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CBC’s diminished news world

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By Frank Moher The CBC cut some more jobs last month. Where’s the news in that, you say? It was just 140 jobs, you say? Just a droplet in the bloodletting of 1500 jobs projected to be lost by 2020? Well sure, but besides the fact that another swack of people are out of work, […]

Dear CRTC: More Margaret Atwood won’t save Canadian TV

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By Jim Henshaw A decade of boneheaded moves by Canada’s broadcast regulator, the CRTC, were the original inspiration for my  blog. And over its life I’ve repeatedly weighed in on just how dim-witted or out of touch our CRTC Commissioners have been with their decisions. The last was a couple of months ago with the first […]

Why I was Charlie Hebdo

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By Mark Leiren-Young I’d just read the news about Charlie Hebdo when CBC Radio contacted me. They wanted me to come on the air the next morning and talk about what happened, share a satirist’s perspective. They did a pre-interview with me. I burst into tears. I’ve had people threaten to kill me for my […]

The CBC is not its board

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By Montreal Simon Ever since the CBC was hit by the Ghomeshi scandal, and now the Amanda Lang Affair, the CBC haters in this country have been having a ball. Trying to use the scandals as just another excuse to kill the corporation. For those Cons hate it so much with a zealotry that borders […]

Unintelligence sources

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By Frank Moher The Prime Minister, in his role as Chief Scarifier, performed as expected on Thursday, once again using an atrocity for political gain, and to serve his government’s agenda to reduce Canadians’ civil liberties. No surprise there. What was surprising — or, if not surprising, then wall-to-wall evident in the 24 hour news […]

“The Province”: Doing it right for the petroleum producers

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By Alison@Creekside h/t Waterbaby That’s very good, isn’t it? “Kinder Morgan has solved the NIMBY problem by taking the backyard.” I also liked his debunking of the attempt to de-legitimize protest itself — the argument that “protesters undermine the rule of law by claiming to speak for the whole community.” Hey, here’s one now from […]

The shootings: How the media fed our inner monster

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By Montreal Simon You think you know the story. You’ve seen the pictures on TV a million times. Over and over again. You’ve seen how the media have tried to explain what happened, and how they’ve framed the narrative, complete with more heroes than you can count. You know what Stephen Harper wants you to […]

Radio Caroline, all over again

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By Jim Henshaw By now, virtually every Canadian is aware of the stare-down going on between Netflix and our broadcast regulators, the CRTC. But there’s a similar confrontation concurrently flying under most of our media’s radar between the self-same CRTC and a group of radio stations in Vancouver. These stations, unlike Netflix, have their offices, […]