Having shovelled billions into the maw of CBC for almost a decade to keep its creaky mandate going amid “seismic developments,” it seems an odd decision for the Liberals to redefine that same mandate. With less than a year left till an election (it could be a lot less) in a bureaucracy where time is measured in decades (unless it’s climate) the idea of getting anything this profound done before Pierre Poilievre gets his hands on the Corp. is risible.
Poilievre has made clear his intentions to stop the billion-dollar gravy train to CBC. Clearly the rethink is a political feint to assuage its aging progressive base that remembers the good old days of Peter Gzowski and Don Harron. Sure, the model is broken, but if we call Poilievre a mini-Trump and demagogue Elon Musk often enough (and have our paid scribblers repeat the charge) can we turn this scow around in time to save our hides? Desperate times call for desperate measures.
So what is going on here? Has Team Trudeau just realized the gig is up for the CBC’s traditional media structure? Do the threats about jailing purveyors of alternate narratives indicate they’re doubling down for their pals in big Telcos? In dumping CEO Catherine Tait have they gotten the message that global communications giants don’t give a flip about the Liberals’ protectionist plans?
Example: Netflix is pulling its financial support of programs in the Canadian film and TV sector due to the new Online Streaming Act, Trudeau’s hapless attempt to make foreigners prop up Canada’s failing print and TV production. Out of sight, out of mind. Spotify also announced it was increasing prices in Canada – because of you-know-what.
While French-language Radio Canada might still have a cultural argument in Quebec to make for its continued existence, no such imperative faces English CBC services anymore. The private production side and the digital world are perfectly capable of finding the next Schitt’s Creek or The Great Canadian Pottery Challenge Throw Down without air cover from the feds. So the Lib’s survival strategy now is attack, attack, attack.
Perhaps if enough captive media slappies demonize Poilievre (“The Conservative leader’s rhetoric seems tailored for a media climate that rewards maximum drama,” whines CBC), protectionist intimidation could halt the growth of internet opposition. Likely not. As blogger Mike Benz notes, “The best way to start the story of Internet censorship is with the story of Internet freedom.”
Will pumping CBC’s tires/banning internet critics actually stem the tide? CBC’s national news division is compromised beyond recognition. In concert with the huge private telecommunications firms, they’ve also hollowed out local/regional economies, leaving skeleton operations beholden to head offices in Toronto and Ottawa. And now that independent podcasts and sites emerging since the 1991 privatization of the internet are filling these gaps, Trudeau thinks it’s time to rethink CBC so it can finish off his antagonizers?
While the precise strategy of Trudeau’s hubris remains opaque, the issue between old and new media in the United States is now existential. With Elon Musk coming out in favour of Donald Trump and a new coalition with RFK Jr., Hillary Clinton has raised the banner of jailing those whom she believes purvey “disinformation and misinformation” (translation: things she disagrees with).
In the past, the Grift Queen needed only to make some phone calls to insider media to get her agenda bannered across the major press. Her acolytes would go to the Sunday Morning TV panels to spin her take on affairs. The FBI would cower. Now she’s a remnant of a toppled order. She seems to be saying, why can’t they all be like Kamala Harris and follow my orders?
But new digital media defies her by aligning with Trump. One need only look at the polls indicating that 18 to 35-year-olds are moving toward Trump to see the demographic peril for the Clinton/Obama insiders. No wonder the U.S. Defence Department and Homeland Security are funnelling millions to prestigious American universities to “study” what can be done about “misinformation” from critics like Trump. Spoiler alert: jail time.
Their old order is dying. Even reliable squishes like Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg are having second thoughts about Harris. This past Saturday, SNL savaged Harris, Biden and Tim Walz in a skit that was unthinkable even six weeks ago. And that pillar of Democratic orthodoxy, 60 Minutes, broadcast a damning clip with Harris in which host Bill Whittaker asked her tough questions – which she fumbled. (CBS quickly scrambled to bury the clips.)
You’d almost think the Media Party are looking to distance itself from a Harris train wreck. So Clinton and her shell-shocked allies want arrests and pronto. Indeed, Musk confessed this week that should Kamala Harris prevail next month, he will probably be in jail within six months of the new administration taking office.
One of the favourite claims of the old media looking to rough up Trump/Poilievre is the Hitler meme. We are told that they read his book, follow his agendas and want to eliminate their racial enemies. But the more apt comparison of eras is not Germany 1933-45 but revolutionary France in the late 18th century.
There, dissolute snobs with a hereditary claim to being obeyed suddenly found themselves outflanked by people they hardly deigned to acknowledge, let alone understand. Expecting protection from the trappings of their power, they never saw the Reign of Terror till it walked up the stairs of their palaces. The guillotine ended their pleas for privilege.
It may not be that bloody in modern terms. But the last gasp of a dying elite will look a lot like Marie Antoinette clutching her pearls on the way to meet Madame Lafarge.
Bruce Dowbiggin is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his new book with his son Evan, was voted the eighth best professional hockey book by bookauthority.org. His 2004 book Money Players was voted seventh best.
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