CBC Board of Directors Political Contributions by Party

As I prepared this post, a rerun of the CBC’s fifth estate documentary was lamenting the arrival of that “loud”, “raucous” cable news channel that has debuted on Canadian digital cable. I am, of course, talking about Fox News.

Bob McKeown has an obvious thesis. He claims, quite correctly, that Fox News has aided in the division of the United States into Red and Blue. He calls it “a very un-civil war”. Ironically he uses Al Franken and his Air America to confirm his thesis that Fox News is conservative (and thus quite evil). Yet, he ignores that by appealing to Franken he becomes unfaithful to his original thesis of media division of opinion as unfavorable.

I’d venture to guess that Bob took a lot of notes when he saw the Democratic Party funded documentary on Fox News: Outfoxed. All of the points were there. If I produced Outfoxed, I’d look into suing the Fifth Estate for plagiarism.

There is something quite ironic about the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation identifying media bias when the American news channel itself will compete directly with CBC for viewers.

So, I decided to look into the political influence behind what may direct the decisions at the CBC, from the stories that they choose to cover to which rerun of the Antiques Roadshow they’ll play on Newsworld whenever the Conservative Party gets together at a convention or leadership debate.

Thus, I present the political contributions by party made by the current CBC board of directors.

cbc board of directors.jpg

Consider that these powerful positions are appointed by the government and that state media should of course be unbiased.

The CBC documentary on Fox News dreads a division of opinion in the news media concerning the stories that are reported, the facts which are selected, and the tone of the broadcast. I would much prefer a “divide” than such a disparity which is as evident as the chart above describes.

Rex, ask your editors

rex.jpgIn a recent column concerning the Conservative Party of Canada leadership race, Rex Murphy mused perplexedly over the paucity of confabulatory prose by this nation’s columnists and news writers on the topic of the race.

Rex, the leadership race is not dead. Your editors have merely found another story and they’re running with it. I’m talking, of course, about the American Democratic Party Leadership Race. Why is our nation’s news media so focused on a topic that they usually abhor? Indeed, our national news peddlers tend to give American news less attention than its worth. Yet, why does our opposition’s leadership race get so much less coverage than the American’s opposition leadership race receives? The American Democrats and the Canadian Conservatives are trying to do the same thing, in effect: change the government. However, Peter Mansbridge has spoken more about John Kerry than Belinda Stronach, and we’ve heard more about Lieberman’s Joementum (or lack thereof) than we have heard about Tony Clement.

Our leadership race is news. Rex, you should ask your editors why they’re choosing to ignore the story. Without media coverage, our leadership contenders can only be heard as far as they can shout. Mr. Murphy has declared that Belinda Stronach, Tony Clement and Stephen Harper have all climbed inside a “Trojan horse”, ready to attack the Liberal party’s stranglehold on power. It’s not that the three intend to stay within the horse, rather, it’s that nobody has told the city of Troy that the horse is waiting outside its gates.