s Advocate in B.C. I would like to know that I could depend on a CBC report’s accuracy and neutrality. To know that it was prepared by someone with long-term knowledge of the subject and the territory, who wasn’t just a pretty face helicoptered in to assemble inflammatory quotes. I’d like to know that I could trust the program’s producers and editors to screen out unsupported bias, to give me the truth even if it’s unvarnished. I’d like to be able to trust the CBC again. ******************************************************** Copyright © 2016 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups encouraged; links from other blogs welcomed; all other rights reserved. To send comments, to subscribe, or to unsubscribe, write jimt@quixotic.ca ********************************************************
YOUR TURN
Frank Martens seized the core of last week’s column about selective reading, in these two sentences: “ Frank responded, “I have read a great deal of Israeli/Palestinian history. I get daily propagandized news of Israel through THE TIMES OF ISRAEL and I also get Palestinian ‘propaganda’ from the MIDDLE EAST MEDIA CENTRE. Both adamantly believe they are right. I came to the conclusion that the Palestinians have been the victims of the Israelis (with help from their American and European cohorts). The more I read and become informed the more I KNOW I am right. Nothing will ever change my mind, yet I continue to read both sides of the story. I believe that most intelligent people operate this way.” Frank added, “Those rectal orifices may once have heard the other side of the story, but are convinced that their viewpoints are right.”
George Brigham also quoted one of my sentences back at me: “The mass media keep feeding us stories about the occasional rogue cop who beats up or shoots a suspect, instead of treating him like an Oxford don.” To which George commented, “Clearly you’re not familiar with the British TV detective series Morse and its spin-offs Lewis and Endeavour. Set in Oxford, as often as not, the villain [usually] turns out to be an Oxford don. Morse does not shoot them or beat them up, but gives them no special treatment, often with the disapproval of his superior officers.”
Tom Watson suggested, “Your column about tunnel vision should be required reading by all partisan politicians. Just three months into the role of being Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau has already been written off by opponents. One person with whom I correspond on a regular basis went so far as to call him a ‘useless twit.’ It has left me wondering what he would have to do to be right in some people's minds, or even given a chance. “I wonder what good might occur if all politicians worked together at trying to figure out what was good for the entire country rather than just what's good for their party and how to score political points. But, rather than that, most scurry into their own tunnels.”
Bonnie Mulligan: “I once read an article that referred to selective reading as ‘confirmation bias’. I thought it was a good term. I googled it and there's even a Wikipedia reference to it. My husband says ‘Wise men are full of doubt while fools are always certain.’”
Bruce McGillis “enjoyed a chuckle today. You used some words that are out of your character, or is the real Jim standing up? By the way, a brother’s sphincter quit working. Very embarrassing.” And not something I should joke about. Sorry, Bruce’s brother. 
Dorothy Haug was concerned about the availability of other viewpoints: “I would like to hear your thoughts about the recent firings at newspapers across the country. Apart from the seemingly 'casual' cruelty of dismissing employees who have clearly given a great portion of their lives to a vocation, I am concerned about what may or may not replace them. Will we be getting our news from bloggers across the globe with little or no research going into the articles?”
On the subject of alternate viewpoints, Isabel Gibson wrote, “I just read a piece where a fellow says that questions are our way of making a space in our brains. If we get information but haven't asked a question, there's no space for it and it bounces off. So we need to keep asking questions if we want to keep learning things.”
Dave Goodman sent me quite a long tribute to Dr.Leonard E. Gads, when he was Associate Dean of Engineering at U of A. Gads apparently had a great skills at opening his students’ minds. Among other things, Gads noted that “educators had labored hard to create assignments that had a single answer. But the real world would present problems that had at least three unsatisfactory possibilities…. The general public usually assumes that science produces a yes or no answer and are hugely disillusioned if only a least negative solution is given. Unfortunately the more complex the problem, the more likely the solutions will have a downside. “The ease of communication today [leads] to unreasonable responses such as that all policemen must never make a mistake, but if they do then all policemen must be evil.” 
I expected Steve Roney to express a contrary view: “I certainly agree with the basic premise of this essay, that it is important to hear all points of view. I also thank you for [citing] the debate between Bill Nye and Ken Ham. I did not know of it. “But it seems to me you misrepresent the relative positions of Nye and Ham. Nye's the guy guilty of not listening to the other side. He says, true, ‘just one piece of evidence,’ but then ignores a piece of evidence of exactly the sort he calls for from Ham, the 40,000 year old wood encased in 4,000,000 year old basalt. Indeed, there are quite a few known anomalous fossils, such as fossils of modern rabbits found in the same strata as ancient trilobites. Nye is either dishonest or shockingly ignorant in saying repeatedly that there is not one example ever found.”
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TECHNICAL STUFF
This column comes to you using the electronic facilities of Woodlakebooks.com.        If you want to comment on something, send a message directly to me, at jimt@quixotic.ca. Or just hit the “Reply” button.
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PROMOTION STUFF…
 Ralph Milton has a new project, called Sing Hallelujah – the world’s first video hymnal. It consists of 100 popular hymns, both new and old, on five DVDs that can be played using a standard DVD player and TV screen, for use in congregations who lack skilled musicians to play piano or organ. More details at www.singhallelujah.com Ralph’s HymnSight webpage is still up,  http://www.hymnsight.ca, with a vast gallery of photos you can use to enhance the appearance of the visual images you project for liturgical use (prayers, responses, hymn verses, etc.)  Wayne Irwin's “Churchweb Canada,” an inexpensive service for any congregation wanting to develop a web presence, with free consultation. <http://www.churchwebcanada.ca>  Alan Reynold’s weekly musings, punningly titled “Reynolds Rap” -- reynoldsrap@shaw.ca  Isabel Gibson’s thoughtful and well-written blog, www.traditionaliconoclast.com  Alva Wood’s satiric stories about incompetent bureaucrats and prejudiced attitudes in a small town – not particularly religious, but fun; alvawood@gmail.com to get onto her mailing list.  Tom Watson writes a weekly blog called “The View from Grandpa Tom’s Balcony” – ruminations on various subjects, and feedback from Tom’s readers. Write him at tomwatso@gmail.com or twatson@sentex.net
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