Granted, the CBC has shown to have slight bias to one side or the other when it deals with certain subjects and topic of a political nature. And yes, there are sometimes slight misrepresentations in its news stories. But one important thing is that, a large majority of the time, I can trust it to be trying to ride the centre road of neutrality. (or in Rick Mercer’s case, he takes comical, satirical shots at everyone and not just one group).
Anyways, I was going through the old CBC fifth estate episodes and I came across this: http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/sticksandstones.html – an episode called “Sticks and Stones”.
“Sticks and Stones” is a fifth estate investigative report/documentary on the Post-9/11 American Media and its takeover by the so-called “conservatives” in the United States. (Please note that our brand of Conservatism in Canada is different from the United States brand of “conservatism“).
After watching the entire 42:30 documentary, my reaction was “…wtf…” (please pardon my language). The reason for this type of reaction:
- Ann Coulter. Nothing really needs to be said after that. As a person who graduated Cum laude from Cornell University – an Ivy League school, it’s pretty sad that she clearly did not know that Canada was never involved the Vietnam war and it never intervened in the conflict in support of the American position. Yes, there were Canadians in Vietnam, not as Canadian Soldiers or part of the Canadian Armed Forces, but as “American” Soldiers. If we were in the war, we wouldn’t have accepted all those draft dodgers. She acts like stubborn, tantrum making child, where she believes that every word out of her mouth and refuses to listen to other people and other views, even when she is clearly wrong. And if she can’t prove the other views are wrong, she insults the people who hold those views.
- Bill O’Reilly. From what I’ve seen watching his show and watching the CBC’s the fifth estate episode “Sticks and Stones”, all I can say is that the impression that he gave me is that he is a jerk who makes up things as he goes along. His boycott of the French goods: phony baloney and total bullshit. According to the United States Census Bureau – Foreign Trade Division [1], trade actually went up during O’Reilly’s “boycott” (In thousands of USDs: 2003 = 29,219,280; 2004 = 31,605,739; 2005 = 33,842,058 2006 = 37,039,632; 2007 = 41,588,986). And his so called boycott of Canadian goods and services: again total bullshit. As each other’s largest trading partners, our economies depend on each other, and therefore a boycott is unrealistic and implausible, as such an action will be a suicide pill for the United States economy. Essentially, it’s “if you try to take us down, we’ll take you down with us” and due to the nature of the Canadian and United States economies and the agreements that bound them so tightly together, “we” will succeed in pulling down the United States economy into the fire with “us” if “we” are pushed in first. You know really makes him such a jerk? The fact that he insults people, and telling to shut up when the other side is trying to have an intelligent conversation and debate with the man.
In my opinion, American television and news networks are way too bias and and there is no standard to guarantee the neutrality and the accuracy of their programs. What these American television and news networks should do is look at Canadian television shows such as the Agenda with Steve Paiken, where the panelists are experts in their fields, the host is neutral, discussion is fair and the show is informative, not some propaganda tool for an ideology. When the Agenda brings up a topic, they bringing commentators that know the subject first hand and/or academics. If the topic was about Pakistan and Afghanistan, the show would have people who lived in the region and have studied the situation in the region, or even experts and academics such as international relations and studies professor Janice Stein. Or if the topic was about women in politics, again, they would bring in experts such as academics and women actually elected or running for office.
In my opinion, the American news media needs to reform: to rid themselves of these lopsided, overly bias self proclaimed experts and adopt a more neutral, fair, and balanced stance and present the news as is and not use it as some sort of ideological propaganda tool.
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